(eJP note: as “Tomorrow” opens later today, an extremely relevant guest post from the Jewish Donor Blog).

There exists a broad generational leadership gap within many Jewish organizations, large and small.

This gap, and how well we handle the transition, will have a profound effect on the future of Jewish fundraising.

Here are my thoughts on the aforementioned Jewish organizational leadership gap:

Many high profile Jewish institutions have simply not properly groomed the next generation of leaders on how to be viable and successful future leaders.

I’m not sure if this has occurred out of a lack of available talent in the next generation, which I doubt very highly, a lack or foresight, or possibly mistrust by the current generation of leadership in turning the reigns over to the new generation.

Have the Boomers been at the helm so long that they can’t or won’t imagine it any other way?

Are the Boomers really “indispensable”?

One undeniable fact in this multi-dimensional debate, and that is that the baby boomer generation is nearing retirement age.

If the Boomers can’t or won’t see far enough down the proverbial road to properly train the future generation then I think that they are doing themselves, their organizations, and really the greater Jewish community a huge disservice.

Do we need some sort trust building seminar between the Boomers and the next generation in order to realize that yes, Jewish organizations will continue to thrive in the future? Maybe the Boomers need to let go a of a little bit of their well deserved ego and the young leadership needs to get a little swagger in their step.

Does the new generation need to prove themselves before any responsibility will change hands? Maybe, but it’s tough to prove oneself unless given the opportunity and the proper preparation.

One things for sure: We have come a long way with our current organizational leadership and in order to preserve our gains and carry on successfully in the future we need capable new leaders to be properly trained and given the opportunity to show that we too can be great leaders!

One last plea to the Boomers: Set the next generation up for success not failure. Believe in us and give us the proper tools to achieve what you have. You earned your wings, let us have that opportunity as well.

Here’s to a a successful new generation of Jewish leadership and here’s a hat tip to Aimee Neistat who wrote the article I read that put the the wheels in motion for this post…

“Ideally yes - if you’re a Zionist and you’re a Jew, you should live in Israel.
But that’s ideally. In the meantime, just because you don’t live in Israel that
doesn’t mean you don’t have to take responsibility and some sort of role in the
state. Whether that’s done by raising money [or] by bringing people to the
country, there are plenty of ways you can [support Israel],” she said. Despite her undying loyalty to WIZO, Gostin points out that many of the group’s leaders had considered themselves indispensable, and hadn’t bothered to train successors. According to Gostin, this organizational flaw (hardly unique to WIZO) caused an age gap, and could possibly have led to the group’s demise. But in recent years, she says, WIZO Australia has focused on closing that age gap through programs designed to attract younger members. “We now have some very active [young members]. They’re tremendous - they understand what they’re doing and they’re thrilled with what they’re doing,” she says. “It’s fine that I’m president, but the next one should be younger,” she adds.”
- Aimee Neistat,
Jerusalem Post, Jan 2008.

Yoav Kaufman, is a List Manager with Negev Direct Marketing Inc.

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Otherwise known as: Everything You Need to Know About Networking

(The major summer conference season begins this week. A perfect opportunity to ‘recycle’ a post from a few years back on conference networking.)

There is an old Japanese riddle: Is it the bell that rings? Is it the hammer that rings? Or is it the meeting of the two that rings?

Charlie Jones, an internationally known speaker on the challenging problems in business, tells us: “You are the same today as you will be five years from now, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

What does this mean to you, the non-profit manager or social entrepreneur?

The books you read simply means keeping up with all that is new, different, and exciting in order to continuously enhance your business and your own mind.

The people you meet are important because they are part of your network. They include not only your present constituents, but extend much further to those you meet at social and business gatherings, your local neighborhood, or shopping mall; the list is almost endless.

“Networking is people talking to each other, sharing ideas, information and resources”, according to John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends.

He continues…

“Networks are structured to transmit information in a way that is quicker, more energy-efficient, and more high-tech than any other process we know.” You can network in your community by belonging to the local synagogue, civic / political group or by contacting professional associates you meet at conferences.

Remember,

the potential for growing your non-profit extends beyond not only the walls of your organization, but also the boundaries of your community. With cell phones, e-mail and the Web, the world has become smaller, which allows you to tell more people who you are and what you do.

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As we wrote last week, The AVI CHAI Foundation has announced that it is allocating up to $1.15 million over the course of the next three years to four individuals and one team of two whom it has selected as the first recipients of The AVI CHAI Fellowship.

Chosen on the basis of their promising creative and entrepreneurial Jewish leadership in the North American Jewish community, the finalists were announced yesterday afternoon in New York; and I am delighted to know and be very aware of the work of three. I am certain this can be said about all the winners, but for those I am personally familiar, they are great and extremely worthwhile endeavors that can only benefit with this recognition. Kol Ha-Kavod to all!

First, the team of two? If you’ve followed many of our posts these past few months you could probably guess: Ariel Beery and Aharon Horwitz, co-founders of the PresenTense Group . They will be “expanding PresenTense Magazine and the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism to form a corps of forward-thinking social and communal pioneers, specially trained for the Information Age.”

Aharon and Ariel noted, “this award is a testimony to the tremendous efforts of the volunteers, staff, community members, advisers, investors, and participant creators of PresenTense. We expect that this generous investment by AVI CHAI, coupled with our growing community’s unstoppable energy, is going to create a powerful force for good in the Jewish People and Israel during the years to come.”

eJewish Philanthropy will have a great deal more to say about this choice as the 2nd summer of the Creative Zionism Institute opens in Jerusalem next month.

The individual Fellows include Chabad-Lubavitch representative, Rabbi Menachem Schmidt. Highly respected in the Philadelphia Jewish community, Rabbi Schmidt is involved in numerous innovative programs and projects that contribute to an enriched Jewish life experience of a wide reach of Jewish people. Rabbi Schmidt is Executive Director of Chabad at the University of Pennsylvania.

Initially, says Rabbi Schmidt, he was tapped for the award for the innovative and popular First Friday Shabbos program that he introduced to Center City. But in his meetings with Avi Chai officials, he introduced them to the mentoring program for college students which he launched and developed under the Steinhardt Neubauer Jewish Heritage Programs (JHP) , a project of the Cayne Heritage Foundation. JHP was a pioneer in peer to peer campus outreach and mentoring of college students by community professionals, a program now expanded to ten campuses.

Other finalists include, Dr. Betsy Dolgin Katz, who is writing a book about the development of adult Jewish learning against the backdrop of contemporary America society;

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, working on the expansion of Yeshivat Hadar beyond its present parameters, allowing the institution to have a national and potentially global influence;

and Rabbi Dov Linzer, creating a rabbinical school curriculum for educators, allowing the Orthodox rabbinate to gain enhanced pedagogical training, so that they are better trained to be Day School educators.

For more details on the Fellowships, see our previous post here .

You might also find of interest an announcement of a previous fellowship awarded to Mechon Hadar along with several past posts about Creative Zionism , their projects, and co-founders.

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According to today’s edition of Haartez,

Prof. Jonathan Halevy, the director general of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, received close to $100,000 in 2004 from the American Committee for Shaare Zedek for his fund-raising activities. Such compensation would not be allowed at a state hospital, but Shaare Zedek is private.

Morris Talansky, who is a key witness in the latest investigation concerning Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is best known for his fund-raising efforts for the hospital. Talansky was paid for his efforts, and it turns out he was not the only one. The American Committee for Shaare Zedek is responsible for raising contributions for the hospital in the U.S., and Talansky was its executive director at the end of the 1990s, and later served as a consultant to the committee. Halevy was also paid as a “consultant.”

Read the complete article here.

also see our previous post, The Trouble With Percentage Commissions

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The generation gap isn’t such a big deal in fundraising, according to a study released today.

While fund raisers often say that baby boomers are very different in their giving styles from their parents, it turns out that other factors — such as income and education level — matter a lot more than the generation in which a donor grew up.

The scholars found that the amount people give rise along with their income, levels of education, and frequency of attending religious services. The age of donors didn’t matter at all.

However, the older donors are, the more likely they are to make gifts to religious causes: Seventy-two percent of donors in the great generation reported giving to religious causes, but only 41.5 percent of the millennial donors did.

The reasons people give also divided along generational lines.

Members of the silent generation are ore likely to say that they gave to “control where my money goes instead of having the government do it” or to “provide services the government can’t or won’t.”

Millennial donors are more likely to say they gave to “make the world a better place.”

The study, “Generational Differences in Charitable Giving and in Motivations for Giving,” was commissioned by Campbell & Company, a fund-raising consulting company.

Read the executive summary below; or download the complete study including recommendations for fundraising strategy based on the data, from Campbell & Company.

Generational-Differences

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Navigation, page length, and site organization still matter in our Web 2.0 age.

we learn from Guidestar,

Almost every organization today, from the small one-person nonprofit to the private-sector independent contractor, has a Web site. A Web presence is essential and has been for years. And just like anything that has been around for a while, every now and then things need to be revamped and reevaluated.

With the advances in technology, specifically Web 2.0 functionality, nonprofits should revisit their Web sites and determine whether they are up to par with today’s savvy, particular Web site visitor.

In order to embrace the advancing technologies, nonprofits should first evaluate their current Web sites to ensure that overall design and layout are acceptable by current standards. Here are some basic questions to ask when evaluating current Web site design and structure:

1. Is it is easy to find the organization’s contact information? Is the link on every page?
Today’s Web users can get frustrated when information is not easy to find or is buried under pages of content.

for more Essentials click here

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Britain’s wealthiest continue to prove their generosity; “the super-rich are engaged in unprecedented levels of giving. They are more directly engaged in the distribution of that money than ever before.”

According to the Sunday Times Rich List Giving Index, almost $4.65 bn. (May 9 exchange rates) has been given away or pledged by the leading 30 philanthropists among Britain’s richest 1,000 individuals. This is nearly double the $2.36 bn. given last year, and more than five times the amount given in 2006.

The Giving Index ranks Rich List members by the proportion of their total wealth donated to charity over the preceding 12 months. The average Giving Index for the top 30 donors was 26.42 in 2008, almost treble that of 9.36 last year (the median almost doubled, to 7.97 from 4.33).

The most popular causes were education, children and youth, humanitarian, and medical, with a more engaged and involved approach being reflected in the predominantly self-made male and female donors.

Alastair McCall, Editor of the Giving List, says, “Entrepreneurial confidence has fueled unprecedented levels of giving”, with business entrepreneurs and financiers still dominating the top ten.

The dramatic growth in giving over the last three years is cause for optimism despite the current financial climate, according to McCall. “The philanthropy boom will not turn to bust as quickly as the economy.”

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Business Under Fire; Israel at 60

War has been a central part of life in Israel since the country became a nation 60 years ago. So it would seem counter-intuitive, then, that the country’s economic growth has been just as steady, just as constant.

check out this extensive feature from the Home of the Peacock.

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.

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