Over a century ago, the Jewish Publication Society was formed to "provide the children of Jewish immigrants to America with books about their heritage in the language of the New World." During it's long life-cycle, the JPS became the standard bearer for Jewish wisdom literature, its most popular item - and cash cow - being the JPS Tanakh, the Bible many if not most young Jews in America received when they were given the Good Book. Recently, however, the JPS realized that the printed book, even the Good one, was under siege - and with it the existence of the JPS itself. Seeing online content grow all around it, the JPS had two general choices: cut back, cut down and hope for the best offline, or develop new directions and revenue generating products that can live in the world beyond print. They … Continue Reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Key Questions on Jewish Innovation, Interruption, and Sustainability
In preparing for a recent flight to New York for some meetings that included discussions regarding the state of Jewish social innovation, I compiled a stack of recent ‘want to read, but haven’t yet read’ materials on the topic. But much like the rest of life, my best-laid plans were interrupted when I stopped at a newsstand in the airport to pick up the day’s newspaper. There on the shelf was a BusinessWeek headline too hard to ignore: “Innovation, Interrupted: How America’s failure to capitalize on innovation hurt the economy - and what happens next.” How’s that for serendipity? So rather than methodically review the stack I compiled, I boarded the plane and dove right into the BusinessWeek article with fascination. It raises some key observations and questions regarding the … Continue Reading
The Innovation Ecosystem: Emergence of a New Jewish Landscape
Based on the 2008 Survey of New Jewish Organizations An ecosystem is a complex set of relationships - the interactions of organisms that live in an interdependent environment. In an ecosystem, the web of connections between individuals and structures forms a self-organizing framework to support life. Over the past decade or so the Jewish world has witnessed the emergence of a new landscape of innovative startups. These enterprises have created new entry points to Jewish life, and new ways of building Jewish community. This diverse and vibrant collective of new Jewish initiatives is an organic communal infrastructure for the Jewish community in the twenty-first century. The Innovation Ecosystem: Emergence of a New Jewish Landscape is a snapshot of a habitat with over 400,000 participants and … Continue Reading
Shared Future, Shared Resources
by Jason Brzoska, Adam Gaynor and Becky Voorwinde The economic downturn and the Madoff scandal have escalated discussion in the Jewish communal world about collaboration. In fact, the recommendations of the just-released report The Innovation Ecosystem: Emergence of a New Jewish Landscape indicate that organizations want to and should be collaborating and sharing resources. The report says organizations should “collaborate and cooperate to reduce costs.” As organizations who are productively partnering with one another, we found that the initial time and effort put into building relationships between our organizations has truly paid off in saved time and money. In nature, when resources are scarce, survival instincts kick in. In the Jewish organizational world today, funding, the lifeblood … Continue Reading
A Crisis of Vision
excerpts from an Op-Ed, Invest in Innovation, by Felicia Herman and Dana Raucher As this process of communal re-envisioning begins, we’ve been hearing calls for greater consolidation and a return to the more centralized infrastructure of yesteryear. Drawing upon our experience in two foundations that have prioritized innovation in their grant making, we respectfully disagree with this view. We believe that the young, and often small, nonprofits that have emerged in the past decade, and the very de-centralization they reflect, are here to stay. We believe that this interconnected network of smaller, niche-based organizations reflects the organizational transformation now under way in American culture: a revolution in the way that people connect, organize and affiliate, brought about by … Continue Reading
Survey of New Jewish Organizations
The first results of the 2008 Survey of New Jewish Organizations are in. Commissioned by The Natan Fund and The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, and conducted by Jumpstart, a think tank and incubator for sustainable Jewish innovation, the survey has confirmed that the number of Jewish entrepreneurial non-profit organizations has exploded over the past decade. Additionally these start-ups are a huge economy and are making significant long-term in-roads into the established Jewish world. The findings include: More than 300 initiatives are serving as many as 400,000 individuals. As much as $500 million has already been invested in this start-up sector. New initiatives succeed at attracting the exact demographic that established Jewish institutions struggle to reach, at a fraction of the cost … Continue Reading
Mapping Jewish Social Entrepreneurship
The past decade has seen an upsurge of new energy being brought to bear by individuals and organizations seeking to foster positive change both within and beyond the Jewish community. The impact of these individuals and organizations is already being felt in Jewish education, spiritual life, arts and culture, technology, human services, and in efforts aimed at achieving social justice and preventing environmental catastrophe. These Jewish social entrepreneurs and emerging leaders are being encouraged and supported, in turn, by a growing number of programs and funders through incubators, fellowships, training programs, grants, and other vehicles. The potential of this nascent global field of Jewish social entrepreneurship and new leadership development to strengthen and transform Jewish life and the … Continue Reading
Survey of New Jewish Organizations – A Response
by Bob Goldfarb Jumpstart’s Survey of New Jewish Organizations, released last week, promises to start a lot of conversations. There are no stunning surprises in the key findings or the full study. They point to the diversity of these organizations, their generally small size, financial fragility, and desire to collaborate and save money. What’s interesting is the questions they suggest for further study. Let’s start by taking a closer look at what’s being measured. Is it new organizations, or innovation among Jewish nonprofits? Jumpstart, which was commissioned to undertake the study by the Natan Fund and the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, did an amazing job in surveying hundreds of organizations in December, digesting the data, and producing a report last week. But that understandably … Continue Reading
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