Nervous About the Economy?
from Fundraising Success Magazine:
Many nonprofit professionals today are nervous. The economy, while showing hopeful signs such as slightly lower oil prices and a stronger dollar, is still not in a good place. That means donors have less money in their portfolios and their pockets.
As a result, giving is down across the board. This is not how we want to enter the all-important year-end giving season. With up to half of all donations coming in the last quarter of the calendar year, nonprofits need to start planning now so they can end the year strong.
There are five simple things any organization can do to not only increase year-end results, but also maintain and even strengthen important long-term relationships with donors.
The Jewish World Speaks
all three from the Jerusalem Post:
Jewish charities fear Wall Street chaos
US Jewish social service agencies and nonprofits say they expect this week’s string of bankruptcies, buyouts and takeovers on Wall Street to severely cramp their end-of-year fund-raising as individuals curtail their donations and whole companies suspend their philanthropic programs.
Officials at the UJA-Federation of New York, which supports 102 social service agencies in the New York area, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday they were particularly anxious about the fate of Neuberger Berman, a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers whose executives have historically contributed a significant proportion of the approximately $42 million raised annually from Wall Street.
Analysis: Some things can’t be privatized
When the Jewish Agency ceded aliya activities in North America to Nefesh B’Nefesh, it didn’t lose all that much in organizational terms…
It is worth noting that the agency’s primary functions, in terms of organizational size and focus, have long been coordinating partnerships between Israeli and Diaspora communities, managing large social welfare projects in Israel, and providing a Jewish world infrastructure for small communities worldwide…
While community partnerships and social projects would exist even without a Jewish Agency, it is the last function - the network of emissaries in small communities who are instrumental in rescuing Jews in times of crisis - that even the agency’s most energetic detractors acknowledge would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Gov’t, JA start forum to aid distressed communities
The Jewish Agency announced this week the establishment of a joint forum with the government that would coordinate assistance to Jewish communities around the world in times of crisis.
Study Examines American Philanthropic Support for Israel
from Market Watch:
A landmark report released today, “Philanthropic Support for Israel’s Nonprofit Organizations by U.S. Donors,” shows that American philanthropic support to nonprofits in Israel continues to rise and that more American philanthropic dollars directed to Israel are being targeted by donors to specific organizations.
The EHL Consulting Group examined the patterns of charitable giving for a representative group of eighty Israel-based nonprofits during the period of 2001-2006 in four discrete sectors: Arts & Culture; Education; Health, Hospitals & Diseases; and Human Services. The sectors are included as several of the ten “traditional” categories established by the Giving USA Foundation and the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Philanthropic support by Americans for Israel-based nonprofits has represented a significant effort since the founding of the modern State of Israel. Many Israeli nonprofits have created “American Friends” entities that collect and direct dollars to Israeli causes.
Read more here from the Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
The complete report is available for purchase from the EHL Consulting Group.
The Jewish Agency’s Smart Decision on Aliyah
There has been no shortage of stories in the Jewish media, and blog-o-sphere, surrounding the recently announced agreement between the Jewish Agency and Nefesh B’Nefesh on administering the North American Aliyah portfolio. There has been particular interest in what this decision means to the future of JAFI.
in today’s Haaretz, Dr. Alex Sinclair writes:
In a recent Haaretz opinion piece, Anshel Pfeffer wrote that the Jewish Agency, by ceding its aliyah portfolio to Nefesh B’Nefesh, has “signed its own death certificate.”
A more thoughtful examination of this recent decision leads to a very different conclusion: that the Jewish Agency has made a profound and admirable strategic decision about the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora in the 21st century.
Read Dr. Sinclair’s complete op-ed piece here.
Time To ‘Retool’ the Jewish Agency
from the New York Jewish Week:
The Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) decision last week to outsource the entire aliyah operation in North America to Nefesh B’Nefesh, a 6-year-old American group promoting aliyah, is indicative of both the need for change in the American Jewish community’s relationship with Israel and in JAFI’s relationship to the organized Jewish community…
The time has come to institutionalize the direct relationships among federation leadership and Israeli philanthropists. It is not only a way to work together to meet the human service, social, health, educational needs, among others, in Israel, but it is also an approach that will lead to closer ties between Israelis and American Jews…
Utilizing the decision to outsource aliyah service to Nefesh B’Nefesh should be taken as heralding the beginning of new ways of working together with non-profits in Israel. It should be replicated in other service areas and the connections should be made directly, thus strengthening the ties between Israel and the North American Jewish community.
Excerpts are from the article , Time to ‘Retool’ Jewish Agency by Stephen Donshik, formerly director of the Israel Office of UJA-Federation of New York. Click the link for the complete article.
MediaWatch: Our Jewish World
from the Columbia Spectator:
Student-Run Fellowship Emphasizes Charity
In response to what they see as a dearth of opportunities for philanthropy on campus, two students from Columbia/Barnard Hillel have formed a faith-based fellowship devoted to giving back.
from the New Jersey Jewish News:
Day school endowment hits $20 million mark
A year after its launch, a community-wide campaign in support of Jewish day school education has reached the $20 million mark.
More than 35 donor families have made commitments of $100,000 or more, and close to 100 donors have made gifts to the MetroWest Day School Campaign, an endowment initiative that aims to boost excellence and affordability at three local Jewish day schools.
Connecting the Jewish World
from Haviv Retting in this morning’s Jerusalem Post:
‘Only the Jewish Agency can connect the Jewish world’
The Jewish Agency may have “outsourced” the important function of bringing aliya from the world’s largest Jewish community, but it remains for the foreseeable future the only body connecting the diverse communities of the Jewish world together, according to agency director-general Moshe Vigdor.
Vigdor was one of the architects of the Jewish Agency-Nefesh B’Nefesh agreement announced last week that gave Nefesh responsibility for North American aliya marketing and implementation. He spoke to The Jerusalem Post this week in the wake of that agreement.
“There is nothing more important than the connection of Israel with the worldwide Jewish communities, not just in the United States, but also in Latin America, France, Britain, South Africa, the Former Soviet Union, and elsewhere,” he said.
MediaWatch: Our Jewish World
Some of our largest organizations are in the Israeli papers these days.
(first two) from Haaretz:
The Jewish Agency’s diminished role
Last week, the Jewish Agency signed its own death certificate. The agreement with Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN), the private organization that has been helping thousands of Jews immigrate from the United States and Canada, whereby the agency will cease its aliyah operations in North America and NBN will become the only address for those thinking of making the plunge, means that the agency is relinquishing its main historic mission in the world’s largest Jewish community. It also embodies the fundamental change in the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora.
They’re at it again! In one corner, a powerhouse philanthropic agency of the Zionist world - the Jewish National Fund of the United States (JNF-USA). In the opposite corner - the owner of more than 10 percent of Israel’s land and one of its primary land-management agencies, the Keren Kayemeth L’Israel (KKL). The latest disagreement, according to a recent article in the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth, is over who has the rights to the name “Jewish National Fund” in English and to the iconic blue box. JNF-USA is reportedly taking legal steps to make both name and box its own registered trademarks. The larger issue is the future of millions of dollars in donations collected by JNF-USA.
from the Jerusalem Post:
‘Teacher’s birthright’ may get $100m. boost
The plan to bring thousands of Diaspora Jewish educators to Israel on free trips could receive over $100 million in state funding, according to initiatives being developed in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Planning work within Masa over the past month has confirmed the initial perception that “something like this [program] is needed, it is possible, and there’s an identifiable target audience for it.
and not to neglect the other side of the Atlantic; from the Los Angles Jewish Journal:
Q&A with Rhoda Weisman — Jewish woman on top
I don’t think that we as a larger community have been successful in creating a very strong pipeline connecting the baby boomers to Gen X and Gen Y. There’s never been a time when leaders in their 20s and 30s have been as equipped for leadership as now: Many of them have come from homes of privilege where they’ve been able to advance themselves in a whole number of areas. So, you have people in their 20s that have the same skills and talents etc., as people my age and in their 40s.
MediaWatch: The World Around Us
With Monday’s upcoming Consultation on Jewish Social Entrepreneurship and New Leadership Development, a timely article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review:
Rediscovering Social Innovation
Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have become popular rallying points for those trying to improve the world. These two notions are positive ones, but neither is adequate when it comes to understanding and creating social change in all of its manifestations. The authors make the case that social innovation is a better vehicle for doing this. They also explain why most of today’s innovative social solutions cut across the traditional boundaries separating nonprofits, government, and for-profit businesses.
from Business Wire:
Current U.S. Economy Causes Seniors to Give Less, the Young to Give More
Survey results indicate that only 13 percent of respondents expect to increase their giving for the remainder of 2008, while nearly a third (29%) admit to decrease their giving. Surprisingly, donors aged 25-34 were more likely to increase their giving in the fall, while those over the age of 65 were more likely to say they are giving less.
from the Washington Post:
New eBay site has social, environmental aim
Most consumers probably associate eBay Inc. more with vintage lunch boxes and low-priced electronics than with laptop bags made from recycled plastic by women in New Delhi.
The online auction operator is trying to change that perception with WorldofGood.com, a Web site launched Wednesday to sell goods produced with social and environmental goals in mind.
The Challenge of Connecting to American Jewry
We reported Sunday on the new partnership agreement signed between the Jewish Agency and Nefesh B’Nefesh dealing with Aliyah from North America.
Writing in today’s Jerusalem Post, an analysis on what this does, and does not, mean from their Jewish world correspondent, Haviv Rettig:
Analysis: Making aliya the American way
It would be a mistake to view the agreement announced on Sunday between the Jewish Agency and Nefesh B’Nefesh to cede aliya promotion in North America to the smaller organization as a mere logistical arrangement, as Jewish Agency spokespeople have claimed in recent days.
Nor is the Jewish Agency’s ceding ground in itself a history-changing event, as Nefesh B’Nefesh officials believe.
Even so, Sunday’s announcement was a momentous one. It amounted to a recognition by the Jewish Agency that the Jewish world has changed. The agency has come to recognize that the spectacularly successful tools it has developed over some eight decades, during which it brought over three million Jews to Israel, do not work in the United States.