by Abigail Pickus Over 200 people gathered in Jerusalem on Sunday to participate in Amuta21c, a day-long conference aimed at giving Israel’s third sector (amuta in Hebrew) recognition as a valuable entity, and the tools and shared space to further their goals and work together. “We’re doing something very meaningful here,” said Jonny Cline, who co-organized the conference with Shoshanna Jaskoll, from Reach3k. A nonprofit strategist, Jaskoll launched the conference for he first time last year under the name, Future of Nonprofit Summit - Israel (FONSI). “There was a vacuum in this arena,” Cline, the Director of UK Toremet, later told eJP. “As opposed to other professional groups, the nonprofit sector has never really shown a tendency to cooperate and share knowledge.” The … Continue Reading
Olim Facing Tough Job Market in Israel Turn to Gvahim for Help
by Abigail Pickus When Naomi Smigel said goodbye to her life in New York to settle in Israel, she left a plum job she’d had for ten years at Time Warner. But she assumed with her expertise, she’d land something in her field relatively quickly. “While I didn’t think it would be easy, I also didn’t think it would be as hard or take as long as it did because there is so much high-tech here and I was coming from doing software projects,” said the 36-year-old married mother of three. Smigel is not alone. Many olim come to Israel with advanced degrees and impressive career achievements under their belts only to face the daunting - and sometimes bootless - task of trying to gain meaningful employment that if they’re lucky, will be comparable to what they did back in their home … Continue Reading
Israeli Billionaire Shari Arison Promotes ‘Good Deeds Day’
by Abigail Pickus Shari Arison just wants us all to do good. Israel’s wealthiest woman - who happens to also be the richest woman in the Middle East and #57 on Forbes Most Powerful Women in the World list - has made it her mission to encourage good deeds and positive thinking. “I believe that in order make a difference in the world and to make the world a better place for all of us, we need a critical mass of people who think good and do good. If we join together we can really make a difference,” said Arison in a recent phone interview with eJP. There’s even a day earmarked for mitzvoth - Good Deeds Day - which was launched in 2007 by Arison’s nonprofit Ruach Tova and supported by The Ted Arison Family Foundation. What began with over 7,000 participants throughout Israel that … Continue Reading
The CVO Network: An Innovative Approach To Leveraging Resources In The NGO Sector
by Barry Camson Introduction In the twenty first century, there are increasing instances of people and organizations operating as networks. This is certainly supported by the interactive capabilities of the Internet. Beyond this, there is the recognition that often the highest leverage for advancing the goals of individual organizations consists in affiliating as a network. This is especially true in the nonprofit sector where individual organizations do not have the advantages that private sector organizations do in generating revenue and using scale to reduce costs. The CVO (Council of Volunteer Organizations) network is a significant illustration of the value of the network approach in the NGO sector. The CVO network is a voluntary affiliation of individual NGO’s in the area of Haifa, … Continue Reading
My Battle as a Jewish Woman
My Battle as a Jewish Woman: How a film on Jerusalem in conflict leads to personal reflection by Liz Nord The night of November 4, 2008, was one of the best of my life. As Supervising Producer at MTV News, I had spent the year leading up to election night training and mentoring a corps of young reporters from across the country to cover this pivotal race through blogs and videos. Our reporting culminated the night Barack Obama was elected President of the U.S. Taking a break from MTV’s frantic newsroom for a few minutes, I stood on the street below our headquarters in Times Square and watched the results roll in with tens of thousands of other people. Among the flashing billboards overhead was one that MTV had taken over in the thick of it all. There between a Rock Band ad and the … Continue Reading
The 10 Questions North American Donors Will Ask Israeli Nonprofits
[A further article in a series aimed at guiding Israeli nonprofits towards successful resource development.] by Jeff Kaye Daniel M. Lyons, one of the most respected philanthropists in the history of the State of Israel passed away last April at the age of 92 in Florida. I remember sitting with Dan and his wife Bente their living room and being asked the question that many Israeli fundraisers encountered during the decades of his involvement, namely "Jeff, tell me. What's the most important thing I can do for Israel right now"? I could tell from the tone of his question, Dan wanted an immediate answer to his important question. For any of us in the field of Israeli fundraising, there are several questions that we can easily anticipate when meeting with North American donors or grant-makers. … Continue Reading
Israel’s First Ethiopian Heritage Center Opens
The Lipson Ethiopian Heritage Center in Kiryat Yam, the first of its kind in Israel, has opened. The Center, a prominent part of the Alex and Betty Schoenbaum, Science, Educational, Cultural and Sports Campus inaugurated in 2010, is an initiative of World ORT. Kiryat Yam, a mostly blue-collar seaside town whose 45,000 residents include thousands of Ethiopians, has benefited from the well-used campus facilities which include a science center, planetarium building, an oceanarium and an athletics stadium - all testament to the vision of Betty Schoenbaum, the nonagenarian driving force behind the campus. As to the center, "She wants to see Ethiopian kids integrating into Israeli society and this center has everything necessary to make a significant contribution to that," said Shlomi Gedamo, the … Continue Reading
Israeli Charities Can (Begrudgingly) Now Use Credit Cards
by Shuey Fogel After years of rumors, here-say, and unwritten code that outlawed the use of credit cards by Israeli nonprofit organizations, the newest version of the Nihul Takin [Certificate of Proper Management] from Israel’s Rasham Ha’amutot [Registrar of Charities] clearly permits the use of credit cards by Israeli charities ... kind of. Unfortunately, vague unwritten guidelines have now been replaced by confusing and unrealistic written rules. Progress? So should your amutah [Israeli Charity] use a credit card? As no two charities are the same, that answer is best left to your organization’s board, accountant, and/or lawyer. What I can do, however, is share the research I have done and practices I have witnessed from countless nonprofits, which will hopefully save your … Continue Reading
Education: Racism’s Antidote
by Yael Rosen Over the past weeks, protests have spread throughout Israel calling for a response to racism targeted at the country's Ethiopian community. Sparked by a Channel 2 story on discrimination in Kiryat Malachi, citizens have taken to the streets to show their outrage at the status quo. Though the despicable slurs and actions that triggered these protests are blatant examples of these grievances, they conceal a deeper issue. Beyond more overt examples, Ethiopian Israelis are often considered less desirable neighbors, and frequently have a harder time finding a job. They are perceived as a poor, underprivileged community and face the stigma of lacking the capability to contribute equally, even if this myth is belied by reality. While some of this is outright racism, the rest is … Continue Reading
A Portrait of Israeli Jews
The Israeli Democracy Institute today formally presents the findings of the third Guttman-AVI CHAI report, A Portrait of Israeli Jews: Beliefs, Observance, and Values of Israeli Jews. Based on a survey conducted by IDI's Guttman Center for Surveys for the AVI CHAI Foundation in 2009, the report is a sequel to two earlier studies conducted in 1991 and 1999. Taken together, the three surveys present a unique continuum of Jewish religiosity in Israel. Here are the main findings: From 1991 to 1999, there was a decline in attachment to Jewish tradition and religion. From 1999 to 2009, by contrast, there was an increase in this attachment, which returned to and in some aspects even surpassed the level measured in 1991. One example of this is the observance of religious tradition: in 1991, 24% of the … Continue Reading
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