The most effective strategy is to empower our young people to host and run quality programs and to invite their friends.
By David Cygielman
Completely unengaged young adults make the best poster-children. I’m talking about those 20-somethings who never imagined themselves becoming active Jewish leaders until they participated in our program. When we find these unicorns, we make flyers, send emails, introduce them to donors and have them shout from their rooftops. But where do they really come from and how do we effectively reach them?
Let’s start with a brief diagnosis of our healthy obsession with engaging the unengaged. It stems from a good place of deep passion for the future of the Jewish community and a fear that our numbers will greatly diminish without some type of meaningful personal or communal connection. This fear does not mean we should just throw our hands up in defeat, but simply saying that we are targeting the unengaged population will not actually reach them or accomplish any of our communal goals. The key here is that they are unengaged, uninvolved, and for the vast majority, not looking for their first step in a lifetime of Jewish communal involvement. Fortunately, the answer to how to best find, engage and create exciting opportunities for the unaffiliated right in front of us: it is those who are already actively engaged.
There is a silver bullet and the data shows us it exists; however, the majority of us have been looking in the opposite direction. Watering down programs, coming up with catchy taglines, offering free food or paying big bucks for famous headliners is not the solution. The learning from our evaluation has illustrated that it takes two engaged young Jewish adults to reach one unengaged. When we saw this data, it made sense. How else would we, sitting in our offices, be able to connect with people who aren’t even looking for us? The answer: we cannot. But, the thousands of people having great experiences with their Moishe Houses can invite the unengaged to participate in our programs. But, we must ensure the program is strong and that we are encouraging the active participants to bring others along with them. We live in a viral society where word of mouth spreads faster than ever thanks to social media. From high school through their 20s, the number one reason someone participates in a program is because they are invited by a friend. Our data shows that 82% of young adults show up to programs when they are invited by their friends, far more than other reason.
So what does this mean for our organizations? It means that we should continue to focus on finding more unicorns. But, in order to make that happen, the most effective strategy is to empower our young people to host and run quality programs and to invite their friends. If we ignore those who are already deeply engaged, we will miss out on all their friends and even more importantly, friends of friends. By having great experiences and feeling a sense of ownership, we know those who are engaged will find their peers at work, at a bar, on a sports team, online or wherever else people younger than me hang out these days, and bring them into the dynamic Jewish communities we are collaboratively building.
David Cygielman is Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Moishe House.
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Despite your largely useful perspective, I’m disappointed by your declarative statement that “…coming up with catchy taglines, offering free food or paying big bucks for famous headliners is not the solution,” which can only be viewed as a backhanded slap at the Federation movement’s NextGen efforts. In addition to being unnecessarily critical without context, facts or data, it suggests that you are offering THE right answer, which is neither helpful nor productive.
Your article’s main point is that already engaged young Jews attract not yet engaged young Jews and that we should empower them to create the programs and ideas that will effectuate such engagement. Certainly we can all agree on this. As we have learned through building NextGen Detroit into a very successful young adult engagement model over the last few years, however, sometimes these programs and ideas include offering free food (a staple of Moishe House engagement strategy I would note), or creating highly attractive events designed to get past a strongly existing bias against Jewish community events.
Jewish organizations seeking to engage young adults are not competing against other Jewish (or even Community) organizations seeking to engage young adults. We’re competing against Netflix, a night out, and anything else on which a young adult could choose to spend their time. There may come a day when all Jewish organizational programming is so awesome that young Jews clamor to attend. Until that time, however, in most communities there exists a (largely well-earned) significant bias against Jewish programming, regardless of who is doing the inviting. When your two “unicorns” do get someone to attend an event and it is merely mediocre (let alone a failure), your likelihood of repeat attendance goes down pretty close to nil.
Creating great programming to support two young Jews engaging a third doesn’t happen without resources, (professional) support, and trial and error in creating great experiences. Moishe House largely does this very well, and you’re not the only ones. Your advice that other Jewish organizations would do well to empower already engaged young adults to focus on creating great experiences for others is well taken. It would have been better taken without your choice to criticize others already attempting to implement that advice at the same time.
Nothing wrong with a bit of criticism! But it’s not usually the centrally engaged who can reach out to marginal Jews. It is those who are on the periphery of the centre in intentional communities that shy away from the organized centre. It is also the rare few in external communities such as Israelis, Russians, LGBTQ, etc. who are identifying and literate Jews who may be able to offer new forms of Jewish identity that do not currently exist. Our North American Jewish ancestors created innovative forms of Jewish life that were relevant to their needs. That same creativity is now needed to conceive of 21st century modes of Jewish life unlike anything currently available. As a people, we have done this many times. It can be done again and again. It requires pride and courage. Pride in our elegant past and courage to create an equally inspiring future.
Epi. Toronto.
Kudos on this article. For years I’ve felt we’ve been framing the problem in the wrong way. In my view, the proper question is not, how do Jewish institutions reach and engage Jews on the periphery so that they’ll come closer to the core? Rather, the proper question is how can Jewish institutions serve their core constituents more authentically and more meaningfully? If Jews at the core were more excited and engaged, Jews on the periphery (and at all levels along the spectrum) would naturally be more attracted. In other words, the problem isn’t fundamentally one of outreach, but of “in-reach.” If peripheral Jews are turned off by Jewish programming, then create better and more authentic programming, don’t water it down to appeal to those who aren’t really interested anyway.
And yes, the freebie phenomenon has got to change. Granted, Birthright’s free ride has gotten a lot more young people to Israel. However, sometimes I fear we are unintentionally promoting a culture of entitlement. When I was in high school back in the dark ages, I worked three part-time jobs during the school year to afford to go on my youth group’s 6-week summer Israel trip. And I sure as heck appreciated everything about that trip. If you are never expected to make sacrifices for the things you value, after awhile you’ll stop valuing them. Yes, subsidies should always be made available to those who can’t afford the high costs of Jewish engagement. But we shouldn’t be making everything free, either. There’s a middle ground in there somewhere.
Kol ha kavod! Great piece. Wow our current customers and they will do the best outreach.