We first told you about this in June. Now it’s official. On Tuesday UJC’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new name and a new logo for the organization:
The Jewish Federations of North America.
According to UJC, “As part of an ongoing effort to create a stronger continental brand and market positioning for the Federation system, and based on market research, UJC is changing its name to align with and reflect the Jewish Federations’ naming.
The new name builds on strength of familiarity of local Jewish Federations, aligns with 90 percent of local Federations’ names, and reflects the best practices of other large federated non-profits.
… The new name and logo will begin to be rolled out publicly at the 2009 General Assembly (GA) Nov 8-10 in Washington, D.C.”
We wonder – will the rebranding effort be simple, or will the UJC moniker stick around for quite a while. How will employees, the media and the broader community refer to the organization? After all, the Jewish world loves initials!
With the rebranding, the ujc.org website could be rebranded as thejewishfederationsofnorthamerica.org. And emails could then be addressed to your.name@thejewishfederationsofnorthamerica.org.
After all, one of UJC’s partner agencies included this sentence in an email yesterday announcing the name change, “There are no initials to be used. Please be sure to always use this new name in all correspondence and on all documents.”
Careful, watch your spelling.
Only time will tell whether this was a prudent decision.
March 2005 Steven Windmueller and I published our study on the process which led to the merger of UJA, UIA, and CJF. United Jewish Communities was the name of the merged organization. In our book (From Predictibility to Chaos?) we reported on the assessments of nearly 90 of the 100 or so merger committee participants. Among the many findings we pointed out how one of the most well known brands in Jewish history, UJA, had been thrown away. This new name still does not incorporate that brand, the value of which has been deemed to have been worth literally millions of dollars in terms of recognition.
Our book had many other findings and cautions. The book was never reviewed or discussed in federation circles. Unfortunately, most of the recommendations are still appropriate. Many of our colleagues and Steve and I continue to hope that the recommendations will still be reviewed and assessed for their applicability today.
It is interesting to note that UJC has purchased the domain name JFNA.org which probably means that the eMail address will most likely be a lot shorter then all of that. And, it will probably be known as the JFNA rather then the Jewish Federations of North America.
Which brings us to the real questions…
Why was Jesna called the Jewish Educational Services of North America instead of the Jewish Educational Services of the United States?
Get it?
In these tight economic times, in this period of down sizing and stream-lining, in this world of diminishing Jewish identification and growing anti-Semitism- what a colossal waste of time, effort and money! Not to mention the questionable results of the doubtless expensive studies, reports and costly re-branding roll-out. What were they thinking?! Or is this-else new name the sad result of misplaced inclusiveness bowing to the usual politics. What a waste of donor dollars and terrible timing!