Sharpen your Skills. Learn from top presenters on the topics you want to know about: Just a sample: Enhance your Fundraising Capacity: Rebecca Voorwinde: Alumni Engagement Miryam Rosenzweig: Millennial Relationship Building Maximize your Potential: Mark Young: Reflection as a Tool for Success Maxyne Finkelstein: Critical Thinking Joshua Rednik and Jamie Schiffman: Work-Life Fit Better Management: Deborah Grayson Riegel: Coaching Skills for Managers Donna Schwartz: Never Enough Time Future Executive?: David Edell, David Eisner, Jennifer Mamlet, and Jason Shames: Lessons from the Top Disaster Preparedness: David Blacksberg and David Pollock: Emergency Preparedness Jonathan Katz and Simkha Weintraub: Caring for your Care Givers Community … [Read more...]
JCSA to Honor Four Communal Professionals
The Jewish Communal Service Association of North America will honor a veteran leader and three young professionals all of whom have distinguished themselves through exemplary service in their agencies and communities: Marsha F. Hurwitz, the newly-appointed COO of the San Francisco Jewish Federation and Endowment Fund, will be honored with the Mandelkorn Distinguished Service Award that annually recognizes significant and sustained contributions to Jewish community organization practice. The JCSA Young Professional Award, presented to Mindy Eklove and Daniel Septimus, recognizes the exemplary service to their agencies and communities by talented individuals, nominated by their colleagues, who are dedicated to professional careers in the Jewish community. Mindy is Director of Coast to Coast … [Read more...]
Winning Ways
by Brenda Gevertz An important role for any professional association is to recognize its exemplary talent. This function not only brings honor to the recipient of the positive attention; recognition also serves the invaluable functions of setting exemplary standards, recognizing role models and sustaining talent. The Jewish Communal Service Association has a number of awards that recognize and honor exemplary talent, so it’s natural that we spend a considerable amount of time thinking about what it takes to be an extraordinary professional. In the awards selection process we ask ourselves a lot of questions: Is it possible to become a star on one’s own? Can an individual in a negative environment rise above the din? Are there supports we can put in place and emphasize to help all … [Read more...]
Getting Our Groove Back
by Brenda Gevertz The publishing industry likes to promote light reading for the beach in summer; slick stories and slim novels that require little thought but provide lots of entertainment. But some topics and some reading simply can’t offer an easy escape. This is a quick story of how the field of Jewish community leadership lost its groove. And, oh yes, how we can have it back. Any regular reader of eJewish Philanthropy would understandably surmise that the field of Jewish community leadership is in deep trouble, if not a crisis mode. A slightly closer examination of the articles might bring the conclusion that we lack agreement on what should be done or worse, that we do not know what to do. These conclusions are off base. The problems stem not from a lack of creativity or knowledge, but … [Read more...]
Report on Effective Succession Planning in Jewish Nonprofits
by Steven J. Noble Ok , now what? ... which, I suspect, is better than ... Ok, so what? In organizational life, however, there doesn’t seem to be a huge world of difference between these two flippant queries; I say this more experientially than cynically. Ok, again, now that “everything is illuminated” or almost so ... and more hard data and compelling findings are available on practices and perspectives relative to the highly emotive succession planning topic in Jewish nonprofits, will all this be positioned more front and center on the personal and professional agendas of CEOs, board chair and funders? What will it REALLY take to raise the volume and catalyze action on this organizational imperative? Will it take three purportedly sudden, unplanned CEO departures of long tenured … [Read more...]
A Response to Rabbi Feldstein
I want to respond to Rabbi Feldstein’s comments on June 29, 2012 about the Jewish Federation of St. Louis’ Board of Directors’ decision to hire Dr. Andrew Rehfeld as the new CEO and President. I am in a unique position to respond - both as 30+ year career Jewish professional and in my current position as Director of the Millstone Institute for Jewish Leadership and staff for JProStl in St. Louis. I want to note that I am responding through my own lens, not the company line. A dozen years ago, our current Federation CEO and President Barry Rosenberg recognized that our community needed to begin investing significant resources into professional development. Clearly our profession was changing. Successful Jewish professionals were leaving the Jewish community for better pay and/or better … [Read more...]
