With Memorial Day behind us here in the US, in my book it is now officially summer. And for those of us who work in the Jewish philanthropic world, that means it's time to decamp to the summer spots where our major donors can be found relaxing, entertaining and open to more casual and personal engagements. Smart fundraisers know that these sweet months of sun, surf and fresh mountain air offer special opportunities to work with their supporters and build relationships with them and their summer friends that can reap benefits long after the season ends. One easy way to leverage the summer outreach effort is to use social media tools to let people know about your organization's programs and events that might be happening in that beach house down the road or to invite friends to meet up on a … Continue Reading
Inside Perspective on Young Philanthropy
In today’s internet age, tweeting, blogging, and expansive friend requests on Facebook seem to have become major criteria for communicating and working effectively in the non-profit world. Non-profits, which often tend to lag behind in their mastery of technology, are working harder to stay current, innovative and most importantly communicative through different and ever advancing social media venues. We often hear that this push for more technology is an effort to better engage the younger generations and ultimately to develop them as philanthropists. To address the motivations of younger donors, we turned to a member of the EHL Consulting team, Meredith Brooks, who finds these challenges quite interesting and intriguing. While perhaps not the “typical post college graduate” that … Continue Reading
A New Young Rabbi Takes the Helm
Filed under In Case You Missed, The American Jewish Scene, The Blog
by Robert I. Evans and Avrum D. Lapin Rabbi Amy Feder will become the seventh senior rabbi of Congregation Temple Israel of St. Louis, Missouri, on July 1, 2010, succeeding Rabbi Mark Shook, who is retiring. At the age of 31, she becomes the youngest female Senior Rabbi to serve a large Reform congregation. To gain some insights into her plans, we spoke with Rabbi Feder, who herself is a fourth generation member of Temple Israel. Even though we have known and respected her for several years, we wanted to learn about her perspectives on a number of timely issues. Comfortable in her book-packed study that also features pictures of her 16-month-old son and husband Michael Alper, who also serves as a Rabbi at Temple Israel, Rabbi Feder shared with us her candid thoughts about what lies ahead as … Continue Reading
Kiev Hillel Sponsors Good Deeds Day
Last week, Kiev Hillel sponsored an event for Good Deeds Day - an appeal to Ukrainian citizens to go beyond thoughts to actual actions and dedicate March 16th to making this world a better place. A kick-off party was held, hosting prominent members from the Jewish community, the wider Ukrainian public, celebrities and politicos. Guests included Zina Kalai-Klaitman, Israel's Ambassador in the Ukraine and Mykhaylo Kulynyak, the Ukrainian governments' Culture and Tourism Minister. The event featured a long rope where every guest was able to tie a ribbon with their name written on it. The ribbons symbolize their good deeds or, alternatively, the good deeds that those people benefited from and would like to recall. The Hillel team tied ribbons on behalf of those who submitted their good deeds by … Continue Reading
Did You Remember to Unplug?
As Shabbat concluded, so did The National Day of Unplugging. This story was published by The New York Times as Shabbat began here in Jerusalem. The video is from the same team that brought us The Tribe. A New Take on the Old Sabbath Ritual of Unplugging I am typing fast because at sundown (7:20 p.m.), I plan to join in the first National Day of Unplugging and turn my electronic devices off until sundown Saturday. The effort, reported in The New York Times and elsewhere, is the brainchild of Reboot, a nonprofit organization of Jewish professionals who want to adapt the concept of Sabbath traditions to the digital age. I thought at first, yadda yadda yadda. Go ahead and unplug, everyone. But then I saw “Yelp,” the YouTube video above by Ken Goldberg and Tiffany Shlain. It uses … Continue Reading
Facebook Co-Founder Launches Nonprofit Platform
from Mashable: ... Facebook co-founder and My.BarackObama.com alum Chris Hughes announced the soft launch of Jumo, his new philanthropic start-up that works to match do-gooders with appropriate causes. Currently, the Jumo site is merely an elegantly designed homepage that announces Hughes’s mission to “bring together everyday individuals and organizations to speed the pace of global change. We connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action.” Hughes told us, however, that the site will later be organized much like a social network - with profiles for individual users that contain a collection of information that they have shared and used, pages for organizations created both by the orgs in … Continue Reading
Facebook Outpaces Google
from brandchannel: Facebook Now More Popular Than Google The numbers are in. Facebook has overtaken Google’s popularity among internet users in the US. Industry data shows that the social networking site has scored more visits on itshome page than the search engine. Research firm Experian Hitwise noted that the two sites accounted for 14 percent of all US internet visits last week, each grabbing about half of that number with Facebook at 7.07 and Google at 7.03. Just a year ago, Facebook clocked in at 2 percent. Facebook reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. … Continue Reading
A Fundraising Platform for Creative Projects
from the New York Times: Small Donations in Large Numbers, With Online Help Last fall, when the Neversink Valley Area Museum in Cuddebackville, N.Y., set out to raise $11,000 for architectural renderings of a new building, museum officials turned to strangers for fund-raising using the Internet. Through a Web site called Kickstarter.com, the museum met its fund-raising goal in fewer than 90 days with help from 69 donors. Some of these supporters had been friends of the museum for years; others did not even know where Cuddebackville was. (It is pronounced Cuh-da-BACK-ville and is about 90 miles northwest of New York City.) The fund-raising process, known as crowd funding, has enabled the museum to move forward with long-term plans for a state-of-the-art center to replace the historic … Continue Reading
Join Sabbath Manifesto in a National Day of Unplugging
Are you sick of having conversations with people with their noses buried in an iPhone? Are you that person? Then put down the cell phone, stop the status updates on Facebook, shut down Twitter, sign out of e-mail and relax, as part of a National Day of Unplugging. People across the nation will tune out to reclaim time to slow life down and reconnect with friends, family, the community and themselves for 24 hours, starting at sundown, Friday, March 19. The Sabbath Manifesto’s principles were created for individual styling, but for one day we are asking you to take on the challenge of Principle Number 1: AVOID TECHNOLOGY. Let us know how you interpreted this Principle. How do you unplug? Join Sabbath Manifesto in fighting back against the tidal wave of technology taking over society … Continue Reading
Boomers and Social Media
According to a new report, Boomers and Social Media, released by eMarketer, "About 47% of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network... Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages. Burst Media reported that 47.5% of online boomer respondents had a social network profile in June 2009. In September of that year, Deloitte found 46% of boomer respondents said they maintained a social network profile—an important difference from simply creating one and forgetting about it." Facebook is also the favorite social network for boomers: … Continue Reading
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