For 8th grader Fabienne and her fellow students at the Zoranje educational campus, learning is the order of the day at a new, state-of-the-art, handicap-accessible middle school built and opened by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). That's because two years after the earthquake, JDC has focused its relief work on children’s education and disabilities-related programming in collaboration with its Haitian, Israeli and other NGO partners. Through $8.6 million dollars in donations from the Jewish Federations of North America and tens of thousands of individual donors, JDC’s projects, including the middle school, have impacted nearly 300,000 Haitians to date. The middle school, which was funded by The Bonita Trust and JDC, is located 30 miles outside of Port-Au-Prince on the … Continue Reading
Leveraging Networks: From Commitment to Action
by Andres Spokoiny and Jay Ruderman On December 6th, nearly 175 leaders - funders, academic experts, and program leaders - came together in New York to explore ways that our community can do more to be fully inclusive of people with disabilities. With the collaborative leadership of the Ruderman Family Foundation and the Jewish Funders Network, the conference showcased two important lessons for active philanthropy. The Jewish Federations of North America, its Boston affiliate Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee all played important supporting roles. First, and most obviously, disabilities is a critical issue: no community, let alone one the size of the Jewish community, can afford to exclude people on the basis of what Tim Shriver, CEO of the … Continue Reading
Internalizing Innovation
by Evonne Marzouk Our recent investment in Jewish innovation has caused a proliferation of small, scattered non- profits organizing individual programs and competing against each other for scarce funding. Caryn Aviv and Shawn Landres have recently written important articles about this Jewish innovation landscape. Shawn Landres argues for impact investing as a new paradigm. Caryn Aviv suggests the possibility of “for-profit” organizations. Both of these are valuable potential models for future Jewish innovation. In this piece, I’d like to suggest another potential model for bringing innovation into existing Jewish institutions. One of the challenges of this burgeoning innovation sector is that, as a Jewish community, we’re losing focus. Young Jews are connecting to smaller and smaller … Continue Reading
A Different Slant on the Global Planning Table
by Carl Sheingold, Ph.D The decision of the JFNA to create a Global Planning Table (GPT) has been greeted with a good deal of skepticism in the press, including several pieces in eJP. Many observers have asserted that it will be a bureaucratic anachronism, out of step with the culture of a new era in which decentralized philanthropy and innovative start ups are replacing a system of large institutions seeking to set or reflect communal priorities. Some within the system have expressed the opposite concern built on the assumption that the GPT will lead, as a likely if not intended outcome, to a withering if not destruction of the long standing relationship of the federation system with JAFI and JDC. The values of Jewish peoplehood, collectivity, and mutual responsibility are indeed … Continue Reading
On Leaders and Lions
by Idit Klein I’ve often said that being a plenary speaker at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly (GA) is the closest I’ll ever come to being on an Oscar stage. When I spoke at a GA plenary in 2007, a federation representative explained that music chosen carefully for me would play in the background as I walked onto the stage under the bright lights. Between my own dramatic score, the booming voice that welcomed me to the audience of several thousand, the jumbo screens, and teleprompters, I felt detached from the highly produced, performative nature of each and every moment. At the same time, I felt honored to be addressing the largest annual gathering of Jews anywhere in the world. Four years later, at the recent 2011 GA in Denver, I felt this same mix of … Continue Reading
Where Goes the Collective?
an editorial from The Jewish Daily Forward The old way of collecting and disbursing money from American Jews to Israel and other communities overseas has finally collapsed under the weight of philanthropic trends and communal distrust. That historically beloved bureaucracies have lost their attractiveness to donors is not just a Jewish story - across the giving landscape, it is no longer enough to send contributions to a central clearinghouse and hope the money is used well. Donors, large and small, want transparency and results; many also crave the personal satisfaction of seeing their names and their imprints on their contributions. So it was inevitable that the historic formula used by Jewish federations to distribute non-domestic funds would go the way of the pushke and be replaced by a … Continue Reading
The Jewish Federations’ Big Gamble
As Israeli fundraisers go, Harry was a legend. His solicitation skills were well above average. He was the guiding force in establishing and raising money for a major new Jerusalem project. And when a prospective donor would ask Harry how their donation would be used, he would place his arm around the shoulders of the questioner, bring them close, and respond, “trust me”. There was a point in time when nothing more than "trust me" was necessary. But even before Harry's unexpected death a few years ago, the philanthropic world was changing, donors were requiring more information on how their gifts would be utilized and even Harry was slowly coming around. That the world has changed is apparently a lesson the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) has failed to grasp. With the passage … Continue Reading
Reminder: Global Day of Jewish Learning is Sunday
The Shema Prayer, this year's theme of the second annual Global Day of Jewish Learning, to be held this Sunday, November 13th, opens with six seemingly small words - words that carry within each segment of each letter a declaration of the bond, principles and identity of the Jewish people. "For the Jewish people, the Shema is a call, a slogan, a sign of identification and an expression of great emotions," says Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz as he explains the choice of theme for this year. "Shema Yisrael, 'Hear O Israel,' has been with us from the very beginning of our history." Around the United States and across the globe - from Oregon to Florida, from Vermont to California, from Latvia to Uruguay, from Canada to China, over 300 events are being held. People in more than 250 communities and in over … Continue Reading
A 20th Century Solution to 21st Century Problems
by Jay Michaelson In the old days, by which I mean the twentieth century, we consumed media curated by experts. On LPs and Cassettes, record producers and company execs picked and ordered songs that they thought we ought to hear, and paid radio DJs to play them. On the five channels of television, industry experts picked which sitcoms we’d watch at what times, and even added laugh tracks so we’d know when to smile. For better or for worse, and I think for better, this mode of media consumption is being rapidly washed away. In place of vinyl records, we create iPod playlists with the artists we find interesting. In place of TV, we TiVo, and watch programs selected from 500 channels when and where we want. This is how we live now - at least, those of us privileged enough to afford such … Continue Reading
Is Collective Responsibilty a Thing of the Past?
Just in time for the opening of the Jewish Federations annual GA, long-time Chicago lay-leader Richard Wexler has relaunched his critical blog, UJ Thee and Me with posts on the proposed Global Planning Table: from Fool's Gold: The proposed Global Planning Table, now coupled with a meaningless even destructive "Second Membership Criterion," is Fools' Gold, a cryogenic chamber in which the hopes of the federations for something/anything from JFNA will be frozen in time until the federations come to their senses. By then, if then, so much will be lost ... from Fraudulent Inducement - JFNA and a Second Membership Criterion: Now, some have told me that it in today's environment it is futile to even argue the principle of collective responsibility and our historic partnership any more - that's for … Continue Reading
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