As the Jim Joseph Foundation aspires to enable all Jews, their families and their friends to lead connected, meaningful and purpose-filled lives, and to make positive contributions to their communities and the world, we invest in powerful Jewish learning experiences. In this investment area, BBYO, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel International, Birthright Israel and Moishe House are categorized as “signature grantee-partners” in our Deliberate Grantmaking Strategy. These grantees have made evaluation an integral part of their work, informing their own efforts, the foundation’s, and the field. More recently, the foundation has also integrated cross-portfolio evaluation into more of our work to learn about shared outcomes across different sets of grantee-partners.

In cross-portfolio evaluation, we’re able to identify overarching trends and opportunities. Our latest cross-portfolio evaluation, for example, conducted by Rosov Consulting, covers all five of these signature grantees and identifies a set of common outcomes and ways to measure the participants they serve. When we began this evaluation, we didn’t know this would be the end result. However, as we convened the grantees and dug into their own evaluation structures and findings, we recognized the opportunity to learn about the value of participating in multiple experiences during the teen years and 20s/30s. Through a qualitative study with the alumni of programs, we came to understand the added value of the programs, the interactions between outcomes created by the programs and the pathways that take young people from one program to another. 

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It was both exciting and gratifying to learn that a large proportion of alumni from one organization also participate, over time, in at least one other organizations’ program. In the spirit of elevating the value of cross-portfolio evaluation and the work of these grantee-partners, here are some key findings:

·       From finding to designing Jewish community. All five experiences provided by these organizations helped participants find and become part of Jewish community in ways appropriate to their ages and stages in life. One study participant commented, “[Camp] was a very different environment to anything I’d experienced before. I would say it opened my eyes to what community could look like in a way that I really connected with very strongly… I don’t think I really had a grasp on what a community was supposed to be before that.”

·       Another participant reflecting on their experience with Hillel added: “Until college, all of my Jewish experiences were kind of chosen for me… college was the first time where I was having the opportunity to choose my own Jewish experiences and opt into those and feel what felt right for me… And it felt way more like it was mine and I had autonomy over the Jewish life I was living and it wasn’t being chosen for me by my parents.”

·       Personal growth. A second outcome of all five experiences was that participants could develop important life skills and grow as well-rounded individuals. This was because these settings offer increasing levels of personal autonomy and are spaces where participants feel safe to fail forward.

Reflecting on their young adult years, a participant commented, “I was always a participant of Jewish programming in Jewish organizations, even in university I was never on the boards or heading anything. So [Moishe House] allowed me to see that I am able and capable to create my own Jewish spaces and cater to what people like me would like and be able to take that responsibility in my own circles that I otherwise had never been able to try or succeed in.”

The researchers found three other outcomes that were commonly produced, although without the exact same force in all five settings. This includes:

·       Acquiring Jewish cultural building blocks. The experiences provided by “powerful Jewish learning experience” grantees are all highly experiential, involving learning through doing. Learning of this kind helped participants become familiar and even proficient in basic components of Jewish culture and practice.

A participant noted, “I’ve heard of a lot of people who have a religious awakening when they go on Birthright that…they feel closer to the religion itself. That wasn’t my experience. My experience was more of a spiritual cultural awakening. I’ve always loved history; ancient history is what I studied in college. And when I went to Israel, I discovered I had been neglecting the most fascinating, important history of all, which is our own history and birthright… And it was just such an intellectually stimulating experience for me.”

·       Valuing Jewish joy. Variations on the word “joy” surfaced in reflections on almost all these experiences. It was a deep feature of some of the experiences that influenced how participants thought about what it meant to be Jewish or to engage in Jewish practices.

In remembering their Jewish camp experience, a participant shared, “I gained the value of joyous Judaism, social connections… just having a community of people that you get to just be with, [is] just amazing. And I would say the last piece is that I was really introduced to almost it’s like a utopian idea of how Judaism could be at its best, where you could both have a rowdy and amazing Shabbat experience and play basketball and swim in the lake and it was just beautiful.”

·       Forming deep and lasting Jewish friendships. Participating in intense, often immersive experiences among peers often fostered deep and lasting friendships.

Reflecting on their youth group experience, a participant said: “So BBYO kind of gave me this whole separate set of friends and this group that was different from my day to day and it also created this structured time of when we saw each other with weekly chapter meetings…It gave me this thing that felt separate from the day-to-day, social messiness of high school.”

While learning about the Jewish education and engagement offerings of each organization is undoubtedly worthwhile, engaging in cross-portfolio evaluation provides deeper insights. We now understand both the distinct and common contributions made by each organization to participants and can identify why the experiences are so powerful.

Moreover, because this research utilized focus groups, we saw how quickly study participants became comfortable with each other, talking about personal and often emotionally significant matters. The researchers note that this reflects the key finding that the experiences provided in each setting were aligned, creating a similar potent mix of Jewish community and personal growth…those individuals who participated in all five of these experiences gained something new at each stop along the way…Each experience added something distinct along with other outcomes that were generically familiar.”

These are very positive outcomes that show how five organizations are integral in creating a vibrant Jewish communal ecosystem throughout key life stages for the young Jews they serve. The Jim Joseph Foundation is eager to engage in more cross-portfolio evaluations to build our base of knowledge and understanding about shared outcomes across the field.

Stacie Cherner is director of research and learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation.