By Lisa Eisen
Our Jewish community needs to be smarter and more creative with our giving if we are to meet the enormous challenges – and the powerful opportunities – facing us today. To be more effective change agents requires that we take advantage of key trends shaping Jewish philanthropy.
Like philanthropy more broadly, Jewish philanthropy is riding the wave of economic and technological sea changes that have reshaped how we approach our work in the 21st century. Several years ago, I wrote on trends in our sector, namely, that philanthropy was becoming more accessible to a greater number of donors, and funders were playing a more catalytic role in advancing the fields and causes most important to them.
Today, these trends continue to take root and giving is increasing even as local needs and global challenges grow. The Jewish community is moving toward a state of what can be called empowered philanthropy: a generation of energized donors large and small who are taking active ownership over their giving and the impact it makes. This is a model in which we are taking advantage of new tools to be more creative, more collaborative and more informed in our investments and strategies.
Now it is time we ensure this model takes hold by scaling what works: expanding new forms of giving that embolden the next generation; embracing an ecosystem mindset to achieve system-wide change; and using data to enhance and accelerate our collective impact.
Creative giving is empowering a new generation
Innovative forms of philanthropy, such as crowdfunding, giving circles, micro-grants and social impact investing, are engaging new Jewish givers at all levels. Crowdfunding has proven particularly effective in both the Jewish and broader nonprofit worlds, with well-established platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo enabling people to find, fund and promote projects that resonate with their interests and values.
More recently, giving circles have become an attractive model for younger donors, who enjoy both the social and philanthropic benefits of coming together with peers to pool their giving. According to a 2014 report, one in eight Americans participated in a giving circle – and nearly 40 percent were under 40. Within the Jewish community, Amplifier, a network of giving circles grounded in Jewish values, helps millennials and other donors join with like-minded peers. Leveraging an online platform and resources, the model seamlessly integrates social networking with social good, taking into account the habits of a busy generation intent on seeing the tangible impact of its charitable dollars. Today, Amplifier is home to more than 100 giving circles and a growing list of Jewish non-profits supporting economic development, education, inclusion, social justice and more.
To forge a new generation of empowered Jewish funders, we need to fully embrace democratized philanthropy. We need to harness the technologies that make it possible. And we need to ensure that more young Jews can access user-friendly tools to imbue their giving with Jewish values, a community ethos and an ability to shape their philanthropy in their own image.
An ecosystem mindset is taking hold
Grantmaking used to be a Darwinian arrangement of independent funders supporting independent organizations. Today, philanthropists and organizations alike recognize that our most vexing challenges have complex interdependencies. To truly achieve our missions, we have to work together to build more productive systems that serve our shared objectives. And Jewish funders are stepping up – rather than asking what is best for individual grantees or even our own portfolio, we are widening our parameters to ask, what is best for the ecosystem? Indeed, by forging new partnerships and approaching our work within the context of the larger whole, we best position ourselves to scale impact and foster more sustainable change.
Our community recently adopted this approach when investing in talent. To better attract and retain talented Jewish professionals, a consortium of foundations and federations came together to launch Leading Edge, an organization that now serves as a central entity for onboarding new CEOs, improving workplace culture and activating lay leaders. Similarly, OLAM, a platform for strengthening global Jewish service, brings together a broad coalition of funding and organizational partners to support the work of those tackling hunger, poverty, disease and other global challenges. These initiatives are two of many burgeoning collaborations that indicate our community is embracing the ecosystem mindset.
While shifting our center of gravity from independence to interdependence takes time and courage, we must actively pursue strategies that transcend any one organization or funder. Instead, we must work together to set common benchmarks, share knowledge and forge shared solutions to our shared challenges.
Data is accelerating our impact
Making strategic use of data is no longer unique to the business sector. More players in the Jewish philanthropic world are recognizing the importance of and reaping the benefits that advanced data collection, sharing and analysis provide. But this is not simply a numbers game – big data clears a path to what Darrin McKeever of the Davidson Foundation calls “big wisdom.” When we use all the tools at our fingertips, from aggregated data sets to human insight, we gain the understanding needed to make better decisions and, ultimately, to magnify our impact.
As the Israel on Campus Coalition director Jacob Baime describes their experience, “data helps to drive collaboration and collaboration helps to drive more data.” ICC has made a concerted effort to collect large amounts of qualitative and quantitative information about their work on college campuses across the country and to share their data with their partners through a community portal.
ICC has set a great example. When it comes to using big data to attain big wisdom, we are each other’s greatest resources. Our successes and failures are most valuable when we learn from them together and use them to inform our work moving forward. When we collect and share data, placing an emphasis on open source transparency, we enable funders to give bigger and give smarter, and we help our grantee partners make a greater impact on the ground. That is why data must increasingly become a communal resource – information can and must help fuel empowered philanthropy.
This paradigm is within reach, but we must grab hold together. It means embracing new technologies that engage the smaller giver, the grassroots activist and the social networker. It means breaking down barriers that keep organizations in silos and coming together to achieve our objectives. And it means ensuring that our resources and our data do not remain proprietary, but instead contribute to a broader, more accurate picture of the Jewish landscape.
Indeed, now is the time to scale our successes and embrace key trends that amplify our work. Now is the time to become empowered philanthropists who, in turn, empower our partners, our constituents and our communities.
Lisa Eisen is Vice President of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, a global organization committed to igniting the passion and unleashing the power of young people to create positive change in the Jewish community and beyond.
Top
Kudos for Ms. Eisen’s great work and the fearlessness in the work of the Schusterman Foundation.
I get how data can help inform and drive decisions. I hope this is not a new concept. The big question is are we (Jewish donors and organizations) willing to utilize data to actually make decisions on program efficiency and effectiveness? But before we do that, is the data good? is it on point? Are we asking the right questions to ensure the right inputs and therefore useful data outputs.
But in the real world, how will Leading Edge actually work? Who is it accountable to? Is it a “pay to play”? Should it be? Are its members truly invested in and committed to the collaborative enterprise? That could mean living with a decision a particular member doesn’t support — without withdrawing funding, or you-know-whatting inside the tent.
JFNA has its Mandel Center. Theoretically it does recruitment and professional development for the federation system. It is, basically, a human resources consortium. But in many cases, federations with resources bypass the Mandel Center. Perhaps because it’s too familiar (and therefore not respected) or it simply isn’t perceived as doing a good job? Does any federation think the Mandel Center is doing an outstanding job and meeting its needs?
In terms of Olam, it also sounds good. But what does it mean to support the work of its member organizations? Is it like a trade association, leveraging resources in areas of common interest? Is it helpful in eliminating the redundancies in Jewish organizations with a common mission? Is it a platform to exchange information?
It seems we often celebrate the collaboration, as we should, but it falls short in its practical application. We never hear about it again but it lingers on deepening cynicism about the possibilities for real change.
What’s particularly interesting is Ms. Eisen’s call for donors to abandon self interest in favor of the ecosystem. The ecosystem sounds an awful lot like the collective, a buzzword for what the federation system has to offer. This is not to praise or complain, just to make an observation. The ecosystem mindset has been around for over a century. It is the bedrock of the federation system.
Collaborations, as Ms. Eisen describes, don’t “democratize” Jewish philanthropy. But if what she is really after is for donors to become smart philanthropists, then just like citizens to become smart voters, they have to spend the time to get informed. They have to demand results, putting resources to their highest and best uses (leveraging, collaborating etc), and get past slick marketing campaigns that appeal to emotions (usually fear!) but offer little in the way of strategic planning, aligned execution and specific results. But they also have to have an idea of what they want to accomplish. Measuring success and efficiency is useless to impossible if there is no destination in mind. A voter can be informed about the candidates but has to decide on which one to vote for based on what the voters shares with candidate in terms of vision, effectiveness, tone etc.
By the way, in terms of direct democracy, at least in the federation world, surely the technology exists for federation donors to participate directly in making allocations decisions. Imagine what it would look like for federation donors to actually vote on allocations? Yeah, it would be scary because federation insiders might be outflanked by donors who may not be as informed (if donors support a program insiders don’t, obviously the donors are ill-informed). But surely it would democratize Jewish philanthropy!
Finally, there’s a lot of “our” and “we” in Ms. Eisen’s essay. It implies something that for is beautiful and powerful but that sadly no longer applies. Is there a “we”? Who is part of that and what does it mean these days?
Well said, Lisa. It is critical for Jewish philanthropy to be creative, nimble. collaborative, demanding, and even more to achieve a stronger Jewish community. We also should not forget that an aspect of this “empowered philanthropy” must be to promote a more diverse and inclusive Jewish community. And, to accomplish this we should look to partners both within and beyond the Jewish community and seek collaborations with foundations, philanthropists, and nonprofits working throughout the world that reflect the Jewish and universal values that are core to our tradition, appeal to our younger generations, and can help us accomplsh our goal of “tikkun olam.”