In eJewishPhilanthropy’s exclusive opinion column The 501(C) Suite, leading foundation executives share what they are working on and thinking about with the wider philanthropic field. 

For two decades, the Jim Joseph Foundation’s core grantmaking — what we call our Deliberate Strategy — has invested in an ecosystem of organizations that foster vibrant Jewish life. While these efforts yield remarkably positive outcomes, the underlying ecosystem was built by and for the minority of Jews who already feel at least somewhat comfortable and connected. It simply was not designed to reach the majority who do not.

Although most young Jewish adults aged 22-40 in North America are not affiliated with Jewish institutions, they don’t realize how common this is. They assume they are the exception, but these young adults are the majority. At the same time, many of them do engage in Jewish life that is meaningful to them — at home, with friends and family.  

To bridge this divide, a few years ago the foundation launched an R&D initiative called Common Era.

Common Era operates separately from our traditional grantmaking, with its own team and a clear mandate to find the people, ideas and unmet needs that our Deliberate Strategy does not focus on. Our aim is to generate new initiatives and, importantly, to strengthen an ongoing discipline to generate knowledge and ideas — in short, to drive our Emergent Strategy. We want to learn about the Jewish people broadly — our culture, behaviors, and the kinds of Jewish experiences that will be relevant and resonant in a quickly shifting landscape. 

Pairing established operations with discovery is standard practice across industries. Universities balance teaching with original research. Businesses pair core products with R&D. Venture capital firms maintain established portfolios while funding unproven startups. Science advances because institutions create space to ask questions before knowing the answers.

In practice, Common Era invests in and conducts research outside usual channels, funds small experiments before knowing if they will succeed, identifies new talent and partnerships, and gives innovators the runway to test and iterate under uncertain conditions. Most experiments fail to scale. When an initiative ends, it either captures lessons for the next attempt, stays small and localized, gets handed off to an established partner or scales into a standalone entity.

Project Ruth is our initial example of that final path. 

Research has revealed a practical problem: A significant number of families want a rabbi, cantor or educator for life-cycle events like weddings or b’nai mitzvah, but they are not members of synagogues and don’t know where to find these leaders. We backed two entrepreneurs to build a platform that makes it easier for families to find trusted clergy and leaders for life-cycle events. Through Project Ruth, families can connect directly with vetted Jewish professionals who can meet their needs. 

What started as an experimental prototype is now scaling into a major standalone platform. Still in its start-up phase with a beta site, Project Ruth is the first of what we believe will be many more initiatives that are in the Common Era pipeline.

To power this work, we are building an Innovation Fund to put capital behind the small number of ideas that are promising, in partnership with co-funders who share our appetite for scaling to the next level after initial testing proves a real need. These pipeline projects moving out of incubation address areas such as new forms of community, media edu-tainment, new approaches to leadership development, and more.

Ruth and other experiments are not meant to replace or compete with current communal offerings. Our core funding will continue for schools, camps, immersive trips to Israel, youth groups, young adult offerings and other successful arenas within our Deliberate Strategy. These programs do an excellent job serving the people who already show up and positively influencing their lives. The talented leaders of these programs continuously innovate to attract more of this audience and to provide deeper Jewish experiences. Common Era and our Emergent Strategy exist specifically for the majority who are not walking through those “traditional doors.”

As we pursue both strategies, we want to know more about what motivates all of these audiences, from the most engaged to the least, and what experiences bring them meaning. Project Prism, our recent multi-method study of the broadest spectrum of Jewish young adults in the United States, reflects our ambitious research agenda moving forward. More than 20 years of grantmaking has grown a knowledge base and made us more strategic in our grantmaking. Still, we can learn even more about which approaches and tools are most likely to pull the right levers to address the big challenges and opportunities our community faces.

Jewish life has always evolved through people willing to try something before anyone could prove it would work. Common Era is our effort to turn that instinct into a discipline — learning from what fails, innovating and experimenting — to build a more far-reaching and vibrant Jewish future.

Barry Finestone is the president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation.