• Home
  • About
    • About
    • Policies
  • Submissions
    • Op-eds
    • News / Announcements
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

eJewish Philanthropy

Your Jewish Philanthropy Resource

  • News Bits
  • Jewish Education
  • Readers Forum
  • Research
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Jewish Philanthropy / Why I am Funding Big Data in the Jewish Community

Why I am Funding Big Data in the Jewish Community

July 10, 2014 By eJP

by Simone Friedman Rones

One of my biggest challenges in managing our family’s philanthropy is knowing whether our grants – especially those we give to organizations serving Jewish young adults – are really making a difference. Are the programs we fund truly having an impact on the individual Jews who are participating in them? Are the young adults attending these programs deepening their involvement in the community by participating in other programs as well? And most importantly, are the programs we fund empowering young adults to move from being passive consumers of Jewish programming to becoming active participants in creating their own Jewish experiences? Unfortunately, the Jewish community suffers from a leaky pipeline problem as individuals move between organizations or disappear from an organization altogether as their interests, needs, life stage, geography, or friends change. One of the big new trends in philanthropy, being played out in education, healthcare, and socialservices is called Collective Impact which includes the cooperation of organizations serving the same population, and, critically, the integration of data systems across organizations to ensure an individual is being served effectively over time. Some call this “big data” in philanthropy, and in the Jewish community, there is a collective platform called GrapeVine which has already started to be rolled out in several cities across the country. From my perspective, GrapeVine presents the only comprehensive way to answer my questions as a philanthropist – at the level of the individual Jewish young adult (as opposed to a population average).

GrapeVine works by building online profiles for Jewish individuals, and with permission, connects with those individual’s social media presence to keep track of the programs he or she attends. GrapeVine then analyzes that data and provides content and program recommendations which correspond with that person’s preferences. Because GrapeVine is doing this for over a hundred thousand individuals, Jewish communities have the ability to do something they have never done before, which is develop a comprehensive picture of the Jewish journeys of young adults. Several forward-thinking Jewish communities have begun to recognize the value of this service and have committed resources to funding its rollout.

Our funding will be directed toward the use of GrapeVine in the Los Angeles area, which will be part of the “NuRoots” initiative. This initiative, stewarded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, will help young adults with no formal ties to the Jewish community connect with Jewish values and engage with their peers. The program will have geographic hubs in three areas within LA, and will tie together programming from local organizations already working with young adults in innovative ways. Most importantly, NuRoots will hire rabbis and community professionals to serve as on-the-ground concierges who will connect young adults to meaningful Jewish experiences. By integrating GrapeVine, NuRoots will be able to track the interactions that rabbis and community professionals have with young adults, and then continue tracking the programs and experiences that these young adults have within the community. By connecting to social media, GrapeVine will also be a source of lead generation for the concierges and for the program partners that are part of the initiative.

Critics of big data and GrapeVine have claimed that because the quantity of data is limited compared to quantity of data generated by Netflix or Google, the use of big data in the Jewish community is somehow misguided. My response to this is that we need to start somewhere. If as a community we expect to engage a new generation of Jewish young adults, we are going to need to have a lot more information about what makes each individual person tick. We cannot rely on anecdotal evidence, nor can we necessarily rely on studies of the Jewish community that interview just a small sample of the population because they occur too infrequently (every 10-15 years in most communities) to create a continuous feedback loop for our community. Our sample size needs to include everyone that we engage through our funded programs (which is many more Jews than we often realize), and big data techniques allow us to do that.

No one is under any illusion that GrapeVine is a panacea that will singlehandedly solve the challenges facing our community. What is clear, however is that GrapeVine has real potential to help us reach people in ways we have never been able to before and to develop programs that are aligned with their true interests. Could it fail? Absolutely. Given the stakes we are playing with and early indications of the system’s abilities, funding Grapevine is a risk that I believe is well worth taking and I encourage others to join me as well.

Simone Friedman Rones is the Executive Director of Emanuel J. Friedman Philanthropies. The opinions expressed are her own.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Jewish Philanthropy, Readers Forum

Click here to Email This Post Email This Post to friends or colleagues!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Joel Schindler says

    July 10, 2014 at 4:30 pm

    You should be commended for funding something like GrapeVine. Big data can and should help the Jewish community – we just need to learn how to use it. In reality, there are still no experts. Even Google and Netfilx are figuring it out as they go. So become the Jewish communal expert in Big Data and help integrate others into the process so programs other than just the ones you fund can benefit. Great first step!

  2. Russel Neiss says

    July 21, 2014 at 5:21 am

    As the “critic” in question (http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/not-big-enough-big-data) I’d just like to respond to the mischaracterization of my argument.

    I don’t know anyone who is against the collection of data to see if programs are working, nor the pooling of data sources. I’m certainly not, and am personally, I’m a big supporter of initiatives life the BJPA, the Jewish Data Bank & others.

    What I’m against is trying to harness a technique that is unproven, expensive, and quite frankly wrong for the job simply because it’s a “hot,” “shiny,” and new idea.

    It’s like trying to build a house using a 3D printer because you’ve heard they’re the latest and greatest thing without taking into consideration other alternatives or traditional ways of doing them that may be more effective.

    If the only argument for doing so is “we need to start somewhere” then we’re in more trouble than I thought.

  3. Deborah Ben-Moshe says

    July 25, 2014 at 4:58 pm

    Hi Russel,

    Great to read your comment. One of our principles at GrapeVine is that Big Data is no longer a single approach, but incorporates many avenues of data collection. Similarly, GrapeVine is not the only answer, but one of many that will aid the Jewish community. As a concept, Big Data does elicit excitement and interest because of its vast promise. However, the buzz shouldn’t detract from Big Data’s practical, varied, and demonstrated uses. Organizations like GrapeVine that engage with the smaller side of the Big Data spectrum (hundreds of thousands, instead of millions of data pieces) are able to gain remarkable insights using today’s technologies. We would love to share more about our work and how we harness various techniques – both new and old—to engage people on their Jewish journeys. Deborah@Grape-Vine.com

  4. Russel Neiss says

    July 27, 2014 at 1:57 pm

    Hi Deborah,

    Thanks for engaging.

    1. Could you explain more at length what you mean by “the smaller side of the Big Data spectrum.” That’s a new term to me.

    2. Back when you guys received the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund to build GrapeVine in 2011 you promised that you would “create freely available APIs to enable other organizations to integrate directly with our software.” How is that process going?

    3. Most data driven initiatives within the Jewish community (and broader 501c3 world) publish their methods and data so that the broader community can measure the efficacy and grow from them. Are their any plans for GrapeVine/Measuring Success to release any information that they’ve learned throughout the process of creating this tool?

  5. Deborah Ben-Moshe says

    July 30, 2014 at 4:25 pm

    Hi Russel,

    We would love to talk to you about this in more depth than the eJP portal allows. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at deborah@grape-vine.com.

Primary Sidebar

Join The Conversation

What's the best way to follow important issues affecting the Jewish philanthropic world? Our Daily Update keeps you on top of the latest news, trends and opinions shaping the landscape, providing an invaluable source for inspiration and learning.
Sign Up Now
For Email Marketing you can trust.

Continue The Conversation

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Comments

  • Bruce Powell on An Invitation To Transparency: Reflections on an Open Salary Spreadsheet
  • Sara Rigler on Announcement: Catherine Reed named CEO of American Friends of Magen David Adom
  • Donna Burkat on The Blessings in 2020’s Losses
  • swindmueller on Where Do We Go From Here?
    Reflections On 2021
    A Jewish Response to These Uncertain Times
  • Alan Henkin on Where Do We Go From Here?
    Reflections On 2021
    A Jewish Response to These Uncertain Times

Most Read Recent Posts

  • Jewish Agency Accuses Evangelical Contractors of “Numerous Violations” but Denies They Evangelized New Immigrants
  • Breaking: Birthright Israel & Onward Israel Seek to Join Forces to Strengthen Jewish Diaspora Ties with Israel
  • An Invitation To Transparency: Reflections on an Open Salary Spreadsheet
  • Why One Zoom Class Has Generated a Following
  • The Blessings in 2020’s Losses

Categories

The Way Back Machine

Footer

What We Do

eJewish Philanthropy highlights news, resources and thought pieces on issues facing our Jewish philanthropic world in order to create dialogue and advance the conversation. Learn more.

Top 40 Philanthropy Blogs, Websites & Influencers in 2020

Copyright © 2021 · eJewish Philanthropy · All Rights Reserved