THE GROWING LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

We are the stewards of our donors funds in a system wholly dependent upon trust. Each year we see the federations we entrust with our funds send $30.3 million on to JFNA and, then, we ignore how those funds are spent, relying upon JFNA to properly invest those funds in programs we have approved in the annual JFNA Budgets and to monitor those expenditures. And, then again, we promptly forget how precious those $30.3 million are. Let's examine our abdication of responsibility to an organization that has demonstrated none, in just a few area:

•  Back a few years JFNA participated in an airlift of Yemeni Jews to Monsey, New York. After many Posts decrying JFNA's involvement in this so-called "rescue effort" (which turned out to have been unnecessary),  JFNA's more responsible professionals sent me an accounting of the underfunded project; they didn't send it to you or, for that matter, anyone else.  What funds have been raised and spent on this effort; you can ask until you are blue in the face.
• We have cited the losses of over half a million dollars...that's over $500,000, friends...on the 2010 GA and Tribefest 1. How are those deficits paid? Nobody's saying.
• The Board Chair and CEO sent out a fund-raising plea to the federations to Finish the Journey of Ethiopian Jewry -- to bring the final remnant of Falash Mura to Israel this year. How much has been raised? How much has been transmitted to the Jewish Agency? Nobody's saying.
• When the Israel Action Network was initiated as a "partnership" between JFNA and JCPA (rapidly translated into an "independent entity" effort) to fight the venality of threatened divestment, boycott and delegitimization, JFNA again was charged with raising the millions to fund the effort. That, of course, failed. The JFNA polity (viz, the Large Cities) then demanded that JFNA fund the IAN from its Budget...and, so, it was done. But who is assuring that funds intended for the work of the IAN are not being spent in significant part to prop up the budget/staff of the JCPA? Nobody's saying.

Friends these are but the tip of an iceberg of irresponsibility, of an abdication of JFNA's and its leaders responsibility...and ours. But, who's asking?


Rwexler