Depending on your federation, JFNA Dues should be a matter of concern for everyone, but let's take Federation X as an example.
You are the CEO of this community. Your Annual campaign could most charitably be described as "struggling," it's what you inherited, but you're working so hard to turn it around. Your JFNA Dues: $2,641,000 (at least that is what it was on your last available 990). If your staff were asked "what do we receive for $2,641,000?" -- they would be stumped. You, yourself, have no idea how to respond if your lay leadership were to ask the same question.
When you raise the possibility of non-payment or partial-payment with your fellow federation CEOs, some support the idea, but others, all of whom you respect, admonish you for even bringing up the possibility. "If your federation were to do that," they suggest, "the whole system would come crashing down." It's the same argument, you think to yourself, that was used to justify the Vietnam War -- the dominoes would fall -- and how did that turn out? "Do you want to be the one who leads to the collapse of JFNA," they ask? This sounds to you like the threat that it really is.
What these other professional leaders don't tell you is that they have been asking themselves the same question -- "why? why?" (One of them suggested to me at the outset of the pre-ordained failure of the Global Planning Table: "I can't believe that I'm watching the destruction of the very system that has been my life's work." "Watching" being the operative word.)
Then, you begin to think: "what if our Dues were reduced to $1,000,000? Still outrageous, but just barely defensible." The community could use the $1,641,000 "savings" to hire two more in Campaign; we could increase our allocations locally and overseas with the balance.; we have so many unmet needs...everywhere. I have lay leaders who lobby for me for more money for our JCC or the JDC, for our Family Agency or the Jewish Agency, and on and on, and I have to plead with some of them to not publicly raise issues of the JFNA Dues amount (and immediately after doing so, I ask myself "why?").
Hell, you begin to ponder, where do my loyalties lie -- with a Continental organization that evidences no responsibility to my community, tosses me a bone once in a while (they ask me to speak at the GA, give some of my lay leaders some minor kavod, etc.) -- but shouldn't my allegiance only be to the community that hired me, that pays my salary and my perks, my retirement some day?
And, you conclude: it's time to acknowledge that JFNA has demonstrated no excellence in anything that it attempts. In reality it has become nothing more than a $53,000,000 a year trade organization -- a bloated bureaucracy -- a collection and distribution agency (and not a very good one at that). I'm going to find CEOs of other federations who have come to the conclusion that we can demand that our Dues be reduced to the maximum amount necessary to support a trade organization. Someone has to lead this effort, why not me?
If only...
Rwexler
No need to ask "why" because everyone knows the answer.
ReplyDeleteNobody wants to make the first move because nobody wants to be blamed for the destruction of our collective system. The truth is that that system has already been destroyed and is no longer with us. What is left of it today is a total sham and does more damage than good every day that it is allowed to continue to exist in its current form.
We have already destroyed the once great federation collective. Now is the time to get rid of the remaining ghost organization and to make a serious attempt to create something better, not just a trade organization but a true colllective framework and leadership organization for our federations and our People.
Federations paying their Dues year-in and year-out without question or demand are like the person doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result; they are insane. This is the Federation Derangement Syndrome: as you've suggested, the tens of millions, or, maybe, it's hundreds of millions by now, wasted on JFNA could have been well-spent on building community, rebuilding them: instead JFNA's leaders must finally come to terms with their own failure: permitting JFNA to fail over and over again but never demanding that the organization do more than fail.
ReplyDeleteOnly Lonnie and Eric and a couple of others would be able to force JFNA's hand.
ReplyDeleteBut my money is on them doing nothing of the sort, just like their predecessors.
I'm trying to understand the math of all of this as an exec of a small intermediate federation so I can relate it to my own community. Let's assume the national campaign is about $900 mil +/-. I believe the budget of JFNA from dues is about $30 mil +/-. This theoretically means that each federation should be be paying about 3.3% of campaign if my calculations are correct. In your example the federation in question must have something approaching a $60 mil campaign. If I am not mistaken I believe my federation is paying something like 5-7% of the campaign. Can someone please explain how the dues are calculated so that I can explain to my lay leadership why we are paying such a high percentage (if my assumptions are correct). If your community in the example does not have a $60 mil campaign it seems logical that they should actually reduce their dues to whatever 3.3% of the campaign is. If all federations reduced to the proper percentage then I assume that since there are federations that are paying far less than 3.3% JFNA would have to either reduce their budget and/or go after those federations paying far less.
ReplyDeleteHow does a community like New York justify an additional 5-7% (or likely higher) overhead charge, when JFNA duplicates much of what NY does, including its Israel and legislative affairs offices. I calculate that when adding in JFNA overhead, UJA-NY must have an administrative burden well above 45%. Isn’t this well beyond the guidelines of Guidestar and others?
ReplyDeleteTo Anon, 1/12 9:01 pm -- you've identified just one of the terrible flaws in the JFNA Dues "system": there are no consistent "rules" at all. New York-UJA is sui generis, no formula applies to it; upon the first application of the campaign-based Dues formula, Boston rejected the Dues baaed on its own Annual Campaign figures, deducted out the designated gifts which were the most substantial part of its campaign andclaimed an almost 7 figure reduction in its Dues; later, LA made a deal to reduce its Dues while paying Dues withheld over years; and so on and so forth.
ReplyDeleteYet, with exception after exception, Dues supposedly still total $30 milllion a year., How does that work? Unless, of course, JFNA is paying itself out of federation allocations for JAFI, JDC and WorldORT.
Robert
ReplyDeleteIn a previous posting you wrote: “While I don't profess to understand why Eric has led his community to turn inward, a sharp U-turn away from historic collective responsibility. I'm sure there is reason behind a series of decisions”
Can you help the uninformed that contribute in a significant manner to the New York campaign understand in which ways NY has turned inward? What are these series of decisions?
JFNA’s Form 990 for the year ending June 30th 2017, shows total revenues of $261 million, down from $274 million in the prior fiscal year.
ReplyDeletehttps://cdn.fedweb.org/fed-42/2431/JFNA_990_Public_Disclosure.pdf
Grants, which one assumes are pass-through funds using JFNA as a conduit, were $213 million, down from $234.6 million.
Salaries were $23.7 million as compared with $21 million, but other expenses were $24.4 million vs $21.5 million.
Shockingly, page 2 (of 73) says RD spent over $22.8 million. How is that even possible?
On page 19, one can see that they are getting fleeced by Blackbaud for their donor management system, when charities like the American Red Cross pay under half that amount.
Any clue on page 20, lines 2a-f?
Line 3 on that page shows the astounding result of JFNA making $1 million a year just by sitting on the cash of other Federations.
On page 22, lines 11-12, we learn that JFNA is playing the stock market with $56 million of funds for which it is a fiduciary. I wonder how that amount did in the last few months? And who is their stock broker?
Page 43 is most instructive. Who donates $45 million a year to JFNA? Is this your friends at IFCJ?
On page 38 we learn that the entire DC lobbying activity which you laud is run for well under $1 million.
So, I neglected to ask, given the opacity of the JFNA financials, how does one calculate a $30 mill budget as opposed to something closer to $45 million?
ReplyDelete