Friday, February 8, 2019

A CAUTIONARY TALE OF SYSTEMIC FAILURE

Following our article on February 6...

This is a cautionary tale -- it is what happens when community professionals and JFNA professionals are allowed to operate without accountability, and when lay leadership fail to meet their responsibilities. It represents systemic failure of the worst kind.

When the Jewish community of St. Paul, Minnesota, changed its name It announced:
“While our name is changing, our mission is not. We are and always will be the organization in St. Paul that builds and sustains our Jewish community, educates our children, feeds the hungry, provides for our elderly, responds to emergencies and helps Jews in need in Israel and around the world.”
What the leadership, or what passed for it, of what is now the Jewish Federation of Greater St. Paul didn't announce at the time was that its former long-time CEO and an unspecified number of communal leaders, who chose not to know, had, in a passive if not active manner worked with professional leaders of JFNA -- yes, our JFNA -- in what can be characterized as a cover-up of the community's $3 million accounts payable balance built up over years of unpaid overseas core allocations due the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Joint Distribution Committee and WorldORT. 

Yes, as disclosed in TC JewFolkhttps://tcjewfolk.com/amidst-financial-struggles-st-paul-federation-looks-to-move-forward/, in every year forward from 2008, the St. Paul federation sent letters assuring an overseas allocation, and, for every one of those ten years...each and every one...St. Paul did not comply with the commitments it made. This outstanding liability owed to JAFI and JDC and WorldORT, grew over the decade from $100,000 to $3,000,000 and JFNA raised no issues, contacted no communal lay leaders, and wholly failed to communicate that membership in JFNA required compliance with outstanding financial obligations -- after all Dues were being paid, weren't they?

In fact, the only local Federation person whom JFNA senior professionals may have contacted over that time was the same long-serving federation CEO who was the person sweeping this reality under the rug. At no time did JFNA raise the horrific account receivable, raise any issues at all, with local leaders. The St. Paul Federation Board of Directors Minutes dating back to October 2017 through the end of 2018 recite that JFNA professionals told the new CEO (who left the community after little more than one year) to tell no one. And, at no time over that decade did JFNA's professional leaders alert the true owners of what became a $3,000,000 debt owed to them -- JAFI/JDC/WorldORT -- that there "might be a problem."

These local leaders, at the initiative of the then newly hired Chief Executive,  upon "discovering" this accumulated/accumulating account payable  apparently hidden in some way by the Federation's long-term retired CEO, reached out to JFNA and, ultimately, allegedly were told by those lacking any authority to do so, to "just write it --the "it" being the $3,000,000 receivable -- "just write it off." And,  to keep this Draconian information from the Federation lay leadership...an allegation denied by a JFNA flack.

It was always right there: right on the pages of the Federation's Annual Financial Statements. First listed as a large unidentified Account Payable transformed on the 2016 Financial Statement to "Due JFNA" -- an incredible amount given the stagnant state of the St. Paul Annual Campaign. We do not know how this past due amount was shown on the books at 25 Broadway, if at all. Perhaps, someone might wish to question the JFNA CFO (whose response to most inquiries has become a rote "it's confidential").

This entire matter came to light when the long- (too long) serving St. Paul CEO retired and his successor began to ask questions: serious questions, questions that his Board over the years should have been asking. Questions that would have disclosed that the Federation Annual Campaign results announced to the community were a fraud; that allocations to overseas needs had not been paid (or had been vastly underpaid) for years while local allocations were paid as if the overseas account was an ATM. 

So what did JFNA do? The 2018 Federation Minutes reflect exactly what was going on -- as St, Paul's Board had allowed itself to be left in the dark on how the "Account Payable" had been built up over years; now the JFNA professionals would leave their Board behind, preempting the write-off process absent any governance authority to do so. (The JewFolk article does report that JFNA cut a "deal" with St. Paul -- a write-off of $3,000,000 for a promise to pay JFNA [presumably for overseas] 10% of its annual campaign going forward.) At no time were JAFI/JDC/WorldORT engaged on what was, in fact, a write-off of their allocations/funds.

The St. Paul Minutes reflect that the Board and new CEO were first concerned with the massive Federation debt disclosed in the 2017 Financial Statements. It is clear that St. Paul leaders were negotiating with the JFNA CEO, the COO and the CFO. Then...

  • On May 23, 2018 the Minutes recited: 
"JFNA Write-off Status: JFNA’s CEO unofficially agreed that JFNA would write off our debt of $3.2 million; however, JFNA has not held an official vote. The target date is May 29, but that might be pushed back by a week to coincide with JFNA’s national board meeting."

  • Then silence until October 2018 when the Federation CEO announced to the Board:
"Rob Jacobs (the then CEO) announced the JFNA agreed to write off all outstanding debt for the St. Paul Jewish Federation, with the stipulation that we commit at least 10% of our annual campaign to JFNA."

And, since...nothing....except the November Minutes disclose that now this CEO had resigned, and then the excellent, in-depth expose on the pages of JewFolk.

Friends, it is obvious that both the lay leadership of the Jewish Federation of St. Paul and at JFNA need to immediately examine these circumstances and take the necessary actions: And, JAFI/JDC/WorldORT need to assert their rights to allocated funds.

  • The St. Paul Board leaders who failed in their stewardship of donors' funds need to immediately resign. They failed in their fiduciary responsibility;
  • The JFNA lay leadership must determine through an independent investigation whether members of their senior management advised others to hide this payable from St. Paul's lay and professional leaders, and, then, if so, immediately let them go. 
  • JAFI/JDC/WorldORT need to creat a joint venture the purpose of which shall be two-fold: to advocate for increased core allocations and cash collections and distribution of federation overseas core allocations.
How is it possible that in its Recommendations, the JFNA Global Operations Committees demanded that JFNA itself lead global advocacy when the reality is that not only has JFNA proved over the past decade its own lack of interest in and ability to do so, but has led a write-off effort that has resulted in millions lost to the overseas beneficiaries? The Recommendation is specious.

It is clear that the massive failings here arose out of an expressed policy of "getting out of  the professionals way" unencumbered by any accountability. Can anyone doubt that the JFNA senior professionals, like the retired St.Paul CEO, considered themselves to be empowered in ways that led to the outcomes in St. Paul reported in TC JewFolk? And the question is no longer "how did this happen?" -- that evidence is now right in front of all of us -- the question is: did JFNA "authorize" similar allocations write-offs in other communities-- how many and how much?

This is a sad chapter among sad chapters. If those at both St. Paul and JFNA fail to take strong actions and then demand accountability -- of themselves and of their professionals going forward -- the system is no more.

No more.

Rwexler












4 comments:

  1. Among other things, we can learn from this example how little JFNA cares about overseas allocations. Putting JFNA in charge of advocacy for anything related to overseas funding and support for our overseas partners is totally absurd. What interests them is collecting dues for themselves and running their own amateurish and misguided GLobal Operations in Israel, wasting valuable resources but being able to "control" and "own" it.

    Indeed, the adoption of the new Global Operations recommendations is designed to accomplish the following:
    ** kill UIA and get its lay leadership out of the way by dismissing most of them and making sure that the few remaining UIA Board members are mere puppets (How they can even rationalize this one is a total mystery and why these true leaders turn the other cheek is also incomprehensible!)
    ** supposedly take full responsibility for advocacy for overseas and the needs of our overseas partners (Does anybody believe that such a total reversal of direction is possible or that anyone at JFNA really intends to act on it?)
    ** continue to see JFNA's office in Jerusalem as the vehicle for our support of the overseas agenda and advocacy for it (PR for JFNA in Israel's Knesset is hardly the place to advocate for the I&O agenda and need to fund it in the North American Jewish Community and they really don't seem to have a clue as to what they are doing, trying to do.)

    The time has come for our overseas partners to form a new coalition and to understand that what they will not do themselves to reverse the trendline on allocations will never get done.
    With what the Global Operations Committee are proud to declare as the completion of the great merger, it has become clear that all that is left is a mediocre trade union, a domestic needs oriented trade union that is concerned with only its own existence.
    The merger has killed our collective and our entire communal system. We have indeed merged ourselves to death, killing UJA and now UIA and leaving a professional umbrella organization that doesn't even fulfill that role very well anymore.
    The professionals have won, with the lay leadership being led astray and/or put out to pasture.
    Just as each federation will have to make it on its own, so will Israel and Jewish communities in need around the world.
    So will you JAFI, JDC and ORT!
    The time has come to change the rules and start playing the game on a new playing field as the merger has unfortunately defined it.
    WE WERE ONE - evidently not anymore!

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  2. How is it possible that "heads have not rolled" on this? It would be a one-day task for an Accounts Receivable person to download the 156 Federation's 990s, make a spreadsheet of the Campaign achievement and net against funds received (do it two years after as a safety check).

    ...And then to write it all off...$3,000,000....bah humbug.

    The message to the field is a horror. Why are we transmitting every single dollar we can when we can send it directly. At least we'd know everything went where it was supposed to

    ..>And you've been predicting this all along.

    This is simple Accounting 101!

    We are so damn angry

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  3. Reading all of this and how it played out leads me to one conclusion, and that is that I would want Rob Jacobs to work for our organization.
    He discovered a serious problem, took it to his leadership ASAP, and informed the national organization. What else could you ask from a CEO who was misled from the start by leadership?

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  4. Let's see if I understand this: St. Paul was dealing with JFNA's most senior professionals who advised them to (1) write off $3 million or more in allocations owed to the Jewish Ageny and JDC and ORT while (2) these same most senior professionals were writing and defending the Global Operations Committee Recommendations that would make JFNA to focal point for advocacy for allocations to the Jewish Agency, the Joint and ORT.

    It doesn't take any genius to understand all that is so wrong with thus scenario, does it? Maybe at JFNA, it does.

    ReplyDelete