Kirby Smart is the extremely successful head football Coach at the University of Georgia. He has offered his philosophy: "We gotta keep making the main thing the main thing." Sadly, that advice is lost on so many in so many places in organized Jewish life.
JFNA's Board has just heard the findings of its consultants at The Bridgespan Group ("TBG") -- it was a high quality study with some important findings that, perhaps, JFNA itself will publish. Unfortunately TBG failed to identify with Coach Smart's dictate -- the TBG fidings and recommendations wholly failed to identify the "main thing" and, having failed to do so, omitted the dictate that JFNA "gotta keep making the main thing the main thing." I'll leave it to you all to reach your own conclusions as to whether JFNA and the federations received a real return on its very heavy investment in this Consultant Study.
So, instead of finding the "main thing," and I think we all know what that is -- it was the merger dictate, 20 years ago, that the merged organization be the steward of "more dollars and more donors." It hasn't been; in fact it's impossible to determine today what it has become other than The Bridgespan Group's finding of "great communal dissatisfaction" with JFNA.
JFNA's lay and professional leaders have been so unfocused that they allowed the institution to collapse and now they inherit the rubble. And The Bridgespan Group's Report does not really help them in climbing out of the deep hole they have dug with what I believe, were those professional leaders competent, would be a singular cry: FOCUS. DO SOMETHING WITH EXCELLENCE.
AND, AT ONE AND THE SAME TIME...in his introduction to the Global Operations Review Committee Recommendations, Board Chair Mark Wilf read that this was some form of "comprehensive report" supporting JFNA's work in Israel. It was neither. Sadly, it was a "made as instructed" set of conclusions and recommendations designed to coopt and defenestrate an actual working part of JFNA -- its subsidiary UIA -- eliminate a significant number of UIA Board members dedicated to both the Jewish Agency and overseas advocacy (characterized as "a streamlining of governance approach"), absorb UIA functions further into the bowels of JFNA where they will surely die (as does almost everything JFNA touches) while, incredibly in light of constant and repeated failure, irresponsibly assuming that JFNA-Israel will carry out a broad array of functions, many of which those for which it has been responsible and with which it has failed time and again. Yes, these assigned functions include many which JFNA-Israel has failed to perform over the past decade.
The reality that the JFNA's Board would consider the deracination of UIA and the absorption of its governance and operational functions in many areas within JFNA or literally designated away, while unrestricted cash allocations to JAFI and JDC have literally collapsed under JFNA's faux stewardship while suggesting that JFNA-Israel should "carry on" as if it has enjoyed any success, is deserving of nothing more than rejection out of hand. But...no...this is JFNA after all.
This may be worse: drumming up support for these basically unsupportable Recommendations, Mssrs. Silverman and Gurvis were telling leaders of the City-size groupings that opposition was just "emotional and posturing," nothing more. This is how they played it -- JFNA professionals claiming publicly that federation/UIA lay leaders were "posturing." Then I heard a message from leaders for whom I have great respect that because these Recommendations emerged "from a JFNA Committee," they must be supported without question.
Of course, after a respectful discussion, the JFNA Board rubber-stamped its approval, ignoring the pleas to Table the matter for further review and consideration, supporting the Chair's sense of unexplained "urgency" and demand for "immediate implementation."
#sad
Rwexler
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
What have we done? (choose only one of the following)
* HINT: don't choose until you get to the last one *
A) Killed what works well and let live what doesn't work at all.
B) Followed the bureaucrats - they know best.
C) Allowed them to get what is left of dedicated, passionate active lay leadership out of their way.
D) Continued to complete the merger even after 20 years of proof that it was a tragic mistake.
E) Proven that we follow blindly whatever crap they write and call a "comprehensive report."
F) Let them get away with putting another few nails in the coffin.
G) All of the above.
So now they have set up a "Global Operations Implementation Committee," staffed by the same folks that staffed the "Global Operations Review Committee" and brought us the "Global Operations Review Report and Recommendations."
If one reads between the lines and understands the code and sinister intent behind the verbiage in the report which was so urgently pushed through and approved by the JFNA Board, it shouldn't be too difficult to predict what the operational recommendations of this committee will be.
There are a few UIA lay leadership representatives on that committee but it is probably too much to expect of them to think that they will be able to change much of the outcome and the operational results. The implementation document has probably already been drafted anyway.
2 conflicting questions --
1) if fundraising is the "main thing" -- shouldn't we all recognize that the landscape of Jewish philanthropy has changed a lot and recognize that JFNA has to be different than the merged orgs each were?
2) are we sure fundraising is the "main thing" -- perhaps it's now more about the impact we make rather than the dollars we raise? what if our communal national conversations started with -- "what have you accomplished this year that's great," rather than "how's your campaign?" Yes, money is needed to do good, but in today's donor marketplace impact might be more important.
Post a Comment