INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY, Z'L

Institutional memory is critical to institutional vitality, to institutional viability. To those who have none, to those who aren't interested; that very memory is an obstacle, a hindrance, to their personal vision of "change." In successful institutions, leaders rise inculcated with those institutional memories, the institutional values of what built the greatness -- the foundation, the building blocks for success. Those leaders -- leaders without either memory or any interest therein or, worst, dedicated to wipe out that memory -- have built their leadership on quicksand...and institutions die.

As Henny Youngman, z'l, might have said: "Take my JFNA...pleae." 

From its birth, JFNA's leaders -- post-merger, and as the institution "matured," for lack of a better term -- set about wilfully and expressly to destroy institutional memory while ignorant of institutional values, wherever and whenever they found them. At first a trickle -- the institution's Chair of the Executive removed his best and closest friend as Chair of Israel-Overseas -- "time for a change" or some such -- that trickle became a flood. Yes, some years later, a Board Chair with a newly-minted CEO who knew neither  the institutional history nor its values not only swept away the remaining leaders with institutional memory replacing them, wherever and whenever she could with "friends," but cared not that JFNA would thereby be significantly weakened. Those who opposed the Draconian removals were characterized as "obstructionist" and, of course, worse. 

Examples abound. Whether the predecessor organization was the Council of Jewish Federations, the United Jewish Appeal or, most recently, the United Israel Appeal, each was the embodiment of collective action, a core value on which our system was built: JFNA, though created to enhance our collective response, has become an actor in its deconstruction. Examples abound, but the most significant was in the construction of the aborted Global Planning Table, the multi-million dollar fiasco that was the GPT.

As drafted, the authors of the GPT realizing that the system qua system had no appetite for what was being proposed for funding, so they just walked away from collective action opting instead for something called "coalitions of the willing." Federations could choose to join together in the funding and operation of a chosen "strategic initiative." JFNA was nothing more than a benign presence, having no substantive FRD function, it was what it had become over the "Silverman decade" -- a financial mailbox awaiting envelopes. And, federation leaders pointed to the potential systemic devastation that might occur -- and, then, they voted for it. 

Of course, the GPT failed -- terribly conceived, impossible of explanation, a paradigm for the wasteland that JFNA had become. And, after unaccounted for millions had been thrown at, wasted by the GPT, then JFNA Board Chair Michael Siegal ordered it collapsed (but not before his poredecessor had appointed herself GPT Chair). The damage had been done -- for not since the Global Planning Table was deep-sixed has JFNA engaged in the collective enterprise on which it was premised in such large measure.

For years now, it seems, I have challenged JFNA's leaders to articulate the organization's purpose, its focus. Recently, on the jewishpalmbeach Mosaic program, this is what we could watch and hear: mosaic: The Future of Jewish Philanthropy - YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z44j8T5-X80  It's worth watching: perhaps you will discern purpose and focus.

Institutional memory has been destroyed. There is no interest in restoring it or even giving it a decent burial.

Rwexler