Tuesday, April 21, 2020

THE RISE AND FALL AND FALL AND FALL

Well, friends, it's time to get back to Blogging even as I pray that all of you are socially distancing, safe and protected.

All of us are experiencing the horrific impacts of this COVID-19 plague that has afflicted the World. The impacts on our families, ourselves, our People, our businesses are and will be devastating. While some optimists see the "day after" as one of opportunity, the realist in me strongly suggests that many of the Jewish organizations that we have helped to build will not survive -- at least not as they one were. 

And, that's where I would like to focus today and further as we move forward.

I read the brilliant plea from Doron Krakow, the Jewish Community Centers Association President, to the JCCA members, partners and funders seeking $1 billion in loans and grants as the Jewish Community Centers, revenue dependent at a time that the virus has eliminated the Centers' revenues. I hope JCCA is successful but our experience suggests that individual JCC Boards nationwide are built of wonderful leaders who have never been significant fund-raisers. In fact, after JFNA collapsed the Federation-National Agency Alliance two and 1/2 years ago, immediately costing the JCCs 100's of millions in allocations, the Movement was unable to recapture those dollars -- and those were better times. 

JCCs are but an example of agencies in dire need -- they all are.  Look at any National or local agency and understand that the safety net that we have helped to build is threatened with collapse. Is saving them beyond our capacity? Will/can community endowments -- created for those "rainy days" -- be allocated immediately becuase the "rainiest of days" are upon us? This is not 207-2008, this is so much worse.

Then, there is JFNA itself. After a decade of stasis and worse, JFNA, under Board Chair Mark Wilf and CEO Eric Fingerhut, appeared to this critic to be moving the Titanic off the iceberg, plugging the holes in the hull and moving albeit slowly toward some open water. Sure, the organization had completely abandoned its historic fund-raising responsibilities to  such an extent that Fingerhut was professionally leading the organization while also assuming the mantle of its FRD leadership with no depth of staff support. And, sure, the organization for at least a decade had abandoned its historic advocacy for funding overseas needs -- abandoned to the extent that last year the organization threw in the towel, telling the Jewish Agency, the Joint Distribution Committee and ORT "you want advocacy, do it yourselves" and "restructuring" the United Israel Appeal out of its former existence relegating that organization to meeting the bare minima of IRS Revenue Rulings. 

Now, with federations facing unheard of financial challenges to just keep the doors open and the social safety net they have built over the dcades literally threatened with collapse, there should be, there must be a national conclave dedicated to the restructuring of JFNA reflecting the new reality that no longer can the federations afford a $30 million JFNA Dues Budget, let alone a $50 million Budget in the aggregate. There must be an immediate Continental planning meeting to restructure JFNA as the trade organization it has become over its two decades of existence --  with financial support at an appropriate and severely reduced level. Yes, I am talking about a truly Draconian Budget...dictated by the circumstances of today.

Where to begin? The long ignored staffing bloat in JFNA-Israel would be an excellent starting point for significant cuts, with staffing everywhere truly and finally reflecting the organization's priorities -- security, Washington and Federation support services. As it appears that this iteration of JFNA has neither the capacity nor the interest in financial resource development (even as surveys of the federations had always identified FRD as the highest priority need of the system -- probably one of the reasons for no more surveys of community "needs") which, as recently as the last JFNA Budget was where 50%...50%...of your Federation's Dues were being spent, a 50% Dues reduction would not appear to be an unreasonable expectation.

It is now time for a dramatic JFNA "right-sizing." Anything less would be unacceptable in today's horrible economic environment. JFNA's Executive Committee have determined that an emergency exists. Earlier this month that Executive Committee convened and authorized the "Officers Team...to take such actions as they deem appropriate to to operate, manage and oversee all of JFNA's operational activities..."

Get on with it.

Rwexler








12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Assuming that something along the lines that you suggest will now finally actually happen, it is just too bad that JFNA leadership waited for this disaster for the writing on the wall to finally move them to action. Federations would be in much better shape to face the current crisis if JFNA had been downsized, as it should have been, long ago.
As you and others have stated here many times before, the outrageously inflated, unneeded and wasteful Israel Office should be shut down and the organization should finally implement real zero based budgeting - not just lip service to it.
The budget and therefore federation dues need to be cut drastically - not just a cosmetic cut as we have seen over the past few years.
We now have no choice but to do what we should have done long ago.

Anonymous said...

I am glad you are back in business, but it is Yom Hashoah.

Your role of a gadfly has been missed.

Perhaps we could take a break for another day.

And, in the interim, use your podium to highlight some of the great things going on in the Jewish World

Kudo’s to JFNA for publishing a calendar of events:
https://www.jewishtogether.org/virtual-meetups/all-day-global-reading-of-the-names-from-yad-vashem-349432

But they didn’t even provide a link to the actual event

But there are so many many more events, many of a local scale, and some quite impressive on an international scale

https://m.facebook.com/events/1098325383862535/

Could you please share some of these?

And perhaps some of the uplifting programs in the Jewish World. I have been most impressed by the communications of Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv highlighting their care for COVID-19 victims

This is their next webinar. I can speak to the prior ones.

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpfuuprTssE9Dyfz3XzFemPbJWCE_Qk4ed

Why not use your platform to crowd source the very best from our world.

And then call out those Federations and organizations that are not responding as they should at this time.

Anonymous said...

Shouldn’t the burden of duty to streamline all this wasted spending have fallen on the shoulders of the larger Federations long ago?

After all, didn’t they have a responsibility to assure that their donor funds were being spent well?
And, most of all NY, which is so staffed so significantly, that it needs nothing from JFNA in the US or in Israel where it has its own large office?

Where have those Federations been? How are they fiduciaries of their donors?

Anonymous said...

For your prior commentator:

https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/2020/broadcast.asp

Paul Jeser said...

And, the CoP?

Anonymous said...

The CoP is useless Paul.

Paul Jeser said...

In the 'good ole days' we had CJF,UJA,CoP.... Today we have nothing....

Anonymous said...

The 'good ole days' are dead and buried. Even the moshiach won't bring them back.
Time to face the realities of today.

Btw, it's also highly debatable how 'good' those days really were.

Anonymous said...

Did someone bring up the COP?

Paul, don’t you think the selection of a HIAS Chair indicates they are more off their rockers than JFNA was during the long dark years?

It is debatable if HIAS is even a Jewish Organization anymore. They certainly haven’t had a Jewish client in almost 30 years.
They don’t care about the Jewish Community in the US and certainly not Israel.

And, they are clearly a partisan organization that is antagonistic to the current administration.

How does this make for an appropriate choice to represent our community to both the US Government, the Israeli government and other international government’s or organizations.

Sometimes, people can be so open minded that everything falls out.

Paul Jeser said...

ANON 1:46. You r 100% right. HIAS' connection with JStreet, IfNotNow,CAIR puts them outside of the pro-Israel tent.

Anonymous said...

Paul, casual mudslinging is beneath you. I don’t know about you, but most of my Jewish friends and family are either immigrants, the children of immigrants or the grandchildren of immigrants. There is no institutional connection between HIAS and JStreet, IfNotNow, or CAIR. This is nothing short of slander.

If you note that JStreet helped raise money for HIAS, than you skip over the major Jewish philanthropists like Haasenfeld, Crown, Pritzker, Schusterman, Weinberg Fdn, you conveniently leave out that the largest donor to HIAS is the US Government.

Disagreeing with the current and minority elected administrations of both Israel and the United States does not put you “outside the tent”.

Responding to another commentator, it may be true that since 2011, there have been very few Jewish refugees. But that is hardly 30 years.

It is a legitimate argument to question the membership of an organization in the COP, that does not serve direct Jewish needs.

Will that be the same argument for Jewish Family Services in 1-5 years and Jewish Community Centers in 10-15 years?

Criticizing the leader based upon harmony with an administration suggests that the leadership should change with every American and Israeli administration.

Stay safe out there.

RWEX said...

OK. Once again my bad jidgment in publishing the first Ciomment off subject has taken us far afield. Tomorrow I will offer my own opinion on the Conference of Presidents/HIAS imbroglio. Until I do so, I am calling a halt to your Comments on the4 subject.

Sorry.