JFNA AND THE FETISHISTIC OBSESSION WITH NUMBERS

Most of you know me for the dinasour I am (and have been for a long time). My Continental service in Jewish organizational life began as a member of the United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership Cabinet. That was back in the day when the Cabinets (there were Men's and Women's) were focused on young leaders' capacity giving -- "capacity" tested in small groups where we were challenged individually to reach at or beyond our reach. It was the era the incredible scholar, our friend, the late Jonathan Woocher, z'l, recounted in depth in his seminal work Sacred Survival. So many of you grew out of the same experiences (who will ever forget those "caucuses," or the inspiration of Rabbis Yitz Greenberg and Irwin Kula, or the shock on the faces of the Gentile service staff at our antique venue, Harrison House, in Lake Bluff, Illinois, as 100 Jewish young men paraded behind the lanky Yitz singing out David Melech Yisrael through the halls). 

Our Cabinet commitment did not end with Lake Bluff even as some in Cabinet leadership had tunnel vision when it came to campaign. As my Cabinet responsibility I travelled monthly to Decatur, Illinois where UJA organized a group of 20 couples, most intermarried, with whom I explored Jewish texts, brought some scholars and engaged in a program that my great chaver (and tennis challenger) Bernie Reisman, z'l, developed. I know that I learned more through this two year experience than did my friends in Decatur.

UJA, back then, wasn't pumping out numbers of participants, it was "graduating" future (none of us pretended that we were current) leaders of federation, of UJA and of local agencies. And, from the leaders of the Cabinets sprung a series of Washington Conferences. While I had long since "graduated" from the Cabinet experience, the Washington Conferences I was privileged to attend were truly remarkable -- every one -- in terms of content, attendance, Yiddishkeit and demonstrable leadership. No matter one's age no one could attend the Conferences and not have been impressed. And, then, Aipac, with the energy of its Policy Conferences, sucked the air from the Cabinets' Washington Conferences all the while the Cabinets themselves were changing -- in my opinion, not for the better.

The first major change -- and all those which followed were similarly blessed by UJA lay leadership -- was the move away from capacity giving to a minimum gift -- at the outset a high floor for many of these young leaders, later a low bar as over the years, that "minimum" was seriously reduced in the interest of...numbers. (Your author was not immune from the seduction -- approached by the Cabinet leaders while I was UJA National Campaign Chair, I agreed with them that a further gift reduction would work.) Instead of the Washington Conferences, there was to be an Israel Conference that just didn't work. Cabinet Missions, once the most dynamic Israel experiences morphed into travel to almost "anywhere but Israel." And the evolution ultimately led to pool parties and Yoga weekends and other assorted narishkeit of the past decades -- programs that may build ruach and...numbers. Leadership though? I'll let you be the judges.

But the Cabinet leaders were merely following what became the JFNA "model" -- exaggerating the number of participants at all events, the most notorious of which were the annual General Assembly where year-after-year the number of paying registrants were exaggerated to the point of mockery. The result, after a decade of overstatement, the GA itself, once the seminal annual event was canceled for something called a "laboratory.".

(For those of you interested in some illustrations and definitions of "leadership," please read the award-winning article that the brilliant Jeff Solomon and I co-authored as the merger which created what is now JFNA moved forward -- Setting Standards for Volunteer Leadership and the Profession in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service. Therein we agreed that lacking codified standards everyone can be termed a "leader" and, thereby, there is little if any way to ascertain what true leadership is. Jeff and I identified the criteria we believed should be applied in defining "leaders.")

And, so JFNA, in the midst of the great and tragic economic crisis of the pandemic

chose to distract itself with the newest of "shiny objects" -- its Changemakers. As I have read the glowing, breathless reports from JFNA HQ which recited that 548....count 'em, 548..."...Fellows -- 20-25 years old -- representing more than 60 Jewish communities..." who began a "...three-week intensive Jewish leadership development journey." The journey? What's My Story? How Do I Find My Voice? How Do I Stay True to Myself? And, no doubt, other equally important themes. Together, these Changemakers we are told "...built a community, formed friendships," etc.

Now, I don't deprecate the achievement; I do question the end product and the timing. Are our leaders really suggesting that after three Zoomweeks will emerge 548 young "leaders" who will have immediately"earned" community Board service; that is, is JFNA with all good intentions setting up these young men and women for frustration, for unrequited expectations? And, while so many federations and agencies are literally underwater, needing help to survive, is Changemakers the best use of professional time or merely a distraction from the exceptionally hard work necessary to confront the crisis?

We all know that numbers had been an obsession of the prior JFNA administration,

leading to, e.g., the constant falsification of real attendance at GA after GA, event after event. Now, there is no suggestion that 548 isn't a real number; just that this may not have been the right time.

Again.

Rwexler

KAL YISRAEL AREVIM ZEH L'ZEH?? PROVE IT.

The last time that JFNA published the data on foundations and endowments within the Jewish federation world was in 2017, the statistics from 2016. Back then, the total of "assets under management" was $21.7 billion (you read that correctly). And, with most, if not close to all, of our communal institutions in extremis still in the midst of the COVID pandemic, the question has to be asked: when will any of our organizations -- are you listening JFNA -- take its head out of the sand and argue for an immediate and urgent commirtment of funds before (if we aren't there already) to these vital foundational blocks of the communities and the social safety net that we have built? WHEN?

In the earliest of days, even before the extent of the financial catastrophe that would accompany the pandemic but as an integral consequence of it, a small number of major Jewish Family Foundations stepped forward to address....certainly not meet -- address...what was then the incipient emergency. These Foundations recruited each other, ultimately raising a formidable $91 million through a vehicle they named the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund -- as always, an acronym: JCRIF. Reading between the lines of the JCRIF's self-description, these founding Foundations were done soliciting other Foundations to join them, while the Fund "...welcomes additional investors." 

I doubt that now, as our organizations confront the incredible, overwhelming unmet needs generated by the pandemic directly and collaterally, anyone believes that $91 million -- as generous as that contribution for interest-free loans and an "aligned grant program" was, it could not possibly fully address the overwhelming needs...needs that grow 24/7. Yes, there are a number of remarkable communities, like Chicago, where the most generous have reached even deeper in the midst of the pandemic; but many more are confronting multi-million dollar deficits, closing agencies and programs...and getting neither guidance nor financial support from what we used to call "the system."

And, so the question -- what's next? What might be done? 

And, friends, the seminal question: is this the best that we can do....really? Our federations and our agencies and beneficiaries are facing the worst financial crisis in their (and our) history and, after this initial voluntary funding from that small number of Foundations...nothing. Why? What exactly is that "rainy day" these foundations and endowments have been building the corpus of their funds for, if not the deluge of today? So many of these self-same foundations and endowments have been built for the long-term on the philanthropic aspirations of the donors the distributions from which may or may not support the Jewish community or the organizations at the community's core. (In fact, I once asked the CEO of one of Large Cities most significant Jewish Community Foundations why they even keep "Jewish" in the name inasmuch as over 80% of its distributions were not to Jewish organizations.) To meet the real crisis of today, that must change.

JFNA, which as the inheritor by merger of the systemic fund-raising flag once flown with pride by the long-forgotten (by some) United Jewish Appeal, seems wholly satisfied with the allocations role assigned to it within JCRIF -- fund-raising? Are you kidding?  (Also, one can only note with frustration that JFNA seems to believe that it can continue with "business as usual" in the midst of the deepest financial crisis in communal organization history. How else can one explain the glee that JFNA leaders expressed over its brand new Changemakers programs, the latest shiny object to distract the so easily distracted?)

I know from historic experience that in its day, the UJA -- maybe with the similarly extinct Council of Jewish Federations -- would have immediately convened a national meeting (today by Zoom) to rally the federations, to lay out a national plan on the JCRIF "model" of loans and grants by reaching out to those whose wealth, the super majority of which is found in Supporting Foundations and Donor Advised Funds to recognize the emergency in which communities and beneficiaries find themselves today and then act in a manner similar/identical to that of JCRIF. Contrary to what appears to be the case evidenced by JFNA's inaction, this advocacy is one of the core purposes for which JFNA was created.

Yes, this would be hard. In many (most??) instances it would change the historic Planned Giving and Endowment "model" -- just raise and manage the funds and let the donor determine the beneficiaries -- no advocacy for any cause let alone a Jewish communal one. The reality of the historic crisis which we are all confronting now and into an indeterminate future cries out for changed practices. After all, the application of even a small portion of the $21.7 billion in assets under management (and, surely, that corpus has grown in the four years since the last accounting) could mean life or death to the social safety net federations and our local/national/overseas agencies have built over their history. 

Now is not the time for timidity.

Carpe diem.

Rwexler

WHITHER JDC?

Perhaps one of you can explain to the rest of us what has happened at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee over the past few years? How has one of our system's most vital Overseas partners come to this:

• After a Search JDC hires a young law dean with no evident background or experience in Jewish life as its CEO only to watch this fish out of water flounder...at an unbelievable level of compensation ($850,000/year!!) He proved to be neither manager nor fund raiser. It took only a few months to convince many in JDC lay leadership that he had to go;
• In a further deterioration, this on the lay side, a JDC Nominating Committee decided to support for President a lay leader from Virginia whose meagre Jewish organization background and lack of non-profit governance experience (and, no doubt, other substantive matters) gave rise to a contested election for the first time in the Joint's history. The institutional nominee, a gregarious business leader, prevailed -- how's that working out?
• As if to prove his critics correct, the newly installed President, apparently unhappy with the direction taken by the JDC CEO Search Committee -- which had been dutifully vetting candidates for months -- decided, process be damned, and unilaterally attempted first to add multiple new members to the Search Committee and, then, apparently frustrated with his own interference,  unilaterally discharged the existing Search Committee appointing a successor Committee to succeed it. Some would argue this was all ok; after all, this interference was permitted by JDC's By-Laws. Yet, as anyone with Jewish organizational leadership experience knows, some discretion and building consensus are far better tools than "I can do it because the By-Laws say I can."
• Caught up in the chaos and controversy was a long-term JDC senior professional who had garnered major support for the CEO position but was derided (and supported) in the press (in particular in a poorly sourced article in The Jerusalem Post). Ultimately, this excellent candidate withdrew from consideration.

I had the privilege, growing out of my service as National Chair of the United Jewish Appeal, to interact with a succession of incredible lay and professional leaders of JDC -- Ambassador Milton Wolf, z'l, Jonathan Kolker, Alan Jaffe on a through line to Stan Rabin with CEOs of incredible commitment, creativity and leadership, among them, Ralph Goldman, z'l,  Michael Schneider and Steve Schwager. I was privileged to join with these leaders in advocacy for the Joint's communal allocations. 

Back then, the Joint was a true "secret weapon" for good; but, long ago, the "secret" was out. JDC's work, in the Soviet Union and then in the FSU, throughout the Diaspora and in Israel, inspired and continues to inspire generations of donors with its life-saving work. But, somehow and somewhere, the Joint appears to have lost its way in the deep hole of organizational politics -- a CEO Search that yielded a bad choice followed by a divisive Nominating process that appears to have produced a lay leader focused on the powers of the office rather than the sacred purposes of the organization.

In the past months alone, JDC, with an interim CEO, has lost its preeminent Israel-based fund-raiser, faces a loss of a number of Board members growing out of the fiasco of the election and the Search, and, now, the leading contender for the CEO position has withdrawn her name.

This is not the JDC with which I or you grew up; what it will be remains to be seen.

Rwexler