Back in the dying embers of the United Jewish Appeal, one of my successors as National Campaign Chair brilliantly organized a national Mission dedicated to allocations to the core budgets of JAFI and JDC. I remember the complaints about whom the communities were sending on this Mission which was to be restricted to Federation CEOs, sitting lay Chairs and their successors. All of us pitched in to assure, to the best of our ability, that the participant criteria were met. We had great participation...and, sadly, almost no impact.
I was reminded of this by a review of what JFNA 2018 calls its "FRD Mission" -- the Campaign Chairs and Campaign Directors Mission, once among the two or three most important and most successful national Missions, has been quietlly abandoned. That CC/CD Mission was a critical annual event bringing together, first, UJA professionals, and, then JFNA's, with the communal campaign (General and Women's) leadership. This Mission begun anew during my terms as UJA National Campaign Chair, UJA leaders having initiated the Mission a decade and more earlier, only to discontinue it for a brief period -- I participated in two of them (always careful to appoint great women and men as the Mission Co-Chairs) and they were spectacular. Relationships were built, ruach was remarkable, the Mission-culminating caucuses were incredible. We had broad federation representation from Campaign leaders of all City-sizes.
Well, that was then and this is now. This FRD Mission doesn't even pretend to replicate the CC/CD Mission. Of 112 participants, 54 are community professionals(12, count 'em, 12 of them from JFNA); Israel is not the destination and only 20% of the total number of federations are participating. (Since the 2007 Prime Minister's Mission, the concept of personal recruitment has been forgotten -- much as Mailboxes now substitute for real fundraising.) One community -- a Large City -- sent three pros, no lay leaders. Others sent Board Chairs and CEOs.
Look, there are great people, great lay and professional leaders participating, as always. And, it's good that a number of young leaders will be on Mission. (N.B., when UJA had the responsibility for the CC/CD Mission, Young Leadership Cabinet leaders were critical members of our Mission leadership team.)
One had hoped that over the years were the CC/CD Mission to evolve, it would have evolved into something better. But, like JFNA itself, it has evolved into nothingness. Instead of making that great Mission better, more meaningful; it has disappeared.
CC/CD Mission: JFNA in microcosm.
Rwexler
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3 comments:
It's past time that Missions become the sole property of the federations. JFNA won't even acknowledge that the vast majority of missions today are being run by the federations themselves with no or almost no input from JFNA and no help from JFNA. This is not a new phenomenon, just a growing reality. Chalk it up as another example of JFNA's lack of value to the communities.
Anon 10:15 is right on point and to make the point even more dramatic consider this. JFNA did not include Israel in this mission because, "the GA is in Israel and then they would be able to focus on Israel with site visits." So, how does JFNA justify the fact that there is not one single site visit built into the GA schedule in Israel - "well all(??) the federations are planning pre-missions and will be doing their own site visits." And just exactly how many of these pre-missions is JFNA coordinating? If you believe they are coordinating more than a handful (I may be accused of being very generous with a handful) there are any number of bridges between Israel and the Diaspora that I can sell you.
JFNA gave up on missions years ago, despite the growth of JFNA Israel.
Go figure that one out.
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