IF IT DIDN'T EXIST...

Who hasn't heard the mantra: If JFNA didn't exist, we would have to recreate it? And maybe...just maybe...that mantra comes with its own solution -- JFNA is in need not of a $1,000,000 Consultant study; it is not in need of bandages...it needs a real recreation. It needs to start anew. And, it needs to do so...yesterday.

There were many insightful albeit Anonymous Comments to our Post -- The Void. Here is one:

"The point is that there is no possible justification for $30 Million (Dues Budget)- probably not even for $10 Million. A $1.5 Million reduction is a joke. An organization that has stopped functioning and doing what it is mandated to do cannot expect to maintain the same level of funding as before. Why anyone in their right mind would be willing to keep the funds flowing is beyond comprehension. Either the organization gets back on track or it crashes. The way things look now, the latter will be the case." (emphasis added)

And, another:

"I...started this recent chain. Don't misunderstand. I fully agree that there is no justification for a $30 mil budget given the value (lack of) received for that $30 mil. As a person who previously served on the budget committee of UJC and CJF before that in various years I have little doubt that they present a balanced budget each year. My experience in those days was that each year the actuals were close to budget on the expense side and the income typically was less than budget based on the decisions made by individual federation to pay less than their "fair share". This is what caused future budget projections to be lowered which then again weren't met by federations on the income side. At the end of the year JFNA and predecessor organizations would "rob Peter to Pay Paul" such as taking money from Network communities for the budget instead of using it for the partners, etc. And unfortunately the board in recent years (and by implication the committees) allowed this process to proceed unabated. Richard has pointed out these tricks over the past many years all of which have gone unanswered by JFNA."

The growing Federation "resistance" (there is probably a better descriptive word) to JFNA's Dues demands is not going to be stemmed by an approach to JFNA's isolation from its owners that suggests a bandage when major surgery is the only answer.

And, so long as those who stood by and watched as JFNA just kept walking the organization backward from its responsibilities to the federations, walking backward and never seeing the precipice into which it was falling...so long as those lay and professional leaders remain in charge. the needed dramatic change isn't going to happen. For G-d's sake, it took these lay leaders almost a decade to realize that the organization had only a faux CEO, and, even now, that CEO remains in office while the times call out for an Interim CEO as we have suggested for months...years.

Time's a-wasting, friends. There is a rising call, from federations coast-to-coast, for deliverables, for actual proof that JFNA exists for more than its own self-interest but in the interests of the federations which own it. The organization is almost two decades old,20 years over which so much that could have been accomplished but hasn't. Millions wasted on an Israel Office of not a single accomplishment over at least a decade; millions wasted on what purports to be a financial resource development effort while annual campaigns are in stasis, where the numbers of donors have dropped by 100's of 1,000's...millions just plain wasted.

It's beyond the time where federations contemplating not paying Dues, or demanding that Dues be significantly reduced will be dissuaded by the argument: "you can't do it, because if you do, your federation will be responsible for the collapse of the system," or "if JFNA didn't exist, we'd have to recreate it." No, real change, a real recreation is the only chance JFNA has going forward.

The only chance.

Rwexler