More Powerful Together: Gleanings from Cross-Portfolio Evaluations

As the Jim Joseph Foundation aspires to enable all Jews, their families and their friends to lead connected, meaningful and purpose-filled lives, and to make positive contributions to their communities and the world, we invest in powerful Jewish learning experiences. In this investment area, BBYO, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel International, Birthright Israel and Moishe House are categorized as “signature grantee-partners” in our Deliberate Grantmaking Strategy. These grantees have made evaluation an integral part of their work, informing their own efforts, the Foundation’s, and the field. More recently, the Foundation has also integrated cross-portfolio evaluation into more of our work to learn about shared outcomes across different sets of grantee-partners.

In cross-portfolio evaluation, we’re able to identify overarching trends and opportunities. Our latest cross-portfolio evaluation, for example, conducted by Rosov Consulting, covers all five of these signature grantees and identifies a set of common outcomes and ways to measure the participants they serve. When we began this evaluation, we didn’t know this would be the end result. However, as we convened the grantees and dug into their own evaluation structures and findings, we recognized the opportunity to learn about the value of participating in multiple experiences during the teen years and 20s/30s. Through a qualitative study with the alumni of programs, we came to understand the added value of the programs, the interactions between outcomes created by the programs and the pathways that take young people from one program to another.

It was both exciting and gratifying to learn that a large proportion of alumni from one organization also participate, over time, in at least one other organizations’ program. In the spirit of elevating the value of cross-portfolio evaluation and the work of these grantee-partners, here are some key findings:

• From finding to designing Jewish community. All five experiences provided by these organizations helped participants find and become part of Jewish community in ways appropriate to their ages and stages in life. One study participant commented, “[Camp] was a very different environment to anything I’d experienced before. I would say it opened my eyes to what community could look like in a way that I really connected with very strongly… I don’t think I really had a grasp on what a community was supposed to be before that.” 

  Another participant reflecting on their experience with Hillel added: “Until college, all of my Jewish experiences were kind of chosen for me… college was the first time where I was having the opportunity to choose my own Jewish experiences and opt into those and feel what felt right for me… And it felt way more like it was mine and I had autonomy over the Jewish life I was living and it wasn’t being chosen for me by my parents.” 

• Personal growth. A second outcome of all five experiences was that participants could develop important life skills and grow as well-rounded individuals. This was because these settings offer increasing levels of personal autonomy and are spaces where participants feel safe to fail forward.

Read the full piece at eJewish Philanthropy.

Stacie Cherner is director of research and learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation.