From Kedem to Kadimah: 10 Lessons from 10 Years of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative

In 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation convened more than a dozen local and national funders of Jewish teen programming for a series of discussions on expanding teen involvement in Jewish life. The funders learned together and commissioned groundbreaking research—and ultimately began to design responsive local teen education and engagement initiatives in communities across the country. United by a dream of creating and nurturing contemporary approaches to Jewish teen education, engagement, and growth, a network of national and local funders and practitioners worked side by side with teens to reimagine the youth-serving ecosystem.

The Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative (Funder Collaborative), now powered by Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), is comprised of 10 communities of varying sizes and demographic composition. This innovative learning and sharing network has created an environment that fosters risk-taking, experimentation, and ongoing reflection. From the outset, this group of professionals committed to sharing the unvarnished lessons they learned.

Today, the teen-serving ecosystem in this network of 10 communities across the country looks vastly different than a decade ago. This evolution was always the vision. New programs were incubated and unconventional partnerships took root. Scaling the most successful ideas was baked into our original DNA; impactful programs launched in one community were adapted by others or brought to a national audience via the Funder Collaborative itself. In this way, the impact of the best ideas was amplified to reach hundreds and sometimes thousands of teens.

Kedem to Kadimah paints a rich picture of key lessons learned, important successes, unexpected challenges, and the Collaborative’s operational structure that produced some of the positive outcomes of this philanthropic endeavor. This is all shared with an eye on the future—for those who might consider this type of effort as well.

From Kedem to Kadimah: 10 Lessons from 10 Years of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative

Read the piece in eJewish Philanthropy from Rachel Shamash Schneider, Aaron Saxe, and Josh Miller of the Foundation.