Learning & Resources Category: Research

Beyond A Jewish Library: Findings From A 2023 Survey of Users in North America

Launched in 2013, Sefaria is a free, living library of Jewish texts and their interconnections, in Hebrew and in translation and a global leader in enabling Jewish learning and teaching in an open and participatory way. In 2022, Sefaria reached a total of five million users, with a monthly average of 598,000 users. Half (51%) of these users are in the United States (48%) and Canada (3%), and this report focuses on this North American subset of Sefaria’s users.

In 2022, Sefaria completed a five-year strategic plan which set forth ambitious goals of further expanding its reach, including “develop[ing] a universally accessible digital library experience [and] power[ing] new pathways to digital Torah beyond the library.” As it sets forth toward these goals, Sefaria has partnered with Rosov Consulting to conduct a survey of its users in order to better understand:

1. Who are Sefaria’s users in 2023? Where do they live? How do they identify? How proficient are Sefaria’s users in Jewish text study, and how many of them are relative newcomers to Jewish text study?

In addition to the evident benefit of easier access to Jewish texts online, what other benefits do users derive from engaging with the Sefaria content, especially when it comes to their comfort and confidence participating in Jewish life more broadly?

2. What attributes (of the users and of their experience with Sefaria) may contribute to or correlate with
these outcomes?

This report relays the findings from a 2023 survey of Sefaria users and offers some suggestions as to how these findings could inform ways in which Sefaria could proceed toward its ambitious strategic plan.

The report begins with a broad overview of all Sefaria’s users in North America (United States and Canada) and their demographic profile; it then narrows down on a large subset of the users and describes Sefaria’s impact on a user subset of particular interest: young North American users (ages 18-44) excluding Jewish educators.

Beyond A Jewish Library: Findings From A 2023 Survey of Users in North America, August 2023, Rosov Consulting

 

One2One: Online Encounters Between Jewish Teens Around the World

Started in 2021, in the midst of the global pandemic, ENTER: The Jewish Peoplehood Alliance (ENTER) launched One2One, an online mifgash (educational encounter) between Jewish high school aged teens who live in Israel and North America. To date 7,200 teens have participated in an online mifgash, which involves two teens, meeting once a week, over five weeks for at least 30 minutes each meeting.

This report focuses on One2One’s development of “the online mifgash” since its inception in 2021, the contribution to the field of Israel education, to One2One’s strategic partners and the participating teens.

The Virtual Mifgash
“The Mifgash” is an educational methodology developed in the 1980s by travel programs bringing Diaspora Jewish teens to Israel. The Mifgash has since taken root as a basic component in many of the educational venues involving Diaspora Jews traveling to Israel, and Israelis traveling abroad, including programs aimed at adults.

One2One’s innovation is the development of an online mifgash. The in-person mifgash requires travel, which is costly and involves high levels of organizational and communal investment. The goal of the online mifgash is to enable the beneficial outcomes associated with in-person mifgashim, without requiring international travel. Until One2One there was no systematic development of the online mifgash in a manner that can reach large numbers of participants.

The report shows how One2One utilizes three elements to enable online mifgashim, 1) technology to enable the online meetings; 2) organizational partnerships which are essential for recruiting the participating teens and enabling the online mifgashim to contribute to broader educational processes; and 3) appropriate educational design.

One2One: Online Encounters Between Jewish Teens Around the World, Ezra Kopelowitz Ph.D., Research Success Technologies, Ltd., July 23, 2023

Learn more about the program’s impact and its contribution to the broader fields of Israel and Jewish education in this essay in the Peoplehood Papers by Yael Rosen, One2One Program Director, and Dr. Scott Lasensky, One2One Senior Advisor

 

Cohort-Based Experiences Initiative: Phase II – Emerging Outcomes & Implementation-focused Reflections

Launched in early 2022, the Cohort-Based Experiences (CBE) Initiative – spearheaded by the Jim Joseph Foundation in collaboration with Maven Leadership Consulting – was developed based on the belief that cohort participation can lead to learning, connection, and enrichment that can ultimately contribute to employee retention within the Jewish communal sector. The Initiative was designed to: 1) unlock the power of cohort experiences; 2) understand the factors contributing to their success; and 3) explore ways to democratize and expand access to cohort experiences within the Jewish communal ecosystem.

The planning and implementation of the first phase of the Initiative (January 2022-July 2022), was documented by Meredith Woocher, PhD on behalf of Rosov Consulting. Documentation of the Aleph Cohorts demonstrated “the importance of momentum, trust, and reputation for cohorts to succeed.” Conversely, Woocher also observed that uncertainty about the future of the cohorts disrupted the momentum of trust and relationship building that contributes to the impact of the experience.

More than 120 Jewish professionals participated in 12 cohorts during the second phase of the initiative, which took place between October 2022 and May 2023. Based on lessons learned, the CBE team made several programmatic adjustments. A new model of recruitment was explored, which relied on crowdsourcing and self-identification. In addition, external facilitators were trained to lead the Bet Cohorts. The CBE team continued to support Aleph Cohorts’ professional development. Two Gimel Cohorts were also supported.

Cohort-Based Experiences Initiative: Phase II – A project of Maven Leadership Consulting in collaboration with the Jim Joseph Foundation, by Tobin Belzer, PhD, June 16, 2023

 

Getting There: Challenges, Opportunities, and Outcomes – RootOne 2022 Evaluation Report

RootOne was launched in 2020 with the goal of maximizing the number of Jewish teens who participate in an Israel experience and maximizing the impact of those experiences. In its first two years, RootOne has approached these goals by means of three primary strategies: providing eligible teens with vouchers that make programs financially more accessible and incentivize participation; building up a continuum of newly-created educational and social experiences before and after the program in Israel; and investing in the professional development of the educators who staff the programs.

Since its inception, RootOne has committed itself to developing a robust program of research and evaluation. For 2022, the scope of this endeavor has included: surveys of participants shortly before and after their time in Israel, as well as a year after their return home; a post-trip survey of trip leaders; real-time observation of Early Experiences (pre-trip programming) and on-the-ground, in-person observations during participants’ time in Israel; observations of staff training; content analysis of program itineraries; and interviews with program staff and organizers, North American participants and their parents, and some of the Israeli teens who joined programs. These efforts have been designed not only to document the immediate and longer-term outcomes produced by programs, but to identify what impedes or enhances those outcomes, with the goal of enabling the RootOne team to continually improve its efforts.

This report synthesizes the data collected during the 2022 calendar year. It provides a sense of who the teens are that RootOne currently reaches. It describes how recent changes in the social-emotional needs of teens both challenge and provide opportunities for RootOne and their partners. This document unpacks the narratives conveyed about Israel by immersive summer experiences, and some of the logistical and educational logjams associated with those narratives. And, against this backdrop—one that depicts the challenges RootOne seeks to overcome—it charts the positive Jewish, Israel-related, and personal outcomes being created by programs supported by RootOne. The report concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for those partnering and planning to partner with RootOne as RootOne seeks to turn its aspirations into reality.

Simon Amiel, Executive Director of RootOne, adds, “By design, this report leads with lessons learned rather than with accomplishments because if we’re going to be a leading organization, we must first be a learning organization. The insights in this report help us chart our path forward as we engage a more diverse population of Jewish teens to connect meaningfully with Israel and their own Jewish identity.”

“Getting There: Challenges, Opportunities, and Outcomes – RootOne 2022 Evaluation Report,” Rosov Consulting, April 2023

 

Atra’s Rabbi Experience Research

This research, the first of its kind in a generation, explores the impact of rabbis on Jewish young adults (ages 18 44) in the United States. This study examines their experiences with rabbis and how those experiences have influenced their connections to Judaism and Jewish communities, shaped their perceptions of rabbis, and their ideas of what a rabbi should be.

Atra conducts research regularly to better understand what the Jewish community needs from its rabbis and in turn, what leadership models and tools will help these leaders be most successful. This research informs the organization’s approach to continuing education to support rabbis as well as advance the field of Jewish spiritual leadership. In an effort to build the field of applied rabbinic training, Atra set out to create a baseline understanding of how young American Jews experience rabbis and what they want in a rabbi. The goals of this inaugural study were to:

  1. Develop a comprehensive picture of what “rabbi” means to American Jews aged 18 44
  2. Explore young Jews’ experiences and interactions with rabbis (past and present)
  3. Learn about what young Jews want from a rabbi going forward

The Rabbi Effect: The Perception and Impact of Rabbis Among American Jews 18-44, Executive Summary, Benenson Strategy Group, March 2023

Rabbi Experience Research, Full Report, Benenson Strategy Groups, March 2023

 

 

 

 

Rethinking the Rabbi

This is a qualitative exploratory research study by Hart Research Associates conducted in early 2023. The overarching objective of this study was to discover what disaffected and unaffiliated Jewish young people need or want in a rabbi, even among those for whom the idea of connecting with a rabbi seems far-fetched. (Note: the terms “disaffected and unaffiliated”  were placeholders and not terms we use now to describe people who are not served or are underserved by Jewish institutions and organizations) 

Researchers conducted 20 in-depth interviews of young Jews between the ages of 18 and 34 who had no current connection with a formal Jewish institution such as a synagogue, Jewish federation, or Hillel.

The research highlights that, for these young Jewish people, any opportunity to connect must provide a relatable, modern experience that is inclusive and on-going.

“Rethinking the Rabbi: Findings from Qualitative Research Conducted in January and February 2023,” Hart Research Associates, March 2023

Capacity Building Grantmaking Best Practices

Jim Joseph Foundation “Build Grants” invest in the capacity of Jewish education organizations to dramatically scale their programming to reach larger and more diverse audiences. The Foundation commissioned Third Plateau to deepen its understanding of fieldwide capacity building best practices to further iterate on the Build Grants structure and strategies. Throughout the research, Third Plateau found deep connections between best practices in the field and the Foundation’s strategies and practices for Build Grants. Key findings from the research, the overlap with the Foundation’s existing practices, and considerations for future work are shared below.

  • Capacity building is loosely-defined, and language is evolving. There is no standard definition or set of strategies that funders consistently use for capacity building. However, both nonprofits and foundations generally agree that any investment that supports the long-term sustainability of an organization can be considered capacity building. The term itself is being discussed and debated as organizations focused on creating more equity in philanthropy have adopted and championed “building resilience” as an asset-based alternative.
  • There are five major best practices associated with successful capacity building grantmaking. Across existing research and interviews with field experts, five elements routinely were identified as effective strategies for capacity building: supplementing grants with non-monetary support, developing trusting relationships with grantees, offering multi-year, flexible funding grants, taking an ecosystem-wide approach, and utilizing a DEI framework.
  • The Foundation is implementing many strategies that are considered best practices through its Capacity Build Grants. Foundation staff are a significant resource to Capacity Build Grant recipients, developing trusting relationships, carrying an open dialogue, and helping them identify areas for learning, growth and potential interventions. The Foundation’s Scaling Build Grants provide multi-year flexible funding to support grantee growth capital, and they have specific giving areas and strategies where investments in the capacity of multiple organizations might support overall growth in the field.
  • There are strategies, tactics, and adaptations of current practices that the Foundation can explore, as well as other ways to consider investing additional resources. The Foundation could further support the organizations through wrap-around services, such as building peer networks for organizations receiving Build Grants or providing external coaching support for leaders navigating growth and change processes at their organizations. They could utilize a DEI framework to improve grantee experiences and enhance the overall impact of the grant. The Foundation could offer an anonymized evaluation process to gather more information on grantee perceptions of Build Grant support, which could enhance the Foundation’s understanding of additional needs.
  • The Foundation’s efforts to shore up organizational capacities in advance of providing Scaling Build Grants is aligned with the field’s recommendations. Assessing readiness for scaling is complicated, and there is no one assessment tool or set of metrics that support an understanding of an organization’s readiness to scale its programming. Several sources indicated that scaling is most effective in organizations with solid infrastructure, particularly those with talented staff and strong financial resources.
  • Organizations should define scaling success metrics. Many question if increasing organizational reach (participant numbers) should be the primary way to evaluate successful scaling efforts. The Foundation has an opportunity to define success in partnership with grantees, ensuring the goals of the Foundation and its organizational partners are met.
  • A nimble approach to a mixed methods evaluation is key to evaluating capacity building grantmaking strategies. The use of causal design, equitable and culturally-responsive, or rapid cycle-change methodologies can help foundations understand the complexities of capacity building work and its effectiveness. The Foundation can learn from the field by examining lessons learned from developmental, formative, and summative evaluations of capacity building initiatives.

“Capacity Building Grantmaking Best Practices,” Third Plateau, January 2023

 

2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership Report

The 2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership (SSA) Report shares the new findings of how the SRE Network member organizations have grown this past year, their common strengths, and the areas for improvement in the year ahead.

The report reveals that SRE Network member organizations are successfully making gradual and steady progress along their journeys to building safer, more respectful, and equitable workplaces and communal spaces. And there is still more room to improve.

 

Key Findings

  • Overall, organizations improved in the last year. 50% of organizations improved from 2021 and 21% sustained their progress, an accomplishment during a year of great disruption.
  • The most common areas of improvement in the past year were Policies & Procedures and Reporting & Response. These are connected with the areas SRE Network invested the most support in this past year.
  • Some of the most improved areas are still the most pressing priorities for further development in the year to come. Roughly a quarter of organizations improved in regularly communicating reporting & response procedures to staff, making hiring and advancement policies easily accessible to staff and frequently communicating them, and training the individuals who conduct investigations into discrimination and harassment.
  • Education & Training is the area with the most room for growth. Many organizations that provide only one training a year indicate it is insufficient and cite a need for more frequent in-depth trainings.
  • Communicating policies and procedures to staff on a regular basis is a key growth area priority. This includes regularly communicating the fair and equitable hiring and advancing policies; reporting and response procedures; and non-discrimination policies.
  • While most organizations have successfully established processes for Reporting & Response, many have not yet communicated these procedures to staff on a regular basis nor provided training to the individuals responsible for conducting internal investigations.

About the Standards Self-Assessment
The purpose of this assessment is to help each member organization assess and strengthen its own organizational commitment and expertise in SRE areas over time, based on the SRE Standards. The survey is completed on an annual basis by one senior leader, in consultation with their leadership team. The Standards were designed by experts to prevent and address discrimination and harassment in Jewish workplaces and communal spaces.

2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership Report, November 16, 2022, SRE Network

Are Jewish Organizations Great Places to Work? Results from the Sixth Annual Employee Experience Survey

The Leading Edge Employee Experience Survey is intended to help individual organizations understand and improve how their employees experience work. The survey helps Jewish nonprofit leaders and managers identify organizational strengths as well as growth areas that can be addressed to improve workplace culture.

Since 2016, more than 45,000 employees working at nearly 400 organizations have received the survey. Organizations that take the survey for multiple years tend to see their numbers improve year over year as their interventions make their employees’ working lives demonstrably better.

Key Findings of the 2022 survey:

  • People want to stay in this sector. A strong majority of employees surveyed (70%) want to stay in the Jewish nonprofit sector for two years or more.
  • People (still) want well-being, trusted leaders, and inclusion. The top drivers of employee engagement remain what Leading Edge has seen in past years: feeling that the organization cares for employees’ well-being, confidence in leadership, feelings of belonging, and feeling that there is open and honest communication in the organization.
  • Some employees are less likely to feel like they belong. LGBTQ+ employees and People of Color (particularly Black employees, both including Black Jews and Black employees who are not Jewish) are markedly less likely to feel like they belong in their organizations.
  • There’s been a lot of turnover. One third (33%) of employees surveyed have been with their organizations for less than two years.
  • Working with board members is common. More than one out of every four employees surveyed (27%) reports that they work with the board.
  • Most employees go to work in person for at least part of their work week. Three quarters of employees surveyed (76%) reported that they work outside their homes for at least part of each week.
  • People working in person (i.e., not remotely) trust their leaders more if they feel well prepared for physical security threats. For the first time, we asked employees working outside their homes about preparedness for physical security threats. Five out of six employees surveyed (72%) feel prepared to act in the event of a security threat, but those who don’t feel prepared are markedly less likely to have confidence in their organizational leadership.

Are Jewish Organizations Great Places to Work? Results from the Sixth Annual Employee Experience Survey (2022), November 1, 2022, Leading Edge

Jewish College Students in America

In January 2022, the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned a study of Jewish college students. Working with the foundation as well as with a survey research and analytics firm, College Pulse, Dr. Eitan Hersh designed a study to capture the attitudes and behaviors of today’s four-year college students. The study includes a national survey of 2,000 Jewish undergraduates, plus a comparison survey of 1,000 non-Jewish undergraduates. In addition to the 35-question survey, the study includes five focus groups of students enrolled at the following universities: SUNY Binghamton, Ohio State, UC Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, and Tulane University.

The goal of the study is to examine who Jewish students are, what drives them and motivates them, where they find connection and meaning, and how being Jewish does or does not play in their college lives. The study answers questions such as: How connected do Jewish students feel to Jewish life on campus? What do they want out of their Jewish experiences? To what extent does the campus political climate affect their engagement with Jewish life? The study places special emphasis on the large share of Jewish-identifying students who have little to no interaction with organized Jewish life.

Jewish College Students in America, Dr. Eitan Hersh, August 2022

Professional Development Initiative – Taking Stock and Offering Thanks: Year 4 Learnings

For the last four years, since soon after the launch of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Professional Development Initiative (PDI), every 12 months Rosov Consulting has interviewed a sample of participants from each of the 10 grantee programs. These interviews have explored educators’ motivations for participating in the programs, what they experienced during the time they took part, what they gained from these experiences, and, finally, what program alumni perceive to have been the impact of these experiences on the trajectory of their professional careers.

Although the Professional Learning Community made up of participants in the PDI formally disbanded more than a year ago, the work of the evaluation team has continued. As planned, toward the end of 2021, the evaluation team returned for one last round of clinical interviews with alumni of the program, and over the last few months the team has continued to field the Shared Outcomes Survey to program participants, typically between two and six months after their programs concluded.

These deliverables show that the programs fulfilled their core goals:

  • Shared Outcomes Survey data indicate that, overall, the programs helped participants become much more knowledge about and more accomplished in performing the professional tasks for which they are responsible, what we called “ways of thinking and doing.”
  • Clinical interview data indicate that these professional outcomes have been quite durable, although with the passage of time interviewees found it increasingly difficult to draw causal links between what they know and can do today and what they gained from their programs.
  • Survey data also show that, taken together, the programs have socialized participants into professional communities that the participants very much value. Again, interview data depict how important these communities have been, especially since the start of the pandemic, and how, in the words of one interviewee, “relationships have become partnerships.”
  • Finally, survey data reveal the degree to which those program participants who started out with less intensive Jewish backgrounds have had an opportunity to grow and feel more confident as Jewish educators.

The evaluation work Rosov Consulting conducted has helped identify the features of high-quality professional development, both in conceptual terms and by means of thick accounts of how such features are formed and experienced (through five case studies).

The Jim Joseph Foundation Professional Development Initiative – Taking Stock and Offering Thanks: Year 4 Learnings, Rosov Consulting, May 2022

View more of the evaluations and case studies of the PDI.

Research and Evaluation on Educator Professional Development Initiatives

Educator professional development initiatives are an integral part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s strategic philanthropy. Following an open RFP in 2017 to create more professional development opportunities for educators, the Foundation invested in ten new programs. Since that initial investment, the Foundation has commissioned extensive research and evaluation conducted by Rosov Consulting to learn about these specific educator training programs and to more deeply understand other programs across the Foundation’s professional development initiatives portfolio.

Stacie Cherner, Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation, and Alex Pomson, Principal and Managing Director at Rosov Consulting, shared key learnings in eJewish Philanthropy on designing and measuring high-quality educator training programs. On the Foundation’s blog, Kiva Rabinsky, Chief Program Officer at M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, shared how learnings from the report influence how M² balances work and play in their design of professional development experiences. And, Robbie Gringras and Abi Dauber Sterne, both formerly of the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Makom, shared how a new Israel education initiative came out of the PDI. 

Jim Joseph Foundation Professional Development Initiative

Taking Stock and Offering Thanks: Year 4 Learnings (full report) This report shows that the PDI programs fulfilled their core goals:

  • Shared Outcomes Survey data indicate that, overall, the programs helped participants become much more knowledge about and more accomplished in performing the professional tasks for which they are responsible, what we called “ways of thinking and doing.”
  • Clinical interview data indicate that these professional outcomes have been quite durable, although with the passage of time interviewees found it increasingly difficult to draw causal links between what they know and can do today and what they gained from their programs.
  • Survey data also show that, taken together, the programs have socialized participants into professional communities that the participants very much value. Again, interview data depict how important these communities have been, especially since the start of the pandemic, and how, in the words of one interviewee, “relationships have become partnerships.”
  • Finally, survey data reveal the degree to which those program participants who started out with less intensive Jewish backgrounds have had an opportunity to grow and feel more confident as Jewish educators.

A Picture of Learning Coming Together: Year 3 Learnings (full report) This report includes the following sections:

Case Studies on Peak Moments of Educator Professional Development Programs  

How Educator Professional Development Programs Pivoted During the Pandemic

Research Supported by CASJE on the Career Arc of Jewish Educators