Learning & Resources Category: Research

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

 

Lessons from the Pinnacle: Coordinated Innovation Shifts the Landscape of Jewish Teen Education & Engagement

Eight years after the first local initiative was launched as part of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, the Cross-Community Evaluation team explores in this final report what has been accomplished to date. The research team examines to what extent the Funder Collaborative’s goals were realized and the main educational lessons learned from this project. They employ a high-altitude view to search for patterns across the 10 participating communities and across the arc of multiple years. And they draw on findings already produced by local evaluators in each of the communities and on the insights gained by those evaluators, as gathered in their annual reports.

These insights have been further supplemented through structured questioning of the local evaluators by the Cross-Community Evaluation team. In this way, researchers construct a picture of the educational and engagement strategies employed, achievements reached, obstacles faced, and implications for future work in this field. Ultimately, this pinnacle report provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which philanthropic leadership and coordinated programmatic interventions can induce a largescale shift in how and for whom Jewish education and engagement is practiced.

The report covers insights in the following key areas related to strategic philanthropy, collaboration among and between funders and practitioners, and Jewish teen engagement:

  • Local Enterprises Meet Local Needs & Reflect Culture – Peer-to-Peer Learning Facilitates the Spread of Good Ideas
  • It’s All About the Teens – Shifting the Mindset of Jewish Growth and Learning
  • Development of Sustainable Models Takes Many Forms – Positive Change Tied to Structure and Innovation Strategies
  • A Common Cause: Professional Development for Teen Educators – Investing in Professionals is an Important Ingredient for Long-Term Change
  • (Re-)Setting the Communal Table – Building a Holistic Ecosystem Involves Teens, Parents, Educators and Stakeholders

Lessons from the Pinnacle: Coordinated Innovation Shifts the Landscape of Jewish Teen Education & Engagement, Rosov Consulting, December 2021

Looking Back at Seven Years of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative: Key Outcomes & Lessons Learned

The Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative began in 2014 with a partnership between Rose Community Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation. The Initiative was conceived in part in response to a research project on local Jewish teen engagement conducted in 2010 by Rose Community Foundation’s Jewish Life Committee and the Allied Jewish Federation (now JEWISHcolorado).

The Initiative began its first phase (2014–18) with three objectives and a commitment to encourage innovation in
Jewish teen programming. The Initiative’s original objectives were:

  1. Increase funding to existing innovators and new projects as a means to provide higher-quality experiences
    and achieve incremental growth in teen participation.
  2. Increase the number and quality of Jewish professionals and trained volunteers working with Jewish
    teens.
  3. Promote youth initiatives and youth-led ideas that engage teens and their peers in Jewish life.

The Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative was one of the first of 10 initiatives across the US working collaboratively to create new Jewish teen programming and increase teen engagement. The Jewish Teen Funder Collaborative organized a group of national and local funders to study and explore pathways to greater Jewish teen engagement. Since 2014, each community working with the Collaborative has worked toward a common set of outcomes, expectations, and measures of success, with some additions and adaptations to address specific needs or interests of a sponsoring community. A national evaluation effort, referred to as the Cross-Community Evaluation (CCE), developed tools for this shared measurement and aggregates the data collected from the 10 communities’ evaluations to capture national-level trends and common learnings.

Over its seven years, the Jewish Teen Initiative has produced both positive outcomes for the region’s teens and an abundance of information and lessons learned that will help inform future investments in the local teen ecosystem. As our region and communities across the country consider future models and innovations for improving Jewish teen programming and increasing teen engagement, we hope this report will serve as a useful resource.
– Vanessa Bernier, Community Impact Officer – Jewish Life, Rose Community Foundation

Looking Back at Seven Years of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative: Key Outcomes & Lessons Learned, October 2021, Informing Change

View Informing Change’s evaluations of Year 1 and Year 3 of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative. View the Cross-Community Evaluation of the Jewish Teen Funder Collaborative.

 

 

 

The Gender Gap in Jewish Nonprofit Leadership: An Ecosystem View

Qualitative research into people’s experiences and expertise helped Leading Edge and The Starfish Institute posit 71 causes to the persistent gender gap in top leadership at Jewish nonprofits; quantitative network analysis suggested five “keystones” among them.”Keystone” is a technical term, short for “keystone species.” The Starfish Institute borrows this term from the science of ecology, in which “a keystone species is an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem. Without its keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether.” (National Geographic.) In the ecosystem of factors mapped in this report, keystones are factors that have high “reach,” which means they affect many other issues, and high “leverage,” which means they are influenced by few others. Solving them may be difficult, but doing so could create a large ripple effect on other causes of the problem.

Most people working at Jewish nonprofits are women. But most CEOs of Jewish nonprofits— especially at the largest organizations—are men. In 2019, Leading Edge launched an investigation to better understand why that is, and how the field might begin to change it.

In this exploration, Leading Edge partnered with The Starfish Institute, an organization that has developed a methodology for applying network science to understanding complex social problems at a systemic level. Together, over the course of 18 months, Leading Edge and The Starfish Institute engaged over 1,200 people to define as many distinct causes of the persistent gender gap in top leadership at Jewish nonprofit organizations as they could identify. They then mapped how those causes likely interact with one another as an ecosystem.

“The Gender Gap in Jewish Nonprofit Leadership: An Ecosystem View,” Leading Edge in partnership with The Starfish Institute, August 2021

Read more insights about The Gender Gap in Jewish Nonprofit Leadership: An Ecosystem View.

Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators Study

It has been more than ten years since the last systematic effort to collect data about the Jewish educator workforce; in some areas of Jewish education no large-scale data have ever been collected. The CASJE Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators Study was designed to provide usable knowledge about the recruitment, retention and development of Jewish educators. Beginning July 2021 CASJE released a series of reports and briefs highlighting findings from the study.

This study is animated by the belief that research-based knowledge is a critical resource in tackling complex problems in Jewish education. Insights generated through research can inform planning strategies for the field, guide philanthropic investment, and frame the design of well-conceived programmatic interventions. In this case the focus is on increasing the capacity to support Jewish educators at all stages of their careers.

CASJE identified ten key findings that are explained in greater detail (along with other findings) in the research reports:

  1.  Jewish educators are mission driven, love Jewish learning, and share an abiding commitment to serving others. For many, especially those who participate in university-based pre-service programs, this sense of mission is a source of resilience in overcoming challenges they face in the field.
  2. The perceived low status of Jewish educators, the perceived parochial nature of Jewish educational settings, and limited or outdated perspectives on the kinds of work Jewish educators do, are barriers to enticing entrants to careers in Jewish education.
  3. Almost half of current Jewish educators report entering the field in response to a job opportunity rather than proactively choosing to enter the field; fewer than half of new educators have participated in formal pre-service preparation.
  4. In many sectors of Jewish education there is no clear career ladder for educators; often the only pathway to advancement is in taking on administrative work.
  5. Continuous and high-quality professional development opportunities that correlate with improved outcomes for educators are not accessible to enough Jewish educators.
  6. Although Jewish educators tend to report good relationships with supervisors, mentorship and support for ongoing professional development are generally viewed as inadequate.
  7. Most Jewish educators are dissatisfied with the compensation and benefits they receive. Female respondents are typically paid less than their male peers, and early childhood education lags in salary and benefits.
  8. The popular narrative of a personnel crisis in Jewish education is fueled by trends in the supplementary-school labor market. Programs such as camping or social justice and innovation report a large pool of talented candidates from which to recruit educators, while day schools and early childhood programs face somewhat tougher supply-side challenges.
  9. There is a lively and growing market for independent providers of professional learning, in part driven by employers who do not demand formal degree completion or certification. Independent providers generally emphasize the personal growth of the educator and relationship building skills; degree-granting university based programs emphasize professional knowledge and technical skills.
  10. The number of educators enrolled in degree-granting programs has increased during the last thirty years, a trend driven by growth in specialty programs and dependent on availability of philanthropic support.

Additional Info and Analysis

Read the Reports

An Invitation to Action: Findings and Implications across the Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators Study
An Invitation to Action weaves together learnings from the previous strands and draws on the learnings produced to address the questions that have animated this work from its start. Summaries of the main findings from each strand can be found in the reports and briefs previously released. Here, researchers bring these findings into conversation with one another.

Mapping the Market: An Analysis of the Preparation, Support, and Employment of Jewish Educators 
Mapping the Market looks at the labor market for Jewish education in the United States, analyzing both supply-side and demand-side data to understand what employers look for in Jewish educators and how pre-service and professional development programs prepare educators to meet the needs of the learners and communities they serve.

On the Journey
On the Journey is designed to elucidate the career pathways of Jewish educators, including their professional growth, compensation, workplace conditions and lived experiences. In 2019 CASJE published the white paper On the Journey: Concepts That Support a Study of the Professional Trajectories of Jewish Educators, which lays out the framework and key questions that underlie this inquiry and serves as a companion to these research briefs. On the Journey will be published as four research briefs that address career paths, professional learning, workplace environments, and compensation.

Preparing for Entry: Fresh Perspectives on How and Why People Become Jewish Educators
Preparing for Entry is designed to understand the pathways by which people enter the field of Jewish education and identify factors that advance or inhibit launching a career in Jewish education. In 2020 CASJE published the white paper Preparing for Entry: Concepts That Support a Study of What It Takes to Launch a Career in Jewish Education, which lays out the framework and key questions that underlie this inquiry and serves as a companion to this report.

 

Beyond the Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color

This research presents an intersectional account of American Jewish life by exploring the ways in which the ethnic, racial, and cultural identities of Jews of Color (JoC) influence and infuse their Jewish experiences. Beyond the Count was commissioned to inform the work of the Jews of Color Initiative (JoCI), a national effort focused on building and advancing the professional, organizational, and communal field for JoC. This study provides valuable insights to help Jewish communities and organizations reckon more directly and effectively with the racial diversity of American Jewry.

In this research, “Jews of Color” is understood as an imperfect, but useful umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of identities and meanings. Those who self-identified as JoC in this study used the term in a multiplicity of ways: as a racial grouping (e.g. Black, Asian, and multiracial Jews); to indicate national heritage (e.g. Egyptian, Iranian, and Ethiopian Jews); to describe regional and geographic connections (e.g. Latina/o/x, Mizrahi, Sephardic Jews); and to specify sub-categories (e.g. transracially adopted Jews and Jewish Women of Color).

This study, which was housed at Stanford University, collected the largest ever dataset of self-identified JoC to date. Survey data from 1,118 respondents present a broad portrait of respondents’ demographic characteristics, backgrounds, and experiences. Sixty-one in-depth interviews provide texture and bring respondents’ own words to the forefront.

“Beyond the Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color,” commissioned by the Jews of Color Initiative, Tobin Belzer, PhD, Tory Brundage, PhC, Vincent Calvetti, MA, Gage Gorsky, PhD, Ari Y. Kelman, PhD, Dalya Perez, PhD, August 2021

Read more insights about Beyond the Count.