The Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative (the Initiative) began in 2014 with a partnership between Rose 
Community Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation. The Initiative was conceived in response to research and a community engagement process done in 2010 by Rose Community Foundation’s Jewish Life Committee and the Allied Jewish Federation (now JEWISHcolorado) about engaging Jewish teens in greater Denver and Boulder.
The desired ultimate impact from this Initiative is that throughout their lives, every teen in the Denver and Boulder Jewish communities can answer the question, “How can my Judaism inform, inspire, and advance the good I seek to do in the world?” To accomplish this, the four-year Initiative (2014–18) was created with three initial objectives in mind, and with an undercurrent of innovation running through its activities. The three objectives are:
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 Initiative funders partnered with Informing Change to evaluate the Initiative over the first three years of its four-year lifespan.
Expanding Innovative Opportunities for Jewish Teens: Learnings from a Three-Year Evaluation of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative, March 2018, Executive Summary, Full Report
The Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative (LAJTI or the Initiative), through a funding partnership between the Jewish Federation of Greater 
Los Angeles (the Federation) and the Jim Joseph Foundation (the funders), launched in 2015 and just completed its second year of implementation. To achieve the ultimate goal of engaging Jewish teens in Los Angeles in activities that promote a healthy, personally meaningful, and fulfilled Jewish life, LAJTI has three main strategies:
1. Expand and create teen engagement programs of excellence.
2. Nurture the teen ecosystem and build community commitment to teen engagement.
3. Support the professional development of educators of Jewish teens.
LAJTI seeks to create ripple effects throughout the community—including the teens who attend programs, their parents, program staff and leaders who design and deliver teen-focused programming, and community leaders and funders who champion and support the work.
The funders have partnered with Informing Change to evaluate LAJTI over its first three years. After completing the Year 1 evaluation report, which provided a baseline assessment of LAJTI, Informing Change collaborated with LAJTI staff and funders to develop seven evaluation questions to explore specifically in Year 2. LAJTI leaders wanted to understand certain phenomena in this second year of implementation that would inform the Initiative’s further development, while also retaining some of the original evaluation questions. This change also necessitated a shift in some of the data collection methods.
Prioritizing Jewish Teens: Findings & Lessons from the LAJTI Year 2 Evaluation, October 2017
Expanding the Circle of Teen Education & Engagement: Evaluation of Year 1 of the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative, December 2016
Learn more: A Taste of the Real World: Lessons Learned from a Community Internship Program for Teens
The four-year, nine million dollar New York Teen Initiative is a jointly funded investment of the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jim Joseph Foundation. With The Jewish Education Project serving as lead operator, the Initiative seeks to redesign and redefine the area’s Jewish teen engagement through the creation of compelling summer experiences. The Initiative builds on UJA-Federation of New York’s historic and current efforts to support programs that attract teenagers to Jewish life and experiences. The Initiative is part of a national effort —spearheaded by the Jim Joseph Foundation — in which 14 foundations and federations are working together as a “Funder Collaborative” to expand and deepen Jewish teen education and engagement in 10 communities across the United States.
In Year 2 of the Initiative, the evaluation was focused on four sets of concerns and associated questions: Program Implementation; Expanded Reach to Teens; Participant Outcomes; and Tracking Year 1 Participants.
New York Teen Initiative and New York Incubator of Intensive Summer Experiences for Jewish Teens: “That was the most myself I have ever been,” Year 2 Evaluation Findings, February 2017
The formation of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative was the result of a process begun by the Jim Joseph Foundation in 2013. At that time, in an effort to spawn innovative, locally sustainable teen engagement programs, the Jim Joseph Foundation brought together an array of funders to explore various approaches. The first 24 months of this deliberate process in which ten local and five national funders undertook to educate themselves, build relationships and co-invest in community-based Jewish teen education and engagement initiatives was thoughtfully documented in a case study issued in January 2015 by Informing Change, entitled, Finding New Paths for Teen Engagement and Learning: A Funder Collaborative Leads the Way.
This case study documents the next stage of the Funder Collaborative’s development, roughly the 21-month period from January 2015 through October 2016 and reflects the Collaborative’s commitment to share its process with others who may choose to embark on their own co-funding endeavor. The case study explores the Collaborative’s experience as it deepens its work in the realm of Action and slowly considers how to move toward Impact.
PREPARING TO DEEPEN ACTION: A Funder Collaborative Finds its Way, June 2017
The formation of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative began in 2013, when more than a dozen local and national funders of Jewish teen programming were brought together by the Jim Joseph Foundation for an ongoing series of discussions about expanding teen involvement in Jewish life. Over the next two years, this group developed into a more formal Funder Collaborative, with the expressed aim of making grants to support comprehensive, innovative, and sustainable new community-based initiatives in ten communities across the United States: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco.
In order to understand the process and outcomes of teen programs, both in individual communities and across multiple regions, two concurrent evaluation efforts were undertaken alongside the community initiatives. In each community, local evaluators were contracted to study regional initiatives; and, on a national level, a Cross-Community Evaluation (CCE) was initiated in 2015.
The CCE is designed to answer a set of primary evaluation questions centered on the learning and growth of Jewish teens in different communities, as well as to facilitate and encourage continual communication and sharing of lessons across communities. At its heart is an exploration into how, and to what extent, local initiatives are successfully engaging teens in Jewish learning and growth.
INITIAL OUTCOMES ACROSS COMMUNITIES: First Fruits from the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, June 2017
The Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative (LAJTI or Initiative) is a collective effort among organizations across the greater Los Angeles Jewish community to enhance the opportunities for teens to engage positively in Jewish life. The LAJTI launched in 2015 after several years of planning with a broad base of community stakeholders. Cofunded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles (the Federation) and the Jim Joseph Foundation (the funders), the LAJTI includes three main strategies, each with multiple components working toward shared goals: Expand and create teen engagement programs of excellence; Nurture the teen ecosystem and build community commitment to teen engagement; Support the professional development of educators of Jewish teens.
Informing Change has been engaged to evaluate the first three years of the LAJTI. The evaluation is both process and outcome oriented, with an intention to provide ongoing feedback on the LAJTI’s various components to inform strategic pivots, while also assessing the Initiative’s results.The data collected during the LAJTI’s first year largely serve as a baseline for assessing change over time. The baseline described in this report provides a promising outlook for the years ahead. The LAJTI launched many of its moving parts in Year 1, most notably the Accelerator and efforts to enhance the professional development for Jewish teen educators. These early starts are accomplishments in and of themselves; yet, as with any new endeavor, there have been bumps and requisite tweaks along the way. This report documents the LAJTI’s development and accomplishments in its first year of implementation, along with early lessons learned and recommendations for Year 2.
Expanding the Circle of Teen Education & Engagement: Evaluation of Year 1 of the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative, December 2016
Learn more: A Taste of the Real World: Lessons Learned from a Community Internship Program for Teens
In 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned the report Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens. In that report, nine key implications for strategic development regarding Jewish teen education and engagement emerged. These implications provided a good baseline for The Jewish Education Project’s understanding of necessary factors to build programs that engage more Jewish teens in meaningful Jewish life. Following the release of Effective Strategies, the Jim Joseph Foundation began to partner with funders in ten communities to significantly invest further in Jewish teen engagement. The Jewish Education Project has run the National Incubator that has been working closely with these communities, known collectively as the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, as they design their respective teen initiatives.
Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today — commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and The Marcus Foundation—builds on the past and is the result of new research in Jewish teen education and engagement. Funders in the Teen Collaborative identified a need to define shared outcomes in order to pursue their common goals and to effectively aggregate and compare evaluation findings. While this research was intended only to lead to the development of outcomes in this space, it yielded insights that can guide and inform Jewish teen education and engagement more broadly, and can be used by those in the Collaborative as well as others. Generation Now details insights about Jewish teens—from their interests, to their fears, to what brings them meaning in life—along with shared outcomes, indicators, and measurement tools that will gauge Jewish education and engagement among teens participating in Jewish experiences.
Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today, April 2016
Effective Strategies for Education and Engaging Jewish Teens, February 2013
Building on previous research, in 2014, Rose Community Foundation entered into a partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation to develop the Denver-Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative. The goal is to make greater Denver-Denver-Boulder area Jewish life relevant and meaningful to young people both now and later in their lives, with teens serving as active partners together with their peers, adults and community leaders in shaping their own Jewish journeys.
The Initiative has three objectives: to identify a few innovative Jewish teen programs and help them achieve incremental growth; to promote and support a shift in Jewish teen programming to models that intentionally foster adult-teen relationships; and to fund youth-initiated, youth-led programming that could connect and engage a wider circle of Jewish teens than those currently engaged in traditional Jewish youth programs. Initiative leaders believed with an infusion of funding and addition staff, a small group of grantees could move their vision forward. As the Initiative launched, the five key grantees—Jewish Student Connection (JSC), Moving Traditions (MT), Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative (BJTI), PresenTense Colorado (PT) and jHub—and the lead funders—Rose Community Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation—articulated a Theory of Change that specified the Initiative’s key strategies and target audiences.
From the start of working together, the Initiative leaders invested in evaluation in order to learn along the way about what works and what needs adjustment, and to document the impact of the Initiative overall. Informing Change was invited to evaluate the first three years of the Initiative.
During the Initiative’s first year, teen participants and their parents from the three grantee programs that were operational—JSC, Moving Traditions and BJTI—were invited to participate in a survey about their experiences in these programs and their involvement in Jewish life in their communities more broadly. Due to the low response rates, these baseline survey data should be viewed as illustrative rather than as representative in nature. However, the survey data provides insight into the teens’ experiences from two self-reported perspectives: teens and parents.
Denver-Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative Evaluation, November 2015
Denver-Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative Grant Information
Denver-Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative in the news
In 2012, BBYO, Inc. (BBYO) added three Directors of Jewish Enrichment (DJEs) to its field management structure. With professional backgrounds and graduate training as Jewish educators, these full-time employees were brought into the organization in an effort “to deepen the Jewish experiential learning offered to [BBYO’s] teen-led community and prepare Jewish teens for a lifetime of Jewish involvement.” The three DJEs are in place for a three year initial pilot project, from 2012 to 2015, with the understanding that a second cohort of three DJEs would be added, provided that the grant criteria for the pilot phase were achieved.
Growing out of a 2011 study of BBYO’s impact, the DJE Initiative is part of BBYO’s broader intentions to strengthen the potential for teens’ Jewish enrichment and deeper “meaningful Jewish experiences.” BBYO’s new Educational Framework, now called “Kivun,” was also developed in response to BBYO’s impact study. Kivun outlines BBYO’s goals for teens’ Jewish growth, outcomes related to those goals, and indicators of teens’ Jewish growth. The DJEs are meant to help BBYO implement this new Educational Framework in order to achieve the articulated goals.
Enhancing Capacity for Jewish Enrichment: An Evaluation of BBYO’s Directors of Jewish Enrichment Pilot, March 2015
In 2013, about a dozen funders from across the U.S. began meeting together to better understand how to develop and invest in local opportunities to educate and engage Jewish teens. Convened by the Jim Joseph Foundation, members of the group were already supporting teen programming but seeking ways to do it better in order to significantly expand teen involvement in active Jewish life. By the end of 2014, the group had developed into a Funder Collaborative in which at least half of the members were in the midst of or ready to begin grantmaking to support comprehensive, innovative and sustainable new community-based teen initiatives. Ultimately, the Collaborative hopes its work will reach beyond the initial participating communities, leading to adaptations of the pilot experiments in other communities across the country and in the offerings of national providers of Jewish teen education and engagement experiences.
Internally, the Funder Collaborative intends for this examination to help inform the ongoing growth and functioning of the group, which expects to continue until at least 2018. Externally, by documenting the lessons learned from this unique Funder Collaborative, they hope to inform future co-funding and shared learning efforts, both within and outside of the Jewish philanthropic community.
Finding New Paths for Teen Engagement and Learning: A Funder Collaborative Leads the Way, January 2015
Press Release on Finding New Paths