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We all want our work to be rooted in evidence and best practices, and we all want to thoughtfully and deftly use high-quality, up-to-date information to guide our decisions. But these aims are neither easy nor simple to achieve. There is a glut of information in the world, of varying quality and relevance to Jewish communal concerns.

The Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education’s CASJE Research Digest, which is relaunching next month, is a case study and model of a partnership between research and philanthropy designed to address this challenge and help Jewish communal decision-makers become more informed and adept users of data and research.

Why Now:
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, we were witness to terrible loss and pain and an onslaught of questions regarding the well-being of the American Jewish community and the nature of its ongoing relationship with Israel. In that period, we also saw a proliferation of research, as a number of leading organizations and philanthropists sought to root their decisions in high-quality information about American Jewish experiences in this volatile time. CASJE catalogued more than 20 studies in just the few months following Oct. 7.

Max D. Baumgarten is the director of North American operations at the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation in Los Angeles, where he oversees grantmaking strategies focused on strengthening Jewish life in the United States.

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

Arielle Levites is the managing director of CASJE and co-director of The Collaboratory: A Center for Jewish Education at George Washington University.

Read the full piece in eJewish Philanthropy.

For well over a decade, I have been privileged to be a part of the evolutionary story of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which works to inspire connection, meaning, and purpose in Jewish youth and young adults. The Foundation is a learning organization that is both highly invested in research and evaluation regarding grantee-partners and the broader field, and entirely comfortable turning the lens on itself through internal assessments and grantee perception reports.

There are many values I cherish from my years in service and from my interactions with hundreds of thoughtful grantee-partners, colleagues, and friends. After 13 wonderful, productive years, I am moving on from the Foundation—but my covenant to the Jewish community and its people remains steadfast. This is an opportune moment to highlight 13 individuals, and specific lessons they offer, who have guided my path of learning, either knowingly or inadvertently. I hope they inform and inspire your work as they have my own.

Stand Up…Especially When it is Uncomfortable
A disciple of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l, Dr. Mijal Bitton speaks up because she is compelled to do so. She is a Latin immigrant, a descendant of Jews expelled from Arab lands, and a proud Jewish American changemaker. Mijal’s research has expanded the definitions and inclusionary practices toward the Sephardi and Mizrahi communities. It is a far easier practice to allow appeasement to supersede conviction, but the results of forsaking one’s ideals can be catastrophic. Mijal was one of the first to raise her voice on college campuses after antisemitism became rampant in 2023 – she then spoke at countless campuses and rallies including the March for Israel in Washington DC with 290,000 people in attendance.

Be Proximate
Early in my tenure at the Jim Joseph Foundation, I attended a conference in which Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, delivered the keynote about his experiences with witnessing and advocating for the victims of mass incarceration and racial injustice firsthand. He described this type of advocacy as being proximate and differentiated it from building a case for an issue from a distance.

In philanthropy, we are already multiple steps removed from the beneficiary voices of the individuals we purport to serve.  If we want to truly understand the experiences of young people, as an example, we need to visit their camps, schools, youth groups, universities, and immersive experiences.  If we truly value their opinions, we need to invite them to speak, participate, and drive change.

Find the Gaps and Fill Them
In the four decades since the founding of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (now Schusterman Family Philanthropies), one of the most identifiable characteristics of their philanthropy remains the ability to identify and respond to gaps. Lisa Eisen, Co-President of Schusterman Family Philanthropies, has served as an anchor in this arena for the past 20 years, responding to gaps in service learning, Israel education, leadership, and gender equity by being founding funders of Repair the World, The iCenter, Leading Edge, and the Safety Respect Equity Network, respectively. She stewarded each of these and others as either a board member or its chair, leading by example and refining aspirational goals with intention. Different than beneficiaries of funding, philanthropy has the advantage of both time and a bird’s eye view of the broader field, and it is incumbent on us to utilize those.

Learning – Learning – Learning: That is the Secret of Jewish Survival
The quote above is attributed to Ahad Ha’am, the pen name of Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, the early 20^th century leader of Cultural Zionism. This teaching was part of the fabric that Dr. Chip Edelsberg invoked in forming the theory of change of the Jim Joseph Foundation. There is no stage in Jewish history or history itself that is completely the same as what came before it, so we cannot accept that doing the same things over again will yield a different result.  Learning and acting upon those learnings are essential if subsequent generations are to survive and thrive.  Among his many feats, Chip brought teachings from The Performance Imperative to the Jim Joseph Foundation as well as leadership and grantmaking tools from the secular world into the Jewish nonprofit community. By continuously learning, he led each of us to strive to be greater and more informed.

You Cannot Just Communicate with the CEO
In Episode 1 of Michael Lewis’ Against the Rules podcast, he tells the story of a woman named Sue Henderson who had solutions for the medical billing industry … but she was six levels down in her organization in a windowless basement of a hospital.  Sue developed nuanced expertise particularly around the Medicare and health insurance system that enabled a level of efficiency that singularly made the hospital successful. But few in the building appreciated the excellence that she brought or even knew of her existence.

When we speak only to the C-Suite of an organization, we can miss the most critical elements of day-to-day interaction that may not be otherwise articulated. In real terms, we miss the individuals that define the organization’s achievements if they are not part of the senior leadership. It is incumbent on us to dig deeper to find the source.

Mentorship Matters
For more than 30 years, I have been privileged to be mentored by Professor Joel Fleishman, Director of the Heyman Center for Ethics at Duke University and author of the foremost compendium on foundations and philanthropy. I am sure there are tens if not hundreds of others who feel similarly about the role that Joel has played in their lives.  In his eyes, mentorship is not about a single avenue to success or about being in total alignment with your mentee.  Rather, it is about being available, a consummate listener, and forthright about what is possible and right for the person in the moment.

His example led me to take on mentees over the past decade and provide pathways for success to others in similar fields. We cannot develop or maintain a pipeline of stellar nonprofit and philanthropic professionals without role models and mentors who support professionals on their journey.

Acknowledge Those Who Came Before Us
There is a phrase called Columbusing that is used to describe the appropriation of an idea or practice that has been in existence previously. This idea is often employed with the best of intentions but overlooks the pioneering efforts that took place long before the ideas reached the mainstream. One of my earlier Foundation memories was participating in a workshop facilitated by Yavilah McCoy, an innovator of the Jewish diversity and equity movement who has dedicated much of her professional career to amplifying the Jews of Color community.  Yavilah reminded me and others that new research can always be complemented with historical documentation and that it is important to be inclusive of those texts and individuals.

Speak to Your Audience
Prior to my tenure at the Jim Joseph Foundation, I benefitted from the tutelage of Dr. Kristy Towry, chaired professor of accounting at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. I learned that in the normally dry and lifeless budgeting process, managerial accounting allows one to incorporate psychology and other social sciences to speak to your audience. Activity-Based Costing, connecting the salaries and ancillary costs of performing a function with that budgeted component, is one highly informative method of illustrating this process. Being an effective steward of relational grantmaking is not about evoking fear of punitive actions.  It is instead encouraging partners to showcase accurate strengths and challenges without fear of reprisal.  Kristy’s teaching helped me tell the story of relational grantmaking on behalf of the Foundation through a series of spreadsheets and videos in ways that would not have otherwise been possible.

Live Your Values
There are few leaders I have encountered who are both soft-spoken and strong-hearted. Rabbi Yossi Prager epitomizes these characteristics and more. More than anything else, Yossi teaches me and the rest of the world how to be a mensch in grantmaking. He led the largest Jewish education foundation in the country on a magnanimous spenddown, which effectively put him out of a job while exponentially enhancing the field. He ensured that each member of his team was cared for with amity, support, and consideration. And he put the grantee partners with whom he worked on a pedestal, reversing the traditional polarity of the funder/grantee relationship.  He is truly a values-driven leader.

Be Aware of the Dreams of Others
Few experiences in my life have been as impactful as the Dreams of Others Seminar facilitated by the Jewish Agency’s Makom in January 2023 in partnership with Mohammad Darawshe, Hartman Fellow and Senior Strategy Director at Givat Haviva. Mohammad was a co-creator on this pilot seminar that included education directors and leaders from many of the most impactful organizations in the Jewish world.  We traversed Jewish communities and the adjacent Arab villages, West Bank settlements and Palestinian towns, border communities and large metropolitan communities.  And we were able to see each through different lenses.  This was not about changing minds but about having the ability to accept a different perspective.

Since October 7^th, our WhatsApp group from that trip continued.  We lost one of the leaders in civil society from Ofakim who met with our entire group in his home. Mohammad lost one of his nephews who was a first responder at the Nova Festival. One member of the group is still waiting for a loved one who is abducted in Gaza. We continue to weep together.

Prepare Yourself to be Unprepared
There are few who have faced storm upon storm of upheaval and uncertainty as Eric Fingerhut, President of Jewish Federations of North America.  He confronted boycotts directed at Israel in Congress, on campus, and in the broader community. He addressed systemic security concerns following the most antisemitic events in US history. He responded to poverty and some of the most horrific natural disasters and their effects on our Jewish community. And he dealt directly with the loss and destruction after October 7th. In each of these instances and in others, he led with thoughtfulness and inclusivity.  There has not been an initiative, whether it is a bill in the legislature or a new initiative in the Federation system, that Eric has undertaken without significant reliance on partnership.

From him, I’ve learned that the best response to unpredictability is cooperation. Alliances do not have to be built beforehand, but trust does.

It is Not Just About Your Work – It is about the Ecosystem
When I first met Jay Kaiman nearly 25 years ago, he shared how when he first moved to town in Atlanta to run a Jewish agency, he made a point to meet with other Jewish professional leaders in the community to understand their work and to convey his own organizational charge.  Now on the funding side, his teachings have even greater meaning as our roles are not only dedicated to philanthropic stewardship but also to serve as connectors, interpreters, facilitators, and thought partners. He sees the community as his own and is personally vested in the success of the whole.

Give the Benefit of the Doubt
I have learned countless lessons from my colleague and friend, Barry Finestone, but the one that stands out most is his approach to culture.  He insists that without precondition, we should give our colleagues, our grantee partners, and others in the field the benefit of the doubt when approaching our work, assuming the best of intentions of others in our orbit. This embodies an ethos of trust-based philanthropy that creates an overall culture of respect and mitigates the power dynamic that is often at play between the donor and recipient. And the only way to exact this value set is to invest in an outsized way in cultivating and sustaining exceptional leaders and educators.  The philanthropic world could be much more about collective and collaborative success if more employed this philosophy.

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Know Before Whom You Stand – דע לפני מי אתה עומד
The phrase, “know before whom you stand,” generally sits outside a synagogue or in a sanctuary referring to the majesty of G-d in the house of worship that we should revere with dignity.  I see the phrase as even more ubiquitous. When you enter the Jim Joseph Foundation, there is a single framed photograph overlooking the boardroom table of an unassuming man who established a great fortune, virtually all of which was dedicated to Jewish education.

When Jim Joseph z”l passed on December 19, 2003, there was no extensive obituary in the New York Times. There was little fanfare across the secular and Jewish worlds… in part because few knew this accomplished real estate titan and philanthropist who operated in relative obscurity.  I unfortunately was never blessed to meet the Foundation’s benefactor, but I have learned considerably from the thoughtfulness, intentionality, and humility of his daughter, Dvora, and son, Josh. Even in his absence, he has taught me how to acknowledge and employ these attributes, and for that I am forever grateful.

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I am thankful to these individuals for their insights and the values they both taught and modeled. They will inspire my work for years to come.

Steven Green most recently served as a Senior Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation. He can be reached at [email protected]  

Students survey pre and post Oct. 7^th say they pay social penalties for being Jewish and supporting Israel; data also show how non-Jewish anti-Israel and antisemitic statements breakdown by political ideology

March 6, 2024 — Jewish college students are experiencing and exhibiting significant changes on college campuses since October 7^th regarding their Jewish identity, participation in Jewish programming, and increased social tension on campus, according to new findings from research conducted by Eitan Hersh, PhD, and College Pulse, and funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation. The research provides key insights on the impact of October 7th and subsequent rise in antisemitism on Jewish college students on campus. The study also asked questions about their views on Israel and the extent to which their own mental health has been affected in recent months.

The research, “U.S. College Students and the War in Israel: Jewish Engagement and Social Tension on Campus,” is unique because it includes survey responses from Jewish college students who also participated in a study conducted by Dr. Hersh in 2022.

“The students from both surveys are a direct link between pre-October 7 Jewish life on campus and post-October 7 Jewish life on campus,” said Dr. Hersh, professor of Political Science at Tufts University. “The data show a campus environment that is a much different place for Jewish students. They felt a big social change. Many of their non-Jewish peers of all political perspectives act differently toward them.”

One set of findings, The Social Costs of Being Jewish and Supporting Israel on Campus: What a Before/After Survey Can Tell Us , notes that more than a third of Jewish students report they are hiding their identity in order to fit in and are being judged if they participate in Jewish activities. Those numbers have doubled from before the conflict. Additionally, Jewish students overwhelmingly perceive a social penalty for supporting the right of Israel to exist. Non-Jewish students in the survey corroborate this, with the highest agreement (50 percent) coming from those on the far left or who identify as socialist.

Another set of findings, A Survey Portrait of Jewish Life on Campus in the Midst of the Israel-Hamas War: 7 Key Findings notes that Jewish students feel a heightened sense of Jewish identity; 35 percent say they feel very close to a Jewish community, double the amount who said so in April 2022. Relatedly, there appears to be a substantial increase both in students who occasionally attend Jewish activities and programs on campus and those who attend events weekly or more. However, the increase in participation does not mean that these spaces were always comfortable for all Jewish students.

“Amid stronger Jewish identities and engagement, a major change from our survey just two years ago is that more of these young people have formed opinions and have increased their support for the state,” added Hersh. “Jewish students, and essentially only Jewish students, are attending Pro-Israel events.”

Additional findings, covered in The Complicated Relationship between Ideology and Attitudes about Jews and Israel, break down views among students by ideology, finding that “Young people on the left are more likely to exhibit extreme negative attitudes when it comes to Israel, whereas young people on the right, as well as some minority identity groups typically associated with the left, are more likely to endorse ominous and prejudicial statements about Jews.” These minority identity groups are “far more likely to say that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets of Hamas than White students are. In other words, these students answer the Israel-focused questions like liberals and Jewish-focused questions like conservatives.”

“For anyone looking to support and meaningfully engage Jewish college students, the data show both immense challenges and opportunities,” said Stacie Cherner, Director of Research and Learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation. “Both in scale and depth, the research goes beyond anecdotal stories many of us have heard. Jewish students feel more isolated and ostracized, and they feel this from peers of all political perspectives.”

These findings represent a mid-point in the research. A series of focus groups will be conducted in the spring, as well as another survey. Both of these data collection efforts will allow for continued examination of change over time, and a full report will be available in summer 2024.

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Study Background:
The study was funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation. The survey itself was administered by College Pulse, a survey and analytics firm specializing in the college student population. Dr. Hersh, who has conducted a number of studies on civic engagement, young adults, and antisemitism, worked with the Foundation and College Pulse to organize this research project and analyze the results. The Methodology is explained in the report:

Back in the Spring of 2022, our team surveyed approximately 2,000 Jewish students and 1,000 non-Jewish students across the country who were attending 4-year colleges. I published a report in 2022 that details the methodology and results. That report analyzed several questions related to Israel and antisemitism that have become especially relevant in light of the recent turmoil on campuses.

Because there are no official benchmarks of what the true population of Jewish American students looks like in terms of demographics or attitudes, it’s hard to know whether a sample of this kind is truly representative. However, as explained in my 2022 report, the basic demographics of the students who were sampled look similar to other studies, such as the young adults surveyed in Pew’s 2020 study of Jewish Americans, which gives us some confidence in the sample.

Between November 16 and December 21, 2023 – 40-75 days following the October 7th attack – we fielded a second survey. This survey was completed by about 1,000 Jewish students and 1,500 non-Jewish students. The Jewish students include those who consider themselves ethnically or culturally Jewish even if not Jewish by religion.

155 of the Jewish students surveyed in 2023 were among the students who were surveyed back in 2022. Back then, they were freshmen and sophomores. Now, they’re juniors and seniors. This is called a panel design, and I’ll refer to the students surveyed both years as “the panel.” The full set of respondents in each year I’ll refer to as the “cross-sections.”

The panel of students surveyed both years provides a link between pre-October 7 Jewish life on campus and post-October 7 Jewish life on campus. If we observe attitudinal changes in the panel, we know it’s not because of sampling variation but because students felt differently in 2023 than 2022. It turns out that the changes we measure are so big that they are highly statistically significant, even with a relatively modest sample size of 155 students in the panel.

One last note on the methodology. In the 2022 survey, the sample of non-Jewish students was designed to be representative of four-year college students across the country. In the 2023 survey, we made an adjustment. We focused the non-Jewish sample on schools that have substantial Jewish populations. To really understand social tensions and the campus climate as experienced by Jewish students, we didn’t need to survey non-Jewish students in schools that have very few Jewish students.

Instead, the 2023 survey pulls non-Jewish students mainly from 21 specific campuses. Those campuses are quite diverse. They include public schools (e.g., Binghamton, University of Michigan) and private schools (e.g., Columbia, Tulane); they are in northeast (e.g., Dartmouth, Northeastern), the south (e.g., Emory, University of Central Florida); the midwest (e.g., Washington University-St. Louis, Ohio State), and the west (e.g., University of California, San Diego, University of Arizona). But they are all campuses with sizeable Jewish populations.

About the Researcher:
Eitan Hersh is a professor of political science at Tufts University. His research focuses on US elections and civic participation. Hersh is the author of Politics is for Power (Scribner, 2020), Hacking the Electorate (Cambridge UP 2015), as well as many scholarly articles. Hersh earned his PhD from Harvard in 2011 and served as assistant professor of political science at Yale University from 2011-2017. His public writings have appeared in venues such as the New York Times, USA Today, The Atlantic, POLITICO, and the Boston Globe. Hersh regularly testifies in voting rights court cases and has testified to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the role of data analytics in political campaigns. In addition to work on elections and civic engagement, Hersh has written on topics ranging from antisemitism and the political consequences of terrorist attacks to politicization in health care delivery and the opioid crisis. His next book is about the civic role of business leaders.

On October 7^th, Israel experienced a pogrom, a targeted massacre intended to destroy as many Jews as possible. The trauma is still raw, and many displaced Israeli families are still living out of suitcases. Moreover, the attack and its aftermath did not merely affect Jews living in Israel. Jews in the Diaspora are feeling isolated, othered, and forced to endure a new wave of antisemitism. Historically, connection between Jews in Israel and those in the Diaspora has been a mitigant to seclusion and an accelerant to peoplehood. Today, with travel limited, especially for organized teen trips, external factors are making those connections more difficult to foster and sustain. How do we build these connections now?

In the last few months, Jewish leaders and educators have rightfully been thinking about how Jewish education and Israel education must evolve post-October 7^th. Israel travel experiences and curricula on Jewish history and modern Israel are being looked at anew. Along with these important aspects of education, we want to elevate the importance—now more than ever—of mifgashim, cross-cultural encounters. These personal relationships between young Diaspora Jews and young Israeli Jews will be critical in building a Jewish future in which youth find meaning and meaningful connections.

Alon Friedman is the Founding CEO of ENTER. Steven Green is a Senior Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, which is a supporter of the One2One initiative.

Read the full article in the Jerusalem Post

This piece ran originally in Kaleidoscope: The Prizmah Monthly

The Jim Joseph Foundation is committed to strategic learning and informed decision-making. We have a diverse array of research and evaluation studies that currently shape our approach to investments. This work transcends the conventional role of a mere accountability tool. Instead, we see our learning agenda as a dynamic process that contributes to the strategic growth and effectiveness of our grantmaking. With this perspective, we foster a culture of curiosity and continuous improvement and field-building.

Implementation

Studies in our learning agenda generally fall into one of four categories:

1. Individual grantee evaluations that build the capacity for our grantees to be learning organizations.
2. Cross-portfolio evaluations that examine shared outcomes and synergies across various sets of grantees to identify overarching trends and opportunities.
3. Funder-commissioned research that partners with external experts to delve deeper into specific areas of interest that align with our mission.
4. Grantee-commissioned research that empowers grantees to conduct research, enhances their own understanding, and contributes to a broader knowledge base.

Beyond individual studies, we also invest in the development of talent to ensure a robust, skilled, and diverse research and evaluation pipeline. This is meant to help grow the capability of communal organizations to apply learnings.

Professional Team Learning

For the foundation internally, we look to integrate insights and learnings into our own day-to-day operations, thus modeling being a learning organization. We lean into our First Principles, which include staying curious, centering youth, and being in relationships. We listen for themes and trends and actively question our assumptions. As we pride ourselves on being a relational grantmaker, we regularly preview early research findings with relevant grantee-partners before public dissemination. Program officers prioritize learning in conversations with grantees and with other funders, often asking what program providers are hearing from target audiences, or what adjustments are being made as a result of learning. We also read other research (that we are not funding) and share what we are reading, either with grantees directly or publicly. If necessary for improvement, we are unafraid to pivot to model being a learning organization.

The program team meets regularly to discuss important evaluation findings and shares reports on an internal platform. We continue to support individual evaluation work both with funding and non-grantmaking support.

Interactions with the Board

We keep our board informed of our research by maintaining an internal website of the most widely used and relied on evaluation and research the foundation has commissioned, in addition to individual memos to the board detailing new research findings when warranted. All grant recommendations presented to the board for approval are grounded in data. Based on learnings from past research, in 2023 the board approved new initiatives that focus on early childhood educators, early-and mid-career Jewish professionals, immersive travel to Israel, new modes of rabbinic training, and a convening of communal professionals to discuss the talent pipeline issues facing the field. In other words, research leads to actions.

Read the full piece at Kaleidoscope: The Prizmah Monthly

Stacie Cherner is Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation

Research Team Will Follow Study Participants Over Five Years to Understand Impact of Programs

A first-of-its-kind longitudinal study aims to understand how professional development programs influence the growth and career advancement of Jewish educators and Jewish educational leaders throughout their careers. A research team at Rosov Consulting will survey participants of Jim Joseph Foundation professional development programs multiple times over the next five years to follow their continued professional learning and career trajectories.

“Effective professional development is key to attracting and retaining these individuals in the field,” said Stacie Cherner, Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation. “This unprecedented study will help grow the pipeline of talented, highly skilled leaders and educators who are vital to Jewish communities. We are grateful to all of the educators that take part in the study as we all learn together.”

Rosov Consulting will survey educators and educational leaders who work in Jewish serving organizations and participated in a professional development opportunity in 2023 that was supported by the Jim Joseph Foundation. Those include programs offered by: Birthright Israel, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel International, M²: Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, Jewish New Teacher Project, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Leading Edge, Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, Repair the World, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, SVARA, The iCenter, The Jewish Education Project, UpStart, and The Wexner Foundation.

The surveys will include questions about the participants’ attitude towards professional development and career commitment; other influences in their life, such as supervisors and current events; and outcomes of participation in professional development.

“We’re excited to have been given the opportunity to track the career trajectories and professional growth of educators and leaders across the various sectors of Jewish education,” said Alex Pomson, Principal at Rosov Consulting. “Real-time panel studies are quite common in general education. As far as we know, this is the first study of its kind in the Jewish community. We have a chance not only to observe how educators grow over time, but to see how their roles evolve in response to tumultuous times.”

Learn more about the study at gelsresearch.org.

A new study is exploring the interests, needs, hopes, and challenges of a wide diversity of Jewish families, including those with more than one religious or cultural tradition, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, single parents, and families experiencing economic insecurity. More diverse families are an increasingly higher proportion of Jewish communities and may, at times, feel marginalized in Jewish communal settings.

“This research will help organizations that work with Jewish families and engage Jewish youth better understand their audience,” said Alex Pomson, Managing Director of Rosov Consulting, which is conducting the study. “As the Jewish community becomes more diverse, more knowledge will help communal leaders meet people where they are—and design Jewish experiences that are meaningful to them.”

The research team will engage directly with families who are raising children ages 0-8, who want some kind of Jewish content or experiences in their children’s lives. What do their Jewish lives look like, and what kinds of Jewish lives do they seek to construct? From where do they derive their Jewish inspirations? Which organizations do (and don’t) they feel understand who they are, and which have (or have not) brought them meaning? What are their educational and engagement interests and needs, and how and where are those needs being met, if at all?

Funded by Crown Family Philanthropies, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and the Jim Joseph Foundation, the study’s findings will be shared publicly throughout the research process. The first part of the study is a review of relevant research literature on factors shaping contemporary family life, available here. Researchers also conducted 40 regionally diverse focus groups with 182 individuals. One set of focus groups was with parents raising their children as Jews who are not typically active in Jewish organizations. The second set was with parents who participate in some aspects of Jewish communal life. Researchers will next conduct follow-up interviews with select focus group participants.

Key findings from the literature review:

• Rising housing costs mean that many people are priced out of areas with greater Jewish infrastructure, impeding their ability to participate in local Jewish communities.
• Literature on multi-faith and multi-ethnic families dispels the still-common belief that mixed-heritage families represent a “threat” to Jewish continuity.
• Extended family networks – especially grandparents – can play an important role in children’s lives; relatedly, researchers understand households not as self-contained units, but rather as embedded in broader social networks.

Adds Pomson, “Jewish families have been impacted by the Israel-Hamas war, rising antisemitism and political polarization, the COVID-19 pandemic, school shootings, rising housing costs, and more frequent and widespread climate catastrophes in recent years. It is not an easy time to raise children; this research will shed light on the kind of support, connections, and experiences parents want to navigate these and other challenges.”

photo courtesy of Keshet

In January 2018, in the midst of a global movement against sexual violence, harassment and discrimination, Jewish foundations, organizations and expert practitioners came together to form what is known today as SRE (Safety Respect Equity) Network. The goal was ambitious: to create a community-led movement to address gender-based harassment and discrimination, and to support Jewish workplaces that are safe, respectful and equitable for all.

Earlier this summer, nearly 200 community leaders celebrated five years of this work at SRE Network’s convening in New York. As a community, we came together to acknowledge what we have accomplished and how far we’ve come.

Since 2018, SRE Network has grown to 165 member organizations committed to this work; has defined standards to characterize safety, respect and equity in Jewish communal life; and has invested more than $5 million across 40 initiatives that help train staff to advance healthy workplaces, champion gender equity, support survivors of abuse in Jewish workplaces and other settings, and more. The network has also provided leadership, research, training, connections and resources within and across Jewish communities.

Dawne Bear Novicoff is the chief operating officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation; Jon Hornstein is the program director at The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation; and Rebecca Shafron is the program officer for U.S. Jewish grantmaking at Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies.

Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy

As two funder representatives in the nonprofit sector, we have seen the negative impact of high inflation in recent years on the charitable organizations we hold dear. Thankfully, funders are stepping up to help grantees manage rising costs. But more needs to be done—especially as people are getting used to inflation.

In 2021, inflation rate rose above 4 percent for the first time since 1990. In a Gallup poll last fall, nearly one in five respondents said that inflation was the country’s most important problem. Now, only 10 percent of respondents feel that way. Yet, grantee organizations in various issue areas continue to grapple with the negative effects of inflation on their budget. Immersive travel programs, for example, face increased airfare and other travel expenses. Overnight camps face rising tuition costs of 6 to 8 percent. Jewish community centers face increased program and maintenance costs.

At the same time that social service agencies are experiencing increased demands at their food banks and shelters, the cost to provide these services has increased significantly. Inflationary pressures are driving the costs of basic food items up by 14 to 16 percent from last year, according to David G. Greenfield, CEO of Met Council, which runs an emergency kosher food network that feeds more than 325,000 of the neediest New Yorkers.

Rachel Schnoll is CEO of the Jewish Communal Fund. Steven Green is a senior program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Read the full article in Philanthropy News Digest

As the Jim Joseph Foundation works toward developing “dynamic, pioneering leaders and educators,” the Foundation wants to learn about the most effective professional development experiences. To this end, about a year and a half ago, the Foundation launched an initiative to test new models of connection, learning, and leadership development in cohort settings for mid-career professionals within the Jewish community. The Foundation hired Heather Wolfson, along with Seth Linden and Gamal J. Palmer, to help guide this work (Rachel Brodie, z’’l, was also a key partner in the first phase of this work). Together, we have been testing cohort models to understand what makes these experiences so powerful and which design elements contribute to their success: increasing retention and supporting career growth and feelings of connectedness and belonging. Our ultimate aim is to understand how we might greatly expand and democratize–to make accessible and more affordable–the “cohort-based professional development experiences in the Jewish communal ecosystem, to support and nourish the Jewish educators and leaders who are the backbone of Jewish communal life.” 

The Foundation also wanted these cohort-based professional development offerings to be different from other experiences that exist. With that in mind, the cohort members in this initiative self-organize around who is in the group and the content they discuss. Unlike more selective professional development programs with fewer participants, this initiative envisions a scalable model over several years with thousands of participants benefiting because they help co-design and co-create the experiences that are both enriching and cost-efficient. In this model, the Foundation provides administrative support and financial resources, and a framework for deciding the purpose, participants and content. The groups can bring in a facilitator or outside speakers without the additional burden of scheduling and leading the PD themselves.

After supporting twelve cohorts for different targeted audiences, we want to share key learnings from our experience and from independent evaluation conducted by Tobin Belzer, PhD. These learnings might help others who are running or are considering running cohort programs to develop future leaders. To facilitate our learning with this early round of experimentation, the initial cohorts served professionals representing a wide range of roles and interests. A few examples include event planners who are responsible for the execution of large-scale convenings for Jewish nonprofits, BIPOC professionals who lead DEI efforts within Jewish organizations, and practitioners of cohort-based experiences.

Here’s what we learned:

People crave low pressure connections and micro-communities.
We launched this initiative coming out of the height of the pandemic. People desperately want connections to other people with whom they share professional and personal experiences. Our cohort sessions were fairly informal, which reflected the desires of the groups. We had some guest speakers, shared facilitation and leadership roles, and plenty of time simply for talking and reflecting. This low pressure tenor can be accomplished both in-person and virtually; people appreciated that sessions consistently adhered to this structure. While many often view the mental health crisis affecting young adults and teens, feelings of isolation and anxiety are prevalent among all demographics—especially those professionals supporting young adults and teens. These cohorts were, as the initiative’s first documentation report details, “supportive containers.” One participant shared, “This group made me feel more confident in my position—I now have a place to better understand industry norms, brainstorm, network and bring back real data to my organization.” Having a micro-community of peers to share challenges and successes strengthens feelings of connectedness, which is one factor in sustaining positive mental health.

People want to feel seen, heard, and valued. These micro-investments do that.
Many nonprofit professionals feel they lack professional development opportunities and room for growth at their organizations. Only a select few are in the prestigious fellowship programs that are designed to help professionals learn new skills and build their networks. When we launched the initiative, aside from the first cohorts that the Foundation identified, we solicited proposals from professionals in the field of Jewish education to ask what leadership development cohorts they wanted to design and participate in. We hosted a webinar for 50+ people, and fielded nearly 20 applications for the five cohorts that we chose to participate with us in this early phase of learning. Being asked what learning experiences they would find most impactful and helpful, and with whom—and then seeing that take shape in a cohort-based experience—was a powerful validation of their work and worth. As one participant shared during the evaluation process, “I really appreciated having the support, knowledge and guidance of my colleagues.”

People seek a range of modalities to access learning.
The settings and ways in which learning occurs should be dynamic and reflect learning for the whole person. People expect nothing less. Our first cohorts are now thinking about how they will continue learning together with guest speakers and retreats. Other modalities we have offered or facilitated include self-care, wellness activities, and book exchanges among cohort members. We found that people want both guidance and autonomy; they want to be empowered to lead and teach in certain areas. Cohort members have also selected conferences that they want to attend with each other. The modalities should be varied and enable people to find the learning opportunities that best suit them. 

The number of cohort members matters.
This is key. After different scenarios and some trial and error, we found that having too many people in a cohort poses challenges and makes it more difficult for the group to really bond and feel connected. Somewhere between six and twelve people seems optimal. However, you also need to account for cohort members who do not attend every session. If you accept 15 people, ten might show up regularly. Setting attendance parameters in advance can help to avoid this issue. Also, depending on the number of people, in-person or virtual offers different benefits and challenges—from scheduling conflicts to sharing information.

Cohort-based programs should have clear goals and outcomes.
Program participants want to know the purpose behind the programs in which they participate, including the long-term goals and desired outcomes. The Foundation, for example, launched this to “nourish” each participant, but the long-term goal is to increase the efficacy and retention of professionals in the Jewish nonprofit sector. The evaluation shows that this experience expanded the participants’ understanding of the Jewish organizational landscape and helped them recognize there is a place for themselves in the Jewish communal sector beyond their current position.

Throughout the program, cohort members asked us good, pointed questions about why we were running this initiative. The latest evaluation shows their desire to have clear answers to these questions. Their time is valuable and they wanted to know being in this program was time well spent—both regarding what they would learn and the bigger-picture aspiration of this endeavor.  

We know there is still much to learn about the recruitment, structure, content, modalities, and more of these cohort programs. We also express gratitude to the participants and all other professionals who submitted proposals. They were, and are, part of this learning journey. Moving forward, we will continue to support existing groups, explore working with network organizations as partners, and develop plans to go beyond this pilot phase, making this opportunity available to more Jewish professionals across the field.

More background information and learnings from the Cohort-Based Professional Development Experiences Initiative can be found in the initial October 2022 documentation report by Rosov Consulting and the May 2023 Phase II evaluation report by Dr. Tobin Belzer.

Heather Wolfson leads Maven Leadership Consulting, Seth Linden leads Gather Consulting, and Gamal J. Palmer leads Conscious Builders. Jenna Hanauer is a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, both of our organizations, Jim Joseph Foundation and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, had been taking gradual steps to improve our grantmaking processes. We were guided by a desire to serve as genuine partners to our grantees, emphasizing information and insights over process so that our grantees have more time to focus on implementing their missions.

Once the pandemic hit, it was clear that business as usual wasn’t going to work. Strict parameters around grant proposals, mid-grant reporting, payout structures and final grant reports were rigid, time consuming and ineffective for organizations that needed to be responding and adapting to the needs of their communities in real time.

After listening to grantees, learning from emerging practices in philanthropy and embracing opportunities for responsiveness, we eased some of the grant proposal and reporting requirements, streamlined our processes and increased the pace and scale of changes to support our grantees in continuing their work seamlessly. We also identified other areas where we could be flexible and enable grantees to devote more time to pursue their missions under challenging circumstances.

Aaron Saxe is a senior program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation and Rebecca Shafron is a program officer for U.S. Jewish Grantmaking at Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. 

Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy

While “innovation” often is associated with a spark of an idea that has the power to change the world, real progress—forward motion, sustainable change—requires the effective implementation of those bright ideas.

To bring an idea or program model that has worked in one place somewhere new, sometimes adapting the idea to meet local needs, effective scaling is essential. Why doesn’t this happen more often? Understandably, there’s an excitement that comes with something new. New ideas and innovations are an important part of the social impact equation. But equally as important is the power of amplifying something borrowed.

What if more nonprofit professionals widen the aperture and expand the idea of innovation to include concepts like customizing and adapting proven models too, helping existing great ideas influence more people in more places? With this mindset, we can see how scaling can follow innovation for greater impact.

Sara Allen is executive director of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative powered by Jewish Federations of North America. Rachel Shamash Schneider is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Read the full article in Philanthropy News Digest by Candid