News & Blogs Category: From the Foundation Team

Retaining and training early childhood educators is a serious and major challenge, and funders are beginning to be creative about their investment models to increase professional development and compensation for these educators. The Jewish early childhood education (ECE) space faces a similar challenge, with high stakes as well. Nearly two years ago, we shared a report detailing the Jewish Resource Specialist (JRS) Initiative in the San Francisco Bay Area, which produced a growing, networked community of educators who have enhanced Jewish ECE experiences in the Bay Area. The Initiative, led by the Early Childhood and Family Engagement (ECFE) Initiative of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties (the Federation), for which planning began in 2008, was an important addition to the growing field of Jewish ECE.

Over the last ten years, funders and organizations have helped to elevate Jewish ECE by investing time and resources to professionalize the field and support its excellence – from staff support, to curriculum support, to programs for families to help bring what is happening in the classroom back home. All of these advancements in the field reflect an increased understanding of the incredible opportunity Jewish ECE presents to engage families in Jewish life and for young learners to begin their Jewish learning experiences.

As the Jim Joseph Foundation continues to think about best practices in philanthropy and how to make the greatest impact in Jewish education, we increasingly focus on models of dissemination and adaptation. We believe these two ideas are inter-related, in that the first step in adapting a successful program model to a new city is to effectively disseminate the relevant findings from recent evaluation and research.

At the same time, we are thinking deeply about how to support and promote the most impactful inflection points along one’s Jewish journey. It is clear that raising young children is one of these such points in life. The numerous Letters of Interest (LOIs) focused on Jewish ECE that we received through last year’s open Request for Proposals (RFP) are indicative of rising interest and increasing demand for early childhood programming and funding both locally and nationally. Along with funder colleagues in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington D.C. and elsewhere, we meet regularly to share learnings from each of our local investments. Simply, there is much to do in this area and many good interventions and pilots bubbling to the surface. One way to reach the broader audiences and to expand this important work is to disseminate ideas and interventions that are ready to be tested and adapted in new and different settings.

With that in mind, and with an updated model documentation of the JRS Initiative from Informing Change (click for executive summary and for the full report) – shared recently and led expertly by Janet Harris and Denise Moyes-Schnur at the Federation – we are excited to see the continued positive outcomes of this Initiative. A third JRS cohort, which launched last year, brought to 21 the total number of Jewish ECE schools in the JRS Initiative. This latest cohort supports their school communities in the same ways the past cohorts did: They deepen Jewish learning; engage families in Jewish life; and receive ongoing coaching, mentoring, and resource support. Moreover, an independent evaluation of the JRS Initiative pilot validated the fruits of this labor. As just some examples, the JRS Initiative is linked to:

• Jewish content integrated into typically secular family programs;
• High parent satisfaction with opportunities to explore Jewish life;
• Teachers’ increased confidence in bringing Jewish content into the classroom; and
• Families participating in additional Jewish events around their community.

Change that Lasts

While we are of course pleased to see these positive outcomes, we want to focus here on a specific aspect of this model – one that the model documentation terms “change that lasts.” The Jim Joseph Foundation is especially attracted to investments in organizations, programs, leaders and educators, and systems that will produce positive outcomes even after the grant period has finished. The JRS model is proving to do just that. We believe this is a compelling case for potential funders and ECE programs that are considering a similar type of investment in other communities.

Continued Investment, Continued Impact

The ECE programs in the JRS Initiative say they continue to see benefits years after the end of their Initiative grant. Programs from the pilot cohort, for example, report that family engagement programs developed during their three-year grant period still serve new families at their centers. And new teachers still engage new families and continue classroom programs using resources and structures put into place by the JRS educator.

An especially important development is that ECE programs from the pilot cohort independently maintain a position in their schools – allocating the necessary financial resources – to continue encouraging and working with classroom teachers to deliver Jewish content, just as the JRS did. This position is usually held by a classroom teacher who is allocated six to ten hours a week to dedicate to this, but there are other variations, including sharing the work across two teachers and dividing the responsibilities between the school director and a teacher.

A Lasting Cultural Shift in ECE Programs

“Through JRS we established some parent programs that are now integral to who this school is.”
– School Director

Beyond these positive ongoing activities are even deeper cultural changes in ECE programs that were a part of the Initiative. School directors and JRS educators from past cohorts say that the Initiative helped to increase expectations regarding the quality of Jewish education in the classroom. These higher expectations remain – and continue to be met because systems and educational resources are in place. JRS educators developed new curricula, workshops, activities, and procedures to match their schools’ needs, which still support teachers and staff to offer Jewish learning regularly. And, the JRS educators continue to coach and offer new resources they create to more classroom teachers so they feel comfortable discussing Jewish elements of the curriculum with parents.

One school director commented that the ECE program has more frequent and more visible Jewish components – “There’s more of a Jewish flavor here” – even three years after the grant concluded. The model documentation reports that “increased levels of Jewish content are giving greater definition to the Jewish nature of these ECE programs.” Critically, school leaders also say that Jewish values are visible not just during specific program activities, but also as part of overall classroom management. In other words, Jewish learning and experiences can happen at any time of day.

Individual teachers also are benefitting from the JRS Initiative because of lasting cultural changes. As a result of their JRS educator’s efforts, teachers in ECE programs continue to be more open with each other. As one school leaders explains, “JRS inspired us to do peer-to-peer learning [among our teachers]. That changed the culture here. We now do more to support teachers to create in their own way and to help their peers.”

Continued Impact of Professional Development

Professional development (PD), including in-person seminars, individual coaching, and relevant site visits, was – and for some still is – an integral part of the Initiative. Since these PD opportunities are designed with the broader school in mind, not just the ECE program, they have resulted in some innovative school-wide changes still seen today. For example, after one school’s site visit to an urban Jewish teaching farm, the school’s educators realized they could use their own outdoor space to teach Jewish content. Following that site visit – and prompted by the JRS approach of engaging families and inviting teacher input and creativity school-wide – the outdoor space at the school is still transformed and still impacts the learning experience. A JRS faculty member says, “In the course of three years, a small side yard patch became a beautiful, natural garden. We could see that what they were doing three years later in the classrooms was much more nature–based. It has changed the school.”

Finally, when a JRS educator moved from her community the JRS educator took her learning and enthusiasm to an ECE program in her new community and, according to her former school director, the JRS approach “completely transformed” the Jewish content in that school, too.

Final Thoughts

As more communities around the country look to leverage the early childhood years to welcome families into Jewish life, the JRS Initiative offers a model with long-lasting impact. By offering Jewish resource specialists learning, support, and other PD opportunities over a multi-year period, they in turn positively influence their teacher colleagues, the children and families with whom they interact and – in some cases – the larger schools and centers in which they are housed. Together, funders and organizations can continue to elevate the place of ECE in Jewish life. For more information about the JRS Initiative, please contact Denise Moyes-Schnur at the Federation (denises@sfjcf.org).

There’s nothing new about the Jim Joseph Foundation investing in Jewish educators and in educator professional development (PD) specifically. In fact, some of the Foundation’s earliest and largest investments were in PD; investments which continue to be an integral part of the Foundation’s strategy, along with the rigorous evaluation of them. About a handful of Foundation-supported professional development programs are operated by our valued partners at any given time.

Yet, there is a certain “newness” to the latest set of investments following the Foundation’s Request for Proposals (RFP) for programs in Jewish Educator PD that differentiates it from previous Foundation grants in this space. First and foremost, the ten new initiatives all represent cohorts of educators, and the directors of these programs all comprise a Community of Practice (Cop) to learn together. This set of investments is a new structure in which the Foundation is operating, a change we made deliberately and after much thought.

Why This, Why Now

It is important to note that this investment approach is not replacing the Foundation’s other grantmaking in which an individual organization receives support. Yet this new approach begs the simple question, “why?” After more than a decade of investments in educator professional development totaling more than $70 million, why intentionally create cohorts simultaneously among numerous organizations? Learnings from previous investments—both those related to educator professional development and others—show clearly that a cohort-based PD program targeting in-service professionals offers significant benefits for Jewish educators, namely:

• The cohort experience in which people learn together, grow together, network, and support each other, is deeply impactful and effective. There are numerous examples that point to this; as just one, the recent evaluation of the Specialty Camps Incubator shows the added value of a cohort structure: Camp directors and assistant directors gained knowledge and insight by hearing one another discuss their challenges and solutions. These camp leaders also consider their cohort to include the Incubator staff and mentors, reflecting a strong sense of belonging to a larger community of Jewish camp professionals.
• Professional development opportunities offered while educators are in-service (as opposed to before entering the workforce) increase educator morale, educator skills, and the likelihood that educators will advance and remain in the field.
• By design, educator professional development programs tend to be relatively small in number. These are intense, immersive programs, tailor-made for participants with one-on-one mentoring, travel, and opportunities to return to their educational settings to apply learnings and to reflect (employers and supervisors are an important piece of this too). This also means that from a sheer numbers standpoint, in order to truly impact the field, the Foundation needs to fund a set of programs to reach a tipping point that engages a significant number of educators.

Of course this latter point also means that educator PD done in this manner is expensive, plain and simple. Yet the Foundation has learned that the high cost per person is worth the investment in high-quality programs. So we have—and continue to—bet on individuals who are committed to their practice and want to advance and improve in their work. The training they receive emanates out from their practice, to their workplace, and to the entire field of Jewish education.

A PD Cohort of Diverse Educators for Diverse Learners

While all of these learnings informed how the Foundation designed the RFP, there was no way of ensuring the quantity and high quality of proposals received. And indeed, the Foundation was fortunate to receive both a high number and high quality of proposals from a range of organizations. As a result, the organizations represent a diversity of missions, types of programs, and types of educators who will benefit. Thus, the ultimate infusion into the field of 500 professionally developed educators will come from different types of PD interventions. And from what we know, this makes perfect sense. Learners in one setting—whether camp, school, cultural settings, and others—will engage with educators who received training that may look quite different compared to a learner and educator in a second setting.

Again, this set of investments, in addition to creating cohorts of educators, also creates a CoP among the directors of these PD programs. While the Foundation has seen the benefit of interventions premised on close collaboration, this also is a new approach for us in educator PD—about which we are excited and eager to learn. The CoP will include in-person and online convenings, smaller working groups, networking opportunities, and an overall structure for problem solving and support.

Laying the Groundwork for More Learnings and Outcomes

Over the next four years, as these programs and the Foundation’s support structures for them are implemented, an external evaluation will offer important learnings about the results of the cohort as a whole (as opposed to just each program), similar to the evaluation of the Specialty Camps Incubator.

The Foundation knows the importance of—and has deep respect for—the educator. Numerous studies and evaluations in both the Jewish and the secular education arenas show that the learners’ experience, and the impact of the learning, is significantly dependent on the talent of the educator. And educators are better when they are supported, networked, and trained in ongoing ways. On a large scale, we want to help develop talented, dynamic, and committed educators, with a deep passion for Jewish life and learning who will ultimately each reach a wide circle of students. This latest big bet is part of that endeavor.

Midway through the Jim Joseph Foundation’s fall Board meeting, members of the professional team stepped outside to call representatives from 21 different organizations who were receiving grants following their submissions to the Foundation’s Requests for Proposal (RFP). It was the culmination of a new and different grantmaking process for the Foundation—and the beginning of the next stage of implementation for these initiatives. While certainly the organizations being invested in expressed excitement on the phone—as they should—I also saw genuine excitement in those Foundation professionals delivering the good news.

This Foundation prides itself on relational grantmaking going hand-in-hand with long, steady development of grant proposals. So we understood that the RFP process would be a departure from this approach, as it inherently put the onus almost exclusively on the grantee to craft and refine the proposal. Thus, the Foundation somewhat became the bystander on the sideline, albeit one “cheering” people on as initiatives were submitted for funding consideration. At the same time, we’ve learned that relationships cannot be entirely separated from any grantmaking process, including the RFP. As certain organizations progressed from initial inquiries, to submitting official Letters of Inquiries, to submitting full proposals, to eventual selection for grants, a different type of relationship between funder and grantee organically emerged. Those phone calls made regarding the awarding of funds were indicative of that.

Any time an individual or organizations tries something new, there are things one knows, things one doesn’t know, and things one doesn’t know they don’t know. The sense of excitement was unexpected. I shared some other initial learnings midway through this process, many of which continued to crystallize through the end of the selection. We look forward to gleaning more learnings through a survey recently distributed to organizations that submitted a proposal. As the Foundation continues to think about the most effective ways to cultivate and support effective Jewish learning, we want to be unafraid of the unknown. Risk-taking, failing forward often leads to the most substantial learnings that can guide future work. And the largesse of modern day realities—from the changing landscape of Jewish life to the heated and sometimes hate-filled rhetoric prevalent in society—demand action that inherently has risks.

The Foundation welcomes that challenge, with a humble understanding that we don’t know what we don’t know. We are excited that the 21 new grants into the portfolio, by far the most new investments for us at one time, are vehicles to address the two primary areas we identified—Jewish Educator Professional Development and Leadership Development in Jewish Education.

At the same time, we want to continue to push ourselves to try approaches that will lead to more uncovering of unknowns in Jewish education and philanthropy. We feel a pressing need to be experimental in our approach, embracing an increased level of risk with the opportunity for great returns. Grantee partners, peer funders, and independent consultants will continue to play key roles in our grantmaking and evaluating endeavors moving forward. Together, we can have a profound influence on the lives of young Jews.

The challenges facing the future of Jewish leadership are well-chronicled—from identifying talent, to training and retaining leaders, to ensuring that Jewish organizations are utilizing leaders to their full abilities. As we have shared, the Foundation understands the urgent need to address these challenges—and is taking action. After a strategy retreat in August, the Foundation’s Board of Directors affirmed a commitment to increase its support for talented and inspiring Jewish educators and leaders. While the Foundation has supported Jewish education leadership over its past 11 years, actions over the past several months have reinforced a more proactive, field-building and risk-tolerant approach.

An emerging leadership development strategy is taking shape and guiding critical investment decisions. The Foundation’s recent $3 million investment in Leading Edge, led by Gali Cooks, will support its growth and build its capacity as a field-building organization that invests in professional and lay leadership in the Jewish community.This gift emphasizes the Foundation’s increasing commitment to developing current and future leaders in Jewish education.

While the Foundation has spent a year and a half studying the leadership field, much remains to be learned in how best to invest in leaders and leadership development. In addition to the new Leading Edge grant, the Foundation is investing $7 million to an additional 11 organizations that submitted proposals for their leadership development initiatives following the Foundation’s recent RFP. These grants all approach leadership development through various lenses and reach various target populations, such as social justice leadership, thought leadership, early childhood leadership and education, and youth leadership.

Representatives from this new group of grantees are being invited to attend two convenings to learn from and with one another, and will participate in a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish education leaders. Representatives of current Jim Joseph Foundation grantees in the leadership space are also being invited to participate in the convenings and the study. To help ensure alignment with a field-wide agenda, professionals at Leading Edge will play a central role in advising and guiding key components of this important, cross-portfolio work.

Evolution of a Jewish Leadership Think Tank
Critically, Leading Edge is building on its initial success and is still evolving its early stages of organizational and governance formation. It intends to spread ideas, convene the field, and test new programs to develop current and future Jewish leaders, focusing on executive professionals, volunteer boards, and workplace culture. To help re-focus its mission, it will frame itself as a Think Tank, Platform, and Laboratory. Even in its nascent life cycle, Leading Edge has produced several important reports within its current programs, including its Great Places to Work (over 7500 responses from 92 organizations over two years), Lay Leadership Commission (a call to action led by 25 lay leaders and The Bridgespan Group), and Onboarding Best Practices (a useful guide to any organization looking for best practices in bringing on new team members). It has convened multiple stakeholders at various local and national Jewish conferences, including Jewish Funders Network, JFNA’s General Assembly, and Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Leaders Assembly. And Leading Edge recently launched its second cohort of CEO Onboarding, bringing together 14 Jewish leaders new to their organization for a year of leadership development, including executive coaching, a community of practice, an Israel Seminar, and learning with faculty from top-ranked institutions and leadership organizations in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

In addition to focusing on professional executives and lay leaders, Leading Edge will also focus on workplace culture. Culture emanates from the top, but grows throughout an organization. Peter Drucker’s famous adage, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” is wisely heeded, and Dan Pink has taught us that motivation, autonomy, and purpose are essential drivers for a happy and productive workforce. Collaborations are also brewing. Leading Edge is working closely with JPRO to connect, educate, inspire and empower professionals working in the Jewish community, and Fund the People (a secular version of Leading Edge). The so-called “talent deficit,” Rusty Stahl of Fund the People argues, is actually a matter of talent investmentdeficit. Stahl makes the case that it is up to funders, working with their nonprofit partners, to lead by example and provide more financial support for professional development, leadership training, capacity support, and other items that might be swept under the “overhead” line item – an overused and underappreciated cost of doing business.

Let’s Model Successful Leadership Initiatives
Funders are pursing many forms of creative investment in this space, which we know offer significant opportunities for modeling and adapting:

• Barr and Durfee Foundations, and O2 Initiatives, have made sabbaticals their place of impact. Give your leaders time off, the research shows, and they come back rejuvenated, thinking and delegating more strategically, and enhancing the skills of their senior team and board.
• Packard and Robin Hood Foundations, and the Haas, Jr. Fund, invest additional money in technical support, management skills, and other flexible leadership grants. This benefit fills gaps in leadership throughout an organization to better achieve its strategic goals.
• Other funders and organizations run their own fellowship programs, from the Wexner Field Fellowship, Schusterman Fellowship, and Selah Leadership Program. These are ongoing and immersive leadership programs, with commonalities including coaching, in person convenings, and a mix of focus on personal development, professional growth and Jewish learning.

Leading Edge itself offers a useful model of “walking the walk.” Their budget reflects their values, with a strong investment in professional development and staff benefits. As an organization working to change the field in how Jewish professionals are treated, valued and nurtured, Leading Edge implements internally what it wants to infuse in the field.

A New Chapter
The Foundation continues to learn from its grantee partners about the best way to invest in programs that train educators. This learning has and will continue to inform the foundation’s approach to investing in education leaders. Successful educators and successful leaders have much in common: they ask good questions, they are good managers, they have vision and they are constantly learning themselves. It is not surprising that a founding principle of the Jim Joseph Foundation is that Jewish education should be loosely defined as that which imbues leadership skills in youth. There is no doubt that as the Foundation takes on this new chapter with an increasing focus on inspiring educators and leaders, it will encounter success and failure along the way, and continue to learn from other leaders in the field.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is energized by the numerous funders already investing in leadership for the Jewish community. We are hopeful and excited about collaborating with more funding partners to build the alliance around Leading Edge to advance this essential area of work.

A core part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s relational approach to grantmaking is supporting grantees to evaluate their programs—either through engaging an external evaluator or by collecting and analyzing data internally.  The Foundation has always believed this is good grantmaking; it builds the capacity of organizations to ask questions, to collect data, and to reflect on findings in a way that then enables changes to be made to increase success.

In this period of transition at the Foundation, the grantmaking team has asked some pertinent questions regarding our evaluation program: “What are we learning from the evaluation work we have supported over the past eleven years?” and “Are there common lessons and emerging themes that we should recognize and reflect upon?”  To begin exploring these and other questions, this spring the entire Foundation team gathered for a full day to share and discuss learnings and common themes discovered from a comprehensive review of nearly all of the key evaluations and reports commissioned by the Foundation since its inception.

To make this day as substantive and productive as possible, the Foundation grantmaking team completed “homework” in the weeks preceding the day. We divided up responsibility to collectively review a sample of 42 evaluation reports, capacity building and business plans, and field building research reports—all completed in the first eleven years of the Foundation.  Each team member summarized the outcomes, successes and challenges that they identified in the documents.

The “Day of Evaluation Reflection” was highly worthwhile and offered space for the team to explore these evaluations in their totality and to discuss how this information might guide future work. This summary shares a few highlights from the resulting discussions.

The Foundation’s effect on Jewish life and learning.
How has the Foundation affected Judaism and peoples’ approach to Jewish life and learning? This overarching question speaks directly to the Foundation’s mission. A very common theme across many program grants funded and evaluated is fostering positive Jewish relationships and community.  With few exceptions, evaluations show that participants in Foundation-supported programs report feeling more connected to their Jewish identity and to Israel when those are the intended outcomes of the program. Since the Foundation DNA includes a broad interpretation of and approach to Jewish learning, these programs include settings from camps, to schools, to service experiences, to Jewish Outdoor Food and Environmental Education, and more. They all are proving effective and align with our mission statement and values.

Lessons learned that have potential to inform Foundation grantmaking.
Several key themes emerged from the day’s discussion that provide opportunities for reflection, focus and improvement, including:

• Various young adult communities can come together successfully through different interests and avenues that resonate and are relevant to the lives of young adults. Social justice and service are increasingly becoming reasons for young Jews to engage in Jewish life. Follow-on programming after an immersive experience is critical to extending programmatic impact, to creating community, and to attaining outcomes.
• Successful programs vary in cost and scale; immersive programs can be expensive and reach a relatively small number of people, but have deep and lasting effect on participants.  Particular programs, like doctoral programs in Jewish studies or education, are a long-play, with high-cost per student or participant.
• Mentorship and time for reflection are key elements seen in the success of many programs, particularly those in educator training. Students value a reputable university program and also desire flexible and diverse programs.
• Capacity building for grantees with regards to evaluation, development and growth planning can be important investments. As a relational grantmaker, the Foundation can be in a position to help an organization pivot and/or engage in long-term strategic planning. These plans must be right-sized with realistic revenue targets and investments.
• Relationships among organizations and people matter. There is value in collaboration and strength in building networks; these are also integral components of creating culture change.
• Some grants are set up to leave a system in place to create impact long after the grant concludes. This is an ideal scenario. Local and national funding partners with aligned interests can leverage resources and both widen and deepen impact.

Challenges grantees often encounter.
The day also brought to the fore some of the common challenges grantee partners experience.

• The majority of challenges that programs experience are related to marketing, recruitment and retention. Retaining current participants can be just as valuable as bringing in new participants to a program/initiative.  Another common challenge relates to hiring and retaining the right personnel – at all levels.
• Development for sustainability and growth is often challenging — and some very effective programs just are not “sexy” for donors.
• Whole school and/or whole organizational culture change is an effective way to create impact, but often is a lengthy process that takes significant staff capacity and buy-in.

Reflections on evaluation. 
In discussions about being intentional in evaluation support moving forward, the team discussed elevating the following concepts:

• Asking good questions and being data informed in our decision-making. Related, evaluations help tell a story for newer Foundation staff members about what is working and what is not.
• Creating opportunities for funding to follow what is working—evaluations can also help inform both if and how to expand a pilot program.
• We can “celebrate failure” in appropriate ways and for productive learning purposes. Furthermore, upon reflection years after a grant and its evaluation are closed, some “failures” actually proved to have success later. Sometimes an evaluation simply captured a moment in time that may not have been the most successful in the life of the program.
• Field building research reports raise the profile of certain programs and certain issues – and dissemination is a very important part of this process so that these reports do not live on a shelf.
• Assessing return-on-investment from our grant-making, which can tell a complete story, is a daunting challenge. Numbers of program participants do not tell the entire story about long-term effects or how someone’s experience influences their heart and feelings. The team reaffirmed a commitment to understand more deeply how Jewish life and learning is experienced and fostered.

Our team viewed the Day of Evaluation Reflection as a productive, enjoyable time for learning. And staff expressed positive sentiments towards the day itself—the structure, the presentations, the team-building environment—and the process outlined for preparation in advance of the day. The conversations were open and honest, signaling that the Foundation’s grantmaking team is comfortable critically examining its past, current and future work with transparency, trust, and patience.  The day raised interesting and important questions that we will continue to diligently explore—and, as is our tradition, we will continue to raise new questions and encourage dialogue as a means to improve our work and understanding of the most effective ways to practice and evaluate our philanthropy.

this blog also appeared in Philanthropy News Digest

The teen years have always been a challenge. Figuring out who you are; navigating complex social systems; being pressed to succeed academically; a body that changes from day to day—almost no adult would willingly return to adolescence.

In our intense modern world, with a 24/7 fishbowl of social media and a heated and polarized public debate, it is no wonder that levels of anxiety and depression are increasing, even for the most successful teen children.

Fortunately, we continue to learn more every day about how to best help teens. Years of research have identified the factors that support teens to grow and thrive: adult mentors; supportive peer groups; the safety to explore difficult and personal issues with depth and honesty; and a community with a robust values system.

Judaism and Jewish community can–and does–offer this to teens.

Our ancient Jewish values of treating each other as if we are all made b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image, of caring for the poor and those who are orphaned, and of working for social justice, have special resonance today.

As a field, we now deeply understand the power of helping Jewish teens make meaning of these Jewish values and connecting the values to their everyday lives and interests. Yet, of course, this meaning making does not simply happen. A recent evaluation conducted by Rosov Consulting and commissioned and shared by the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative–comprised of national and local funders learning together and catalyzing teen initiatives in ten communities–showed, among other key takeaways, that meeting teens where they are, literally and figuratively, is an integral component to offering Jewish experiences that add value to their lives.

Three of the communities within the Collaborative–Boston, Denver, and Los Angeles–work with Moving Traditions to create these types of experiences that reflect our understanding of teens and their desires today.  By fostering positive peer-to-peer relationships in small groups facilitated by trained adult mentors, Moving Traditions’ signature programs, Rosh Hodesh for girls and Shevet Achim for boys, create experiences that have inspired more than 19,000 Jewish teens to find meaning and connection in Jewish life. Moving Traditions also has certified nearly 1,400 educators to mentor the teens in Rosh Hodesh and Shevet Achim groups and it has provided professional development to thousands more Jewish educators who serve teens in a variety of settings.

We know the effectiveness of this work thanks to an independent evaluation. Moving Traditions found that when its Jewish learning promotes self-discovery, challenges conventional views of gender, and celebrates a diversity of voices, teens grow into adulthood with confidence and compassion. Now, with a new investment from the Jim Joseph Foundation (nearly $1 million over four years), Moving Traditions will build its national organization, deepening the quality of its programming and growing its reach.

Emphasizing healthy living and well-being benefits thousands of Jewish teens, as does helping them to find Jewish friends, derive meaning from Jewish wisdom, and develop an ongoing connection to Jewish community. Just a few results from the evaluation bear this out:

• 91% of group leaders reported that the program helped girls gain the emotional skills to deal with life’s changes
• 94% of past participants said that Rosh Hodesh increased their sense of connection with Jewish girls and women.
• 71% of past Rosh Hodesh participants have continued to be involved in Jewish or women’s activities after the program ended.
• 81% of institutional partners running Rosh Hodesh believe that the program helped them retain girls post bat mitzvah.

Anecdotal evidence (input from participants, partners, and group leaders through annual evaluations and direct feedback) suggests similar outcomes for boys in the Shevet Achim program. An independent evaluation of that program is planned for the future.

Moving Traditions’ work within the three communities of the Funder community allowed it to prove the model. The Teen Funder Collaborative offered a blank canvas of sorts to experiment with collaborations, program structures, and other variables. Local funding partners within the Funder Collaborative, which have supported Moving Traditions, unabashedly said that investing in the national office is a promising opportunity to amplify existing work. The independent evaluation affirmed this sentiment, and both were key factors in the Jim Joseph Foundation’s decision to make the new investment.

Moreover, Moving Traditions’ 2015-2020 strategic plan and recently completed business plan provide a roadmap for the organization to move forward, with two comprehensive strategies outlined to widen its scale and deepen its impact:

• Graduated pathway to teen engagement, incorporating new programming—the b’nai mitzvah program and an online group for transgender teens—and refining its signature programs, Rosh Hodesh and Shevet Achim.
• Pyramid of training for adults who mentor teens, refining Moving Traditions’ pre-service training and adding advanced training for Rosh Hodesh and Shevet Achim group leaders and including training for other Jewish educators, including camping staff.

With this plan, the organization also is poised for sustainability and capacity, positioning it to make significant contributions to the lives of Jewish teens and the broader field of Jewish teen engagement.

This is a very timely development. When teens drop out of Jewish life post-b’nai mitzvah, as so many do, it is not merely a loss for the Jewish community–it is a loss for teens as well.  The two years after b’nai mitzvah happen to be the years in which many teens begin to take risks in terms of alcohol, drugs, and sexual activity; encounter serious academic pressure; and experience difficulty in their relationships with their parents.

Moving Traditions offers a compelling framework to counter these trends. What started small within a few communities in the Funder Collaborative now has the opportunity for national impact. It is a strategic investment born from years of learning designed to engage an important audience with thoughtful, ongoing Jewish learning experiences.

Deborah Meyer is CEO of Moving Traditions. Jeff Tiell is a Program Officer of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Just before Passover this year, the Jim Joseph Foundation released two open Request for Proposals (RFP)—one addressed Educator Professional Development (PD); the other addressed Leadership Development. This marked the first time the Foundation embarked on this process, and is another new development among a year of changes for the Foundation. Designing, releasing, and reviewing Letters of Interest (LOI)—we recently contacted the 146 organizations that submitted LOIs to let them know if they were selected as finalists—has been inspiring, challenging, and ripe with learnings both for the Foundation and, we believe, the field.

While we clearly are still in the midst of this process, here’s a quick take on some interesting observations.

What we see in the field:

• Newsflash! Lots of different kinds of people want money. Interest in the RFP’s was not merely high, but also diverse. LOIs received were from a wide range of Jewish organizations, representing different missions, demographics, affiliations and (un)affiliations, levels of ritual practice, and other variables.
• “Hi, we’ve never met, let’s talk.” The RFP process has been a great opportunity to engage organizations with which we have never before partnered. In fact, two-thirds of the LOIs received were from organizations who had not received prior grants. Some of the organizations are now finalists for the grants.
• Tag-teaming unleashes really creative ideas. Some of the LOIs—although not as many as we had hoped—were collaborations between two organizations. They were creative and ambitious in the programs they proposed to design and run. Some of these were selected as finalists.
• DEI and ECE are hot topics Many submissions in some way addressed issues around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) (eight were focused on social justice), which have taken on more prominence of late and are an effective way to engage youth and young adults. And 50 LOIs addressed early childhood education (ECE), an area that some in the field have long-said warrants and needs greater investment.
• We have a lot of organizations! Amid the often fatalistic discourse about American Judaism, the LOIs we received—and even questions from organizations who ended up not submitting LOIs—reflect a diversity and vibrancy that forms a narrative of a creative, evolving, and hyper-organized American Jewish community where nearly anyone can find a Jewish organization that speaks both for and to them. These organizations are eager to receive support and to continue building their visions of Jewish life.

Some internal learnings for the Foundation:

• “All Hands on Deck!” promotes teamwork and collaboration. The Foundation pulled together an interdisciplinary internal team, held weekly meetings, and benefited from immersive and cross-portfolio experience—partly out of necessity to meet the demand of a challenging and time-crunched endeavor. Reviewing LOIs, and now continuing this process with finalists, truly has been a team-strengthening, collaboratory experience.
• Battle Royale between the RFP and relational grantmaking. While an RFP is inherently non-relational, relational grantmaking is a core part of our DNA here. Balancing these two seemingly competing forces was, and is, challenging. To address this, we set careful parameters in our correspondence with interested parties. Even if the Foundation’s professional teams’ instinct was to engage in deep conversation and formulate a proposal with the funding seeker, we knew that would not be the case here, even with existing grantees.
• An old dog….:The Foundation can always think about different ways to approach grantmaking practices. We forced ourselves out of a certain comfort zone of normal operations. As a result of this process, we uncovered new possibilities that can inform how grants are monitored even under our standard grantmaking.

Feedback from colleagues outside of the Foundation—both about the RFP itself and the process we outlined for selection—has been deeply important. We’ve relied on a consulting group (TCC Group) as well, for expert guidance on designing the process. Through it all, the Foundation has found this to be a highly informative, substantive, rewarding, and certainly dynamic endeavor. And while we recognize that many other funders over the years have released RFPs, perhaps these observations above, from a “first-time RFP releaser,” offer a new perspective.

Finally, we know how much time and thought individuals put into crafting LOIs—and we sincerely and deeply appreciate it. We also know how fortunate we are to be in the position of funder to implement this RFP. And to our fellow funders, I note that there were many more fundable ideas among the LOIs received than we will be able to support. Opportunity abounds for those funders who want to make a difference in the areas of leadership and educator professional development. I look forward to updating you as this process continues.

A common question in philanthropy is whether there is double counting of the number of beneficiaries a funder’s grant dollars serves. Often, by asking this question, there is an implicit bias that reaching the same individuals more often than a single intervention is not a desired outcome.

Why is this question relevant to the Jim Joseph Foundation? On a cursory level, approximately 18% of the active grants in our portfolio provide Jewish education and engagement opportunities to youth and families with young children [age 2-12]; 39% to teens [age 13-17]; 22% to college-age students [age 18-22]; and 21% to post-college [age 18-35]. The same individual could be a PJ Library recipient, then a BBYO member, then a Hillel-engaged student, then a Birthright Israel participant, then a Moishe House resident, and then a DeLeT-trained educator (the Foundation in-part supports each of these organizations). Rabbi David Kasher, for example, shared his experience as a Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical Student, a UC Berkeley Hillel Senior Jewish Educator and graduate student, the Senior Rabbinic Educator at Kevah, and an alumnus and faculty member of Reboot—collectively a cornucopia of legacy organizations and start-ups that fit within the Jim Joseph Foundation’s definition of Jewish education.

Contrary to this double—or triple, or quadruple—counting being a negative, the Foundation sees this trajectory as both a promising and a fruitful investment in Jewish education.  No single stage of life has a monopoly on being influential and offering space for an individual to engage with relevant knowledge. Thus, the Foundation views Jewish life and learning as a continuum in which investments can build upon one another; they are not narrow moments in time experienced in a vacuum.

Support for Israel experiences is a quintessential example: In 2006, the Foundation made its first investment in Birthright Israel to support the ten-day immersive experience for young Jewish adults. Then, in 2007, the Foundation made its first multi-year investment in NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel, viewing the trip itself as a powerful opportunity that warranted local engagement and follow-up for interested alumni. In recent years, the Foundation has invested in Onward Israel, a program designed as a post-Birthright experience that offers young adults the opportunity to engage in Israeli life and culture in a deeper way through a multi-month internship and integrated Jewish learning.

Similarly, teens in the Community-Based Teen Education and Engagement Initiatives are primed to ultimately engage with Hillel or AEPi or a Shalom Hartman Institute iEngage cohort.  We know, too, there is overlap among individuals trained by the Wexner Field Fellowship or the Leading Edge CEO Onboarding Initiative and other organizations the Foundation supports.

Investments informed by this “continuum mindset” reflect the understanding that a variety of rich Jewish learning experiences at all stages of life creates numerous opportunities for personal growth and development.  According to Erik and Joan Erikson’s mid-20^th century theory of psychosocial development, of the nine[1] stages of life that individuals undergo, there are five unique stages between the ages of 2 and 40. These are represented by the following virtues, respectively: Will [ages 2-4], Purpose [4-5], Competence [5-12], Fidelity [12-18], Love [18-40].  The Foundation has a better chance of fulfilling its vision—More young Jews engage in ongoing Jewish learning and choose to live vibrant Jewish lives—if we reach and engage individuals at each of these touchpoints, rather than focusing on a single stage.

Investing through a strategic, multi-tiered method is a virtuous cycle.  Fundamental lessons and values are learned through varying pedagogy, experiences, and academic rigor depending on the stage of life and the individual, with many of the core learnings gleaned from early childhood through young adulthood. When an intervention succeeds, the Foundation strongly considers reinvesting. At the same time, the Foundation does not hesitate to invest in a new initiative designed to engage many individuals already influenced by a prior investment.  It is our desire to provide meaningful Jewish learning for more than just a moment in time.

[1]  Erik H. Erikson, Joan M. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed: Extended Version (W. W. Norton, 1998) [originally 8 stages]

How might the Jewish world create, nurture and develop the next generation of Jewish education leaders? The professional staff and board at the Jim Joseph Foundation for the last 18 months have closely explored this question—drawing on 11 years of experience investing in Jewish educators, in Jewish learning experiences for youth, and in building the field of Jewish education to inform our answer. Through this exploration, we have gained an understanding that  supporting talented leaders is mission-aligned with supporting effective Jewish educators and helping to build the field in which they work. Specifically, investing in current and future leaders in Jewish education organizations is a leveraged strategy to achieve the Foundation’s broader mission.

Many are now familiar with the troubling statistic that in the next 5-7 years, 75-90% of Jewish organizations will have to find new executive leadership. This is the leading cause of what many refer to as a “nonprofit leadership deficit” in the field. Others observe this trend and suggest that the more appropriate way to define the challenge is a leadership investment deficit – there are plenty of leaders ready to lead, but there is a paucity of investment in talent development. By some estimates, foundations spend a meager 1% of their grantmaking dollars on talent development.

Whether it is a deficit in leaders or a deficit in investment, action is needed. As part of my onboarding process at the Foundation last year, I was charged with researching previous Jim Joseph Foundation grants to identify trends in our investments related to funding leadership training programs. I found a significant amount of funds helped to support programs or organizations that run leadership programs, whether for emerging leaders, mid-career leaders, service learning fellows, educator trainers, and senior executives. I was also fortunate to go on a “listening tour” to hear from funders, academics and practitioners who are steeped in this field of leadership training. I found examples of programs that provide sabbaticals to Executive Directors (Barr Foundation, Durfee Foundation); customized support for core grantees to develop internal leadership capacities (Walter and Elise Haas, Jr. Fund, Kresge Foundation); and programs focusing on leaders of color, LGBTQ leaders, and other dimensions of diversity, equity and inclusion (Hewlett Foundation, Irvine Foundation).

The development of the Foundation’s leadership investment strategy has been thoughtful and deliberate, guided by an overarching goal to learn more about the field of Jewish leadership and have greater clarity around the most effective ways to invest. From the Foundation’s research in this space, four strategic components emerged:

1) Continue learning from and with current grantees already in the leadership space.

2) Learn from and with new grantees, in part by releasing the Foundation’s first-ever open Request for Proposals (RFP) for Leadership Development.

3) Provide additional leadership capacity support to our current grantees so they can deepen the skills of their own staff.

4) Broaden the Foundation’s role as a convener in the field, bringing together professional and lay leaders of nonprofits, foundations and other experts.

In the mid- to long-term, we hope these new initiatives that the Foundation may fund will expand the pipeline of excellent talent to fill leadership positions, increase retention and advancement of Jewish education leaders, and create more successful, sustainable Jewish organizations.

My colleagues and I are learning important lessons from the research and discovery phase of this new strategy area for the Foundation. For example, most successful leadership programs include these Four C’s: Coaching, Cohorts, Collaboration and Convening. Leadership programs also can have many audiences and different goals – it is critical to identify these up front with Logic Models and/or Theories of Change – and Grantmakers for Effective Organization’s (GEO) leadership investment matrix provides helpful suggestions depending on whether the target outcome is the individual, organization, or ecosystem. Similarly, a program can focus on everything from general leadership development (empathy and strategy), to management skills (board and staff), to technical knowledge (finance and fundraising), or some combination of them all. This should be identified in advance as well. Finally, there are opportunities for the Jewish world to partner with the secular world in the leadership arena, and some of the most effective programs are already doing this, including Wexner Foundation & Harvard’s Kennedy School of Public Policy, Weinberg Foundation & Aspen Institute, and Bend the Arc & Rockwood Leadership Institute, to name just a few.

The Foundation is working to uncover some big ideas and to tackle some big questions in the world of leadership development: How might we make working in the Jewish community as attractive as some people find working in the Tech sector? Would a bold strategy that includes more professional development move the needle in this direction? How might we support the arc of a career Jewish professional? Maybe by providing advancement opportunities and transitions within the organization and within the Jewish ecosystem? How might we provide for an ethical approach – a Jewish character, Mussar – to Jewish leadership development, and what are the values of Jewish leadership? Finally, how might we approach the Sabbath – the Shmita – to acknowledge the rest we all need, by providing a sabbatical year to re-energize, re-invigorate, and support the overall growth of senior executives, lay leaders and the teams who support them? Certainly there are no quick fixes or simple answers. But the Jim Joseph Foundation looks forward to working with other funders, key stakeholders, and practitioners to help us on this exciting new journey.

Since November, I have been consumed with the stories of one of the most dramatic and confusing leadership transitions in our country’s history—filled with sordid tales and accusations of wiretaps and secret alliances.  Just days before President Trump assumed his place in the White House, we at the Jim Joseph Foundation experienced our own leadership transition as founding Executive Director Chip Edelsberg stepped down after 11 years of service. Unlike the staffers in the white house, we did not have to pack up our boxes and vacate the premises prior to moving day for the new administration.  Rather, my colleagues at the Foundation and I sat in the front seat and watched closely as the 18-month transition unfolded and came to a close. We were in the office to say good-bye to Chip on his last official workday and then back the very next morning to welcome Barry Finestone to his new digs.

Many people have asked my colleagues and me: What was it like? How did you survive the long transition? Well, it is true that the 18-month transition felt rather long, at times.  But now that we are on the other side of this enormous moment for the Foundation, I can more clearly see the benefits and appreciate the process. I share them here to hopefully help other organizations and staff who may experience their own leadership transition down the road.

First, the long transition allowed us time simply to acclimate to the idea that this was in fact happening. For those of us who had been with the Foundation for multiple years, this was a necessary process. Additionally, the long transition helped to strengthen the team internally as we worked to support one another and take steps to anticipate change. While people often focus on the onboarding process for the new CEO—and Barry certainly had a deliberate and complete one—each of us to some degree went through an onboarding of sorts as we refined our roles and responsibilities at the Foundation—a natural thing to do during major transition.

Second, the Foundation’s transition had a somewhat unique relationship factor that worked to its advantage. Barry and Chip knew one another well. The collegiality and friendship that they shared prior to the transition contributed to a very direct, honest, and transparent onboarding process. Of course this helped them; but the benefits also flowed straight through to the team. For example, staff had interacted with Barry at the office multiple times even before he was a candidate for the position—which also was a benefit of Barry being local. All of this laid a strong foundation as staff and Barry grew to know each other even more during the transition. In the three months preceding his official first day of work at the Foundation, Barry attended two Foundation Board meetings and several staff meetings.  This was not only a way for him to build a deeper understanding of our work, but also was an excellent opportunity for Barry to get to know us as individuals and to see the dynamics as we worked together as a team.

Third, a successful transition is not only about the two individuals but about the readiness of the team to rise to the occasion and support the leadership change. Chip did a remarkable job getting his team ready for this moment. He raised us and nurtured us through his entire time as Executive Director. He taught us the art and science of strategic grantmaking and instilled in us the sense of humility and respect that is needed to engage in the relational grantmaking that is now the hallmark of the Jim Joseph Foundation.  Then, to no ones’ surprise, Chip spent 18 months preparing us for this leadership change. He shared with us new and relevant learnings, and he ensured that we were ready to lead. He left behind clear, methodical systems and structures that positioned us to overcome challenges. He empowered us in subtle and effective ways.

Of course the transition did not stop on Barry’s first day. A new leader means new projects and a new style. We have had significant changes to our Board (including a new Board chair) and to our professional structure—moving from founding Executive Director to CEO, as well as adding the positions of COO and CPO. Already the field has seen signals of changes, and there are more to come.  We will certainly begin to look and feel a little different. We might wear our sneakers more often than our dress shoes. Yet while it already is clear that this transition brings new elements to our work, it also is clear that “the new” is being built on solid ground—the essence of the Foundation is with us and will guide us.  Jim Joseph’s inspiration, the efforts of the founding Board, and the beautifully simple goal to create effective and compelling Jewish education experiences for young Jews remain.

Finally, for me, the transition has reinforced my understanding that two excellent leaders can have two very different styles as they both lead a team towards a similar North Star. At a time when many are discussing the key elements of successful leadership transitions, Steven M. R. Covey’s book The speed of Trust is referenced frequently. In it he states that the most essential element to any successful leader or successful team is “trust.” My colleagues and I trusted Chip, and still do. And Barry, from the earliest stages of the transition process, showed us respect and trust that helped lead to a deep trust of us in him. The long and deliberate transition process facilitated that transfer of trust. We came into the process unknowing, lived through it, and were met with a whole lot of trust on the other side—ready to be led by a new CEO and ready to continue to pursue the work in ways tried and true and in ways exciting and new.

In just a few days, Jewish philanthropists, foundation professionals and communal leaders will join together in Atlanta at the Jewish Funders Network (JFN) 2017 conference. We will learn, question, and explore a range of topics of import to our collective work.  For our foundations—the Jim Joseph Foundation and William Davidson Foundation—JFN 2017 will provide a special opportunity to share and discuss just-released findings from Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy, a new report based on research conducted by Lewis J. Bernstein and Associates this past year.

Our foundations chose to commission this study to address a core set of questions that feel pertinent in a world where technology has become such a prevalent part of our daily lives. How are new technological developments affecting learning—and Jewish learning in particular? How might funders develop the expertise to invest strategically in new tools, and in the people developing those tools, to advance our Jewish educational missions?

While we knew that significant opportunities existed for Jewish education in this space, we also knew there was much that we simply did not know. So as we decided to co-invest in research about educational technology and digital engagement, we sought to keep our minds open to new ideas. We were eager to learn from the experts.

Initially, we intended this report to be solely for our foundations’ internal purposes. However, after reviewing it, we understood that the learnings are highly relevant to others in the field: funders, practitioners, community leaders and anyone interested in how tools of Ed Tech could advance cultural and religious learning and engagement.

The report offers fascinating insights that begin to answer the big questions with which we wrestle. And it brings to the fore new questions as well. Divided into two sections, Smart Money first includes a set of recommendations for funders to consider, such as investment strategies, priorities, different structures for collaborations, and more. The second section provides a landscape analysis of educational technology and digital engagement tools and trends—both secular and Jewish. We find this section to be of particular interest, as it showcases the field’s efforts to date, the vast room for growth, and successful models from the secular world that we could adapt to Jewish contexts. As a whole, we believe Smart Money is a substantive starting point to explore this space and to build collaborations around shared interests to leverage these new tools to their fullest.

To that end, we are excited to release this report in coordination with Jewish Funders Network. We are pleased that JFN leadership has commissioned a series of white papers that will probe deeper into different topics raised in the report. This will stimulate additional conversation about the learnings. Over the course of the next few weeks, we all will have the opportunity to read some of those papers as they are unveiled in eJewishPhilanthropy.

Additionally, our partners at JFN are taking the leading role in developing a website to house this report and related white papers, and to keep the field updated on developments and collaborations around educational technology and digital engagement as they emerge. We look forward to sharing the website when it is live.

Finally, just as the findings and recommendations in Smart Money already have spurred us to advance this conversation publicly, we hope they also inspire you to consider dedicating time and resources to learn more and experiment with these ideas. We hope that together we can find new ways to use these powerful tools to help advance our collective work within the Jewish community and beyond.

Kari Alterman is Senior Program Officer of Jewish Life and Continuity at the William Davidson Foundation. Josh Miller is Program Director at the Jim Joseph Foundation. Read Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy

originally appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy 

“It’s an incubator. All of it is a risk.” – Michele Friedman, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Director of New Camp Initiatives

When the Jim Joseph Foundation made a $10 million grant to the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) in 2007 to launch the Specialty Camp Incubator, the field of Jewish camping was in a vastly different place than it is today. Jewish specialty camping was in its infancy, with only a smattering of specialty programs embedded in traditional Jewish overnight camps. While incubators were becoming a popular method to kick-start new ventures both in and out of the Jewish world, incubating a cohort of new camps was new to the field of camping writ large, let alone to FJC.

As a new foundation just beginning its relationship with FJC, the Jim Joseph Foundation challenged FJC for a “bold idea.” With a goal of increasing the number of children attending Jewish overnight camp, especially from new markets, and seeing the growing popularity of both incubators and secular specialty camps, FJC had its idea – the Specialty Camp Incubator. Launching five new Jewish specialty camps just two years later—through the still unfamiliar incubator process—was bold. It was big. It was risky. Nine years later, this grant remains one of the riskiest grants the Foundation has made.

Yet, by all accounts, Incubator I and Incubator II were, and continue to be, an overwhelming success. Nine camps were launched. Over 5,000 campers, and counting, have been reached. Enrollment increases summer after summer. Camps attract new campers instead of cannibalizing existing Jewish camps, and retain campers in Jewish camping for longer periods of times. Much of this success can be attributed to a few key decisions made during Incubators I and II, which effectively mitigated the risk of an inherently risky grant, including:

Prioritization of Data:

As with nearly all Foundation grants, evaluation and data collection were integral parts of the early work of the Incubator. They remain a valuable tool to understand where camps are succeeding and where additional work is needed. In 2008, FJC retained Informing Change to conduct a formative and summative evaluation of the Incubator. Informing Change also evaluated Incubator II and will evaluate Incubator III (the importance of continuity is discussed later). Prioritizing data collection benefited the Incubator in a few meaningful ways:

• Strengthened the Incubator: the early evaluation work focused on the Incubator model itself, allowing the Incubator team to continually strengthen and refine its approach.
• Helped camps focus their work: the evaluation explored the operational specifics of each camp, providing customized data to inform individual decisions.
• Confirmed that the goals and outcomes were being met: Among many positive findings, data showed that enrollment grew 138% from the first to fourth summer, camper retention was over 50%, more than 90% of campers and parents recommended camp to a friend, and camps generated positive changes in camper’s attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors about Jewish life.
• Assisted fundraising: having a proven model that effectively met its goals and outcomes helped fundraise both at the national level—The AVI CHAI Foundation provided funding for Incubators II and III—and at the local level for each individual camp.

Continuity of Staff:

Almost unheard of today, the Incubator team has remained completely intact since the program began in 2007. Michele Friedman is the Program Director, Jay Frankel is the Field Operations Director, Adam Weiss is the Financial Consultant, and Michelle Shapiro Abraham is the Jewish Education Consultant. Informing Change is the evaluator. In fact, the only turnover has been here at the Jim Joseph Foundation! Nine years of continuity has afforded the Incubator a great opportunity to mitigate risk along the way. Staff continuity results in deep knowledge about how each individual operates in the workplace. Trust is built. Strengths and personalities are known with responsibilities tailored accordingly. Learning curves reduce. Institutional knowledge remains. Past experience informs future decisions. Mistakes are not repeated. And challenges and changes that occur throughout the grant period are more easily overcome.

Sure, organizations can manage staff turnover. The Incubator would have too. However, over time, the Incubator became a less risky proposition because of the continuous, dedicated, and expert staff.

Staying Flexible:

Despite the proven record of success, the Incubator team did not rest on its laurels. This was not only because of its never-satisfied mentality, but also because it recognized that in an ever-changing field, it needed to change its approach over time too. For example, initially the Incubator team created the program design and drafted curriculum; each camp then proceeded through the process in roughly the same way. However, the Incubator team quickly realized that each camp and its director is unique, bringing different strengths and requiring different support. It adjusted its approach accordingly to assist directors through the process in a way that made sense to them and their needs. This played out in numerous ways over the course of the Incubator. A few examples include:

• At the cohort level, Incubator I directors brought more of a Jewish education background and required more support in launching and operating a business. Incubator II directors had the opposite background and need.
• Some camps had challenges with site identification and lease negotiations. Some struggled with board development and fundraising. Others still with Jewish programming. The Incubator team offered fully customized support based on each unique need.
• Incubator II initially employed two seasoned camp directors to serve as mentors for the Incubator camps. The Incubator team quickly added two more, recognizing the need for a one on one match to best serve the director and the camp’s specialty.

What works one day might not work the next. What works for one camp director might not be what another one needs. It would have been easy to recognize the early success and put the Incubator into autopilot. Yet this would have made the Incubator model a riskier proposition as the field evolved and new challenges emerged.

Big risks can lead to significant outcomes—either negative or positive. The Specialty Camp Incubator undoubtedly is the latter. Critically, acknowledging these risks at the beginning of a grant helps funders and grantees mitigate them and increases the likelihood of a positive outcome.