News & Blogs Category: From the Foundation Team

One of the many privileges of having served as Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation has been ample opportunity to contribute to the field of Jewish education. In personal conversations; at convenings, forums and conferences; through the Foundation’s website and on this blog; and in various publications, I have shared information on lessons learned by the Foundation through its $436 million of philanthropic investments. I have also opined on trends in the broader fields of education and philanthropy, all in an effort to advance the field about which the Foundation and readers of this blog care so deeply.

Over the next two months, as I step down from the position in which I have been privileged to serve, I want to make maximum use of this platform by highlighting three themes which have emerged as integral to the Foundation’s work. Each of the three blogs will offer reflections in the context of the more than twenty years of study and experience I have had participating in philanthropy to support education.

In this first blog, I discuss the benefits of a concentrated set of priority grants. In this regard, the Foundation’s evolution has resulted in a relatively limited number of major grants of very significant grant amounts over longer periods of time than are customarily awarded.

Before the Foundation began its grantmaking in 2006, the Board undertook an accelerated strategic planning process that included commissioning ten papers from established communal thought leaders as well as a landscape analysis of the field of Jewish education, led by Brandeis University professor Dr. Amy Sales. I do not recall that the Foundation set a target for the number of grants Directors anticipated they would grant on an annual basis, nor did they establish policy that stipulated amounts or duration of grant awards. Board members did make clear, however, that they wanted to honor Jim Joseph’s memory by building a legacy befitting his generosity and that, over the years, the Foundation could convincingly demonstrate philanthropic effectiveness.

Directors early on showed a determined willingness to test the hypothesis that fewer (grants awarded), greater (amounts of funding), and more (years of support) could provide results. This approach derived from the following set of key realizations and decisions the Foundation made regarding how to best pursue its mission:

1. Some organizations and institutions are better aligned with the Jim Joseph Foundation mission and strategic priorities than others.
2. Given the Foundation’s vision of “ever increasing numbers of young Jews engaged in ongoing Jewish learning and choosing to live vibrant Jewish lives,” the potential for greater growth and scale in the number of young Jews served became a critically important criteria for grant consideration.
3. Rigorous due diligence conducted by Foundation professionals on grant applications and budgets consistently revealed inadequate resources in operations, technology, evaluation, professional development, financial reserves and other functional areas of budget. This indicated a need for significant infusion of financial capital.
4. Grantee achievement of target grant objectives and goals of a Jewish educational nature take time, especially if such progress is to be assessed in reliable, valid ways.
5. Related to # 4 above, the Foundation conceptualized its philanthropy to involve continuous discovery, assuming that relationships with grantees developed over time would be most conducive to “grounded” learning.

So the Foundation from the outset accepted the proposition that if grantees’ demonstrated success would be a key measure of the Foundation’s effectiveness, then it would consider multi-year grants and potential renewal of them. Now, almost eleven years into its grantmaking, the facts are these: the average length of time of an award to a major grantee ($1M or more) is 4.1 years. 61% of these major grantees have received renewal grants and 33 grantees have received $378M of the $436M awarded by the Foundation.

Certainly, the Jim Joseph Foundation is not unique as a foundation in directing significant resources for multiple years to mission-aligned grantees. In the field generally, a good deal of what is called “social venture” and “high engagement” philanthropy feature long term commitments of funding as a staple of the style. For example, Christine Letts and William Ryan, in a study of six funders conducted in 2003, found that the foundations “funded their grantees for an average of seven years and many anticipated continuing their funding indefinitely” (Ryan, William & Letts, Christine. “Filling the Performance Gap: High Engagement Philanthropy. What grantees say about power, performance and money.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2003: pg. 29). In this month’s issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Elspeth Revere, former MacArthur Foundation Vice President for Media, Culture and Special Initiatives, avers that grant award durations should be “as long as possible. Three to five years should be the norm, but why not make 10-year grants to organizations that have proven their effectiveness?” (Revere, Elspeth. “After 25 Years of Grant Making, I Worry We Have Lost Sight of Nonprofit Struggles.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sept. 2016: pg. 31).

The Jim Joseph Foundation essentially started with a blank slate in 2006. It could have chosen any number of approaches to its grantmaking. In retrospect, I think one of the most important patterns Directors established was to ask professional staff to bring to the Board major grant proposals from highly aligned grantee seekers that sought significant, long-term funding. The Foundation expected that its large investments would be accompanied by careful grant monitoring and evaluation. The dynamic that originally unfolded led to Foundation and grantee personnel forming close and trusting relationships with one another (about which I will write more in my next blog). Moreover, the Foundation providing renewal funding to its high performing grantees often engendered deepened relationships with these grantees and frequently stimulated other funders to seek Jim Joseph Foundation intelligence on, and experience with, a number of its grantees organizations. Co-funding and collaborative grantmaking ultimately emerged from these conversations.

The Foundation has learned in its first eleven years that multi-million dollar grants given to a relatively small numbers of organizations, renewed on a performance basis, offer distinct benefits to the field of Jewish education, including:

• effective grant implementation that—thanks to approximately 100 independent, professional evaluations—evidence greater numbers of young Jews engaged in meaningful, substantive Jewish learning;
• two dozen Jewish organizations with improved programs and systems offering more young Jews richer Jewish educational experiences than was previously the case; and
• an array of funders of Jewish education directly engaging one another as thought partners in their shared interest to build the field.

All of these positive outcomes affirm my belief that “foundations would likely be more effective if they…saw themselves as long-term strategic partners solving mutually important problems…” (Bacchetti, Ray. Ehrlich, Thomas. Reconnecting Education & Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 2007. Pg. 76).

I am grateful to have served a Board of Directors that believes in and actively seeks to realize the Foundation’s vision. Of course, both the Board and professional team are fortunate to work with many high performing grantee partners. Together, we have endeavored to make the most of eleven years of exceptional philanthropic opportunity.

Growing up in a Jewish home, engaging with various Jewish organizations, living in Israel, and working at a Jewish foundation have allowed me to feel connected to Judaism and the Jewish Community. Participating in the Moishe House Ignite Retreat, a retreat designed to gather, connect, and develop Jewish young adult leaders, challenged this sense of connection and reignited my passion for Judaism and the work I do every day as a staff member of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Some of my fondest memories as a young Jew were Shabbat services at URJ Camp Newman, so I was excited to participate in a Shabbat celebration as one of the first activities of the retreat.  To my surprise, I did not recognize many of the songs; why were we not singing the melodies I knew so well from my years at camp? I looked around at the young Jewish leaders joyously and confidently singing around me.  It was then I realized I have spent too much time away from one of my favorite traditions. This thought simultaneously saddened and inspired me. Over time, different forms of Jewish expression emerge and evolve as people, especially young adults, find new ways to engage with Jewish life.

This was the first eye-opening experience of the weekend, but certainly not the last.  I am grateful for the Foundation’s ability and willingness to support me in experiencing the influence that Moishe House, one of the Foundation’s grantees, has on young Jewish adults and the community. It was unprecedented to send a member of our Foundation’s administrative team into the field in this way, but I have an interest in programming and I fit within the target age demographic, so it was approved as a meaningful professional development opportunity. This opportunity would take time and Foundation resources, so I appreciated my supervisor’s and colleagues’ belief in the value of this experience.

Prior to my participation in the Ignite Retreat, I had studied Moishe House extensively.  I read previous and incoming reports and evaluations, participated in monthly calls, and even began to facilitate a research project examining their Peer-Led Retreat Program.  This involvement led me to feel confident in the Moishe House model and proud of its rapid growth and rates of success, but still I felt removed from understanding the organization thoroughly. What are their core strategies that lead to success?

As a Jewish young adult, I recognize we are a challenging demographic to motivate.  This is not because of ambivalence or laziness, but due to already hectic schedules and the wide variety of options that exist today. It was not until attending this retreat that I fully grasped the potential for Moishe House to impact individual Jewish young adults and the Jewish community at large.  Prior to my own participation, I could not have understood how the innovative structure on which the organization is built cultivates an effective and desirable landscape for young adults from around the world to learn and collaborate Jewishly. From my workspace, I simply could not feel the charisma, dedication, and openness of the staff or appreciate the ambition, passion, and authenticity of the participants.  These are the aspects of Moishe House I came to appreciate, which could only occur through direct experience.

Due to the inclusive and stimulating environment and content created by Moishe House, ambitious and compassionate Jewish young adults are attracted to the houses. In fact, most of the participants at the San Diego retreat actually came from the East Coast, with our farthest traveling participants coming all the way from Australia and Kazakhstan. The retreats are the next step that build on Moishe House’s fluid structure that avoids overt distinctions of serving either “participants” or “leaders/educators.” Instead, all Jewish young adults can feel like they have a place at Moishe House, as they grow and evolve based on where they are with respect to their Judaism and stage in life.  This design of constant growth and the ability to begin participation at any level is also what attracts motivated and entrepreneurial-minded young adults. The retreats are one place where this growth and entrepreneurialism is actualized, as participants find meaning in the daily work they are doing for their Jewish communities, and utilize their global network as sources for current and future collaboration. It was beautiful to witness young adults from around the world coming together to share their passions for Jewish culture, tradition, and education.  Being able to participate in this global network with such thoughtful and motivated individuals made for a powerful weekend.

Traveling to San Diego to participate in the Ignite Retreat, I had hoped to enjoy the weekend, gain greater insight to Moishe House, and develop my professional and leadership skills.  All these goals were accomplished and much more.  The weekend began by pushing me out of my comfort zone and causing me to reexamine how I currently engage in Jewish life. I gained a deep understanding of the Moishe House experience not only through objective metrics, but from personal experience.  Now that I have experienced it first hand, I feel better positioned to contribute to the Foundation’s work in supporting Moishe House. I have formed connections with the staff and am now a part of a network of Jewish leaders from across the world. I have a heightened awareness of the ever-evolving landscape of Jewish education and my commitment to prioritizing my involvement in its evolution has been strengthened. I now more thoroughly understand what the Foundation aspires to achieve through its grantmaking—and my personal passion for Jewish education and philanthropy have been rejuvenated. Regardless of one’s role in a funding organization—be it executive director, program officer, or member of the administrative team—a site visit provides real value and insights that ultimately benefit the grantee and the broader field of Jewish education.

Rachel Halevi is an administrative assistant at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

I realize that one of the first rules in communications is, “Don’t bury the lead!”  And yet, I feel compelled to begin with a bit of context before actualizing my metaphor.  As a five-year transplant to the Bay Area, to say that I entered Warriors fandom in the good years would be a drastic understatement.  Stephen Curry, ½ of the Splash Brothers, completed his 2^nd MVP season; the Warriors took home the Championship in 2015 for the first time in 40 years following that with the first ever 73-win NBA season; and the ‘Dubs’ claim three All-Stars for the first time since 1976.  The fact that the team is owned by a distant cousin who I have never met is not even a factor in my infatuation. With that in mind, it makes sense that my reading over the past weeks has been limited to FiveThirtyEight and ESPN’s plentiful array of exposés on Kevin Durant’s departure from Oklahoma City to Golden State for the 2016-2017 season. 

This may seem like a lot of effort to make a basketball metaphor for philanthropy, and it is.  A month ago, at the first ever Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming, and Environmental Education (JOFEE) gathering at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, a group of practitioners and foundation professionals came together around the shared purposed of building the field. The Jim Joseph Foundation already shared some of the innovative learning and professional development that occurred, which certainly will help the field grow and mature. But another aspect of this gathering warrants an examination, because while at face value this type of gathering is not unique, a gathering that included such different funders is. Moreover, we were not there merely as listeners to a speaker or as observers of a conference; these varied funders, which included the Jim Joseph Foundation, joined with practitioners for focused and deliberate visioning and networking conversations.

The Gathering included representatives from the Atlanta Jewish Federation, Emanuel J. Friedman Philanthropies, Gendler Grapevine, the Leichtag Foundation, the Lucious Littauer Foundation, Hazon, Pearlstone Center, Urban Adamah, and Wilderness Torah.  Just as each practitioner represented a different organization in this space—all of which complimented each other while not entirely duplicating efforts—each of the funders had a unique justification for its funding in this space.  So how did we all end up there together?

As a starting point, the acronym—and the fact that the field itself is an acronym—presents opportunities for different funders. While the J O F E and E are certainly related in this context, they also are separate spaces unto themselves. Inherently, while all the organizations at that first meeting to some degree address farming, food justice, the environment, and other kinds of Jewish outdoor educational interventions, there are important strategic differences to recognize. Whereas the Emanuel J. Friedman Philanthropies (founders of Jewish Initiative for Animals) and the Leichtag Foundation (founders of the Coastal Roots Farm) see JOFEE funding as an end unto itself, for example, the Jim Joseph Foundation sees this investment as a means to funding its strategic priorities of educating Jewish educators and expanding opportunities for effective Jewish learning.

By making space for funders with different strategies and missions to come together, the field displayed a strength (and a potential for even greater strength) only possible by bringing together all of the letters of JOFEE. In this context, field leaders can engage more people in Jewish learning and life experiences; an individual will opt in even if just one part of JOFEE resonates with her or him. Yet, once they do, they open themselves up to other elements of JOFEE that may pique their interest and offer new ways to engage Jewishly. Additionally, since JOFEE essentially brings together even smaller, more narrow fields under one umbrella, the environment is ripe for experimentation, creativity, and collaborative Jewish education and engagement efforts.

A field with these organizing principles helps to overcome the issue of funders and practitioners being siloed based on specific foci that do not equate to the exact priorities of others in a similar space of the same field. Instead, the Gathering’s diverse group of funders and practitioners hypothesized together about a shared set of outcomes that were part of a 2022 Visioning Statement for the JOFEE field. As part of this process, each funder understood individual foundation priorities are part of a larger vision that could increase the overall influence that the organizations in that room have on the broader community. The result was a cohesive first conversation.  Despite the differences in the organizations represented, each of the individuals in the room felt vested in the ultimate well-being of both the Jewish community and the underlying eco-concerns.

As the Jim Joseph Foundation has discussed, collaboration comes with real challenges. Yet time and again we see that the benefits—creative initiatives; greater reach; more opportunities to scale and to become sustainable—outweigh these challenges. It is not unlike a basketball team where superstars come together, perhaps giving up solo fame and the chance to each score more, for the singular focus of winning a championship, which everyone on the Warriors wants to accomplish again, especially after a particularly disappointing Game 7 loss on June 19^th (yes, I remember the date). The recruitment of Kevin Durant was not a singular coach speaking with a player. Amidst many dealmakers on both sides of the negotiation table, four long-tenured Warriors were all a part of the process and the effort to recruit Durant.  Each of them knew that bringing him to the Bay Area would greatly increase their chances at another championship season while as a counter-point acknowledging that bringing this addition would likely reduce the shot attempts and general production value of several if not all of these four players.

Whether in the nonprofit world or the basketball world, a single funder or a single player has a ceiling on the amount of long-term success they achieve on their own. I am grateful to have been included in this initial gathering on behalf of the Jim Joseph Foundation, and to Hazon for assembling this group (which still is only a subset of the greater field). The field is stronger as a result.

Cross-posted in eJewishPhilanthropy

Earlier this summer I spent a half-day with this year’s cohort of Kevah Teaching Fellows. Kevah is a nonprofit that empowers individuals and organizations to build Jewish learning communities by creating Kevah Groups matched to an outstanding Kevah educator.

The Kevah Teaching Fellowship is a two-week cohort-based immersive learning experience for which 20 pluralistic Jewish educators from across the country come together to learn from experts in Adult Jewish Education, practice techniques in teaching workshops, and develop their teaching and facilitation skills in relationship with one another. Sitting in the sun-drenched Kevah offices in Berkeley, listening and learning with the Fellows and their program leader, Kevah’s Senior Rabbinic Educator Rabbi David Kasher, I was struck by how important it is as a representative of a funder to get outside the office walls and connect with the people and organizations with which the Foundation invests.

Fellows are trained through a specific pedagogical model that harnesses the power of a decentralized, interactive, and conversational approach. During the morning I was there, I witnessed both a large facilitated discussion led by Rabbi Kasher in which the Fellows exemplifying a diversity of denomination and geography were able to engage one another as a group, as well as chavruta study where the larger group broke into pairs to discuss text together. I came away with an incredible appreciation for the process of the Kevah Fellowship; indeed, the masterful ways in which Kevah’s educational leadership frames the issues, provides for discussion and conversation, as well as reflects on the lessons learned from the participants.

Beyond the significance and value of site visits for Foundation board and staff—the opportunity to see how a grant program is actually implemented, along with the chance to build deeper relationships with grantees, for example—my visit with the Kevah Teaching Fellows offers additional lessons about an organization’s evolution. First, the Fellowship was initiated a few years after the founding of Kevah itself, which, as an organization, did not have educator training as one of its aspirations. The Fellowship was a result of Kevah’s leaders seeing a need both within the organization and in the broader field of Jewish education. Rather than being complacent in what Kevah already had achieved (numerous Jewish learning communities), the organization’s founders instead reflected on what might emerge that could provide a value-add to their mission and helps to fulfill their vision. Kevah consistently demonstrates this forward looking approach under the leadership of their Board, Staff, and Founder Sara Bamberger.

Second, both Kevah and the Foundation have benefited from the timing of this emphasis on educator training. The growth together in this area is part of the interwoven story of the funder and grantee. As Kevah sought to grow its Jewish educator base, in part through this Fellowship, the Foundation began to emphasize educator development in organizations that employ cohort-based teaching models. The notion of “educating the educators” is a basic strategy for the Foundation, with its investments in high performing organizations and initiatives such as the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, and Jewish Outdoor, Food,  and Environmental Education (JOFEE). These investments of course build on the Foundation’s early Education Initiative investments to HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU.

The opportunity for the Foundation and Kevah to work together in this realm, continually infusing our shared learning back into each other’s work, has strengthened the funder-grantee relationship, led to improved project outcomes, and resulted in learning that both Kevah and the Foundation share with the field.

Children are served best in classrooms and other learning environments that consistently take into account their specific learning needs. The support children receive is most effective when it is offered throughout the entire day of learning—by all educators—as opposed to only specific periods of the day.

With this premise, in November 2011, the Jim Joseph Foundation awarded a grant to Boston-based Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) (in partnership with Gateways: Access to Jewish Education and Yeshiva University School Partnership) for the development and implementation of the B’Yadenu model in five Boston-area Jewish day schools: Gann Academy, Jewish Community Day School, Maimonides School, Solomon Schechter Day School and Striar Hebrew Academy of Sharon.

Much of the groundwork for this project was established by grants from the Ruderman Family Foundation that encouraged Boston area schools to set up staff and system infrastructures for serving an increasing number of students with special learning needs. The Ruderman Family Foundation has been a co-funder of the B’Yadenu project and through its efforts on inclusion and its commitment to creating sustainable models has created a vision and direction for this important work.

A Model of Inclusion
Over the past four years, the five demonstration schools have employed this model to create “whole school change” strategies, utilizing professional development activities to build teacher capacity to better meet the needs of diverse learners. A particularly compelling aspect of this project is that it enables participating teachers and schools to work more effectively with all students, not only the estimated 15-20 percent of students who have mild or moderate learning disabilities.

At the regional level, Gateways has supported the five schools through professional development in line with the strategies developed by each school. Currently, any Boston-area school can contract with Gateways for strategic professional development. And soon, Gateways—which now has a network of professional development providers both inside and outside the agency—will expand its reach outside Boston through its new Center for Professional Learning and a host of online tools and resources, offering more communities its expertise in teacher professional development combined with a commitment to Jewish day school education.

John D’Auria leads a professional development session for B’Yadenu teachers. Courtesy of B’Yadenu

While the B’Yadenu model was designed to address inclusion explicitly in day schools, the project’s committed team of professionals—from CJP, Gateways, Yeshiva University, and the five Jewish day schools—has created a national model that actually addresses several critical areas for day school education, more broadly, including: supporting diverse learners, especially children with special learning needs; strengthening Jewish day school leadership; enhancing professional development; and consolidating project management.

Necessary Time
A key lesson learned through implementing this model is that sufficient time for planning, for implementation, and for documenting change is necessary for a school to develop an impactful strategy that can be successfully embedded school-wide. This approach differs from the typical “in and out” or “one-shot” professional development found in many schools.  The B’Yadenu model instead requires a commitment to an intensive planning process and an equal commitment to focused implementation of an inclusive learning structure over a period of years. It takes time to create the conditions that build a school’s capacity to best serve all its learners.  Even as the B’Yadenu model is well on its way toward successful development and can boast promising results to date, its use across the five Jewish day schools is still in progress.

Teacher “Buy-in” as the Key Factor
Interim evaluation results from the Goodman Research Group show that all of the schools created momentum for change with comprehensive planning and by establishing relevant and meaningful activities for their staff.

The five schools each use a variety of professional development models–including whole school staff trainings, peer mentoring, small group coaching, and consultant in residence. Across several of the schools, the “train the trainers” model has become an effective approach.

The evaluation clearly demonstrates that professional development is most likely to translate to successful inclusion strategies in the classroom if teachers “buy-in” to what they are learning. This buy-in occurs when teachers perceive that the approach enhances their teaching rather than imposes a burden. Thus, the B’Yadenu model is based on a top-down, bottom-up process with teachers and administrators working together leading to the best conditions for the success of this model.

What Now and What Next
A final report from the evaluator on the five-year initiative is due this October. Currently the five Jewish day schools are committed to their work with whole school culture change addressing students with diverse learning needs. They will continue the B’Yadenu demonstration project, and they are ready to develop the model further.

The Jim Joseph Foundation Board, following assessment and evaluation of the model, believes that B’Yadenu can contribute significantly to day school education for all who seek it. With this outlook, the Board approved an additional three year grant to complete the B’Yadenu implementation in Boston and to support a pilot dissemination and outreach program to other communities. Already, in the first phase of this program, two communities (Detroit and Miami) received support from Gateways, YU, and CJP to adapt the B’Yadenu model to their particular circumstances. In the second phase of the program, more communities will have opportunities to adapt the model.

The B’Yadenu demonstration initiative simultaneously was a means by which to implement important change in five day schools; to learn lessons about how to do this most strategically and effectively; and to develop a model that can be scaled and adapted for communities across the country. For information about the project and to learn how your community can become involved, contact Alan Oliff, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, at [email protected] or Arlene Remz, Gateways, at [email protected].

Alan Oliff is Director of the Initiative for Day School Excellence at Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Stacie Cherner is a Senior Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Source: “B’Yadenu: It’s In Our Hands To Create Inclusive Day Schools ,” The Jewish Week, August 1, 2016

Work at the Jim Joseph Foundation this summer will be highly concentrated, as it has been these past ten summers. Immediately following the Foundation Board meeting in mid-July, we will begin preparing for another meeting with the Board of Directors in early September. At the moment, it appears that as many as a half dozen major grant proposals will be reviewed by Directors at these two meetings.

With transition occurring at both the professional and governance levels, active change management is necessary in order to seamlessly “hand off” responsibilities to the incoming President and CEO and new Directors. This activity adds a measure of complexity to the Foundation’s otherwise routine grantmaking processes; we rely on colleagues and technical assistance experts to guide the Foundation in this period of change and growth.

Against this backdrop, it is natural to reflect on a decade of Jim Joseph Foundation philanthropy. That the world is different than it was in 2006 obviously goes without saying. And that Jewish education–and philanthropy in support of Jewish education–has evolved is also manifestly apparent.

It is in this context that I confer with Foundation Directors and the professional team to share lessons we have learned as a basis to improve the Foundation’s future performance.  At the same time, as part of a multi-pronged CEO OnBoarding plan, Barry Finestone and I constantly converse with one another about the dynamic growth of the sector, accelerating trends in Jewish education, and potential ventures for the Foundation to pursue.

The Foundation is in the midst of clarifying and refining its strategic approach to numerous areas of its grantmaking. As part of this process, the professional team devotes hours to learning and research: studying Jewish young adult engagement and education; critically examining (uses of) educational technology and digital content (in Jewish educational contexts); exploring diversity issues (as related to education of young Jews, the organizations serving them, and the Foundation’s own forms of diversity); and updating our understanding of best practice professional development and training of Jewish educators.

We remain vigilant in surveying Israel education, routinely discussing with Directors potential mission-aligned grantmaking possibilities.  We have considerably deepened our study of formal programs in (educational) leadership.

This ongoing learning, studying of programs, and constant search for best practices is greatly aided by our foundation funding partners, who contribute meaningfully to these efforts.  Funding partners often direct us to seminal sources of expertise or inform us about an emerging initiative that builds on the initial findings of research we are conducting.

The past decade’s worth of grantmaking and learning combined with a prospective future filled with new opportunities and leadership changes—considered deliberately and in interaction with one another—make for charged moment in time at the Jim Joseph Foundation. I hope that as the Foundation’s intensive work continues in my final months as Executive Director, I will soon be able to describe a few new major initiatives that will help propel the Foundation—and the field of Jewish education—forward.

A couple of years ago, four foundations set out to find the answer to a critically important question: How do we measure the success of our Jewish teen engagement and education initiatives?

The question, while specific, also spoke to a real need. Our foundations recognized the importance of engaging the next generation of Jews in Jewish life as a way to ensure the vibrancy and longevity of our community. But there was a gap between what our community’s teen initiatives accomplished and what our actual long-term goals were — and are.

To address this need, we came together to invest in a significant way in research on Jewish teens. The result is a new report, Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today.

The research that informs the report was designed to identify a set of shared outcomes to be used across various programs when assessing Jewish teen education and engagement initiatives. Not only were we pleased with the clarity of that research, we were also pleased with the process. For example:

• We found it very helpful to partner with a highly knowledgeable and trusted voice in the field — in this case, The Jewish Education Project‘s David Bryfman, who already had strong relationships with many of the parties involved in these efforts. Bryfman led the work in partnership with an experienced research team.

• All parties involved — national and local funders, practitioners, and teens themselves —demonstrated a willingness to move away from old frameworks (both for teen programs and their evaluation) designed by adults to a new framework that takes into account the voices and interests of a new generation of teens.

• We made sure the researchers conducted focus groups with teens and interviewed parents and practitioners. As a group, we then reviewed what was learned, proposed a set of outcomes, tested them with stakeholders, refined them based on that feedback, and then retested. We made sure that what we had developed through the process strongly reflected what we had heard from the teens themselves.

• To help ensure that our efforts would lead to actual, positive change on the ground, toward the end of the process we brought in experts to “translate” the shared outcomes into draft survey questions for teens in communities across the country. The survey questions then went through an iterative review and refinement process with funders, practitioners, and teens.

We are now looking forward to putting the report to work and applying its lessons to the benefit of our field.

How We Leverage Outcomes to Advance a Field

While coming up with a shared set of outcomes was a primary goal of the process, an added bonus was the qualitative research that revealed some incredibly informative, insightful, and in some cases surprising aspects about Jewish teen life today — including how Jewish teens think about their lives, their families, their identities, and their social groups. In short, we learned that our community needs to work with teens to create experiences that address allaspects of their lives. Teens are ambitious, move fluidly between communities and identities, want to be challenged, and want programs that add meaning and value to their lives — and help them attain their long-term life goals.

Along with these valuable insights, Generation Now unveils fourteen outcomes that the research suggests Jewish teen initiatives and programs should strive to achieve in order to have the deepest, most meaningful impact.

Because of the collaborative nature of this investment — and the existence of a Jewish Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative comprised of multiple funders and national and local stakeholders from a range of communities — we are positioned to leverage the report and help further advance and align the field. Rosov Consulting, a leader in evaluating Jewish education initiatives, already is piloting the outcomes and measurement tools in multiple communities that are part of the collaborative. And we have been gratified by the strong interest from national organizations and other communities interested in putting the tools to use for their own assessment work. We’ve also been gratified by the interest from practitioners in the field of Jewish education who want to explore how other audiences (both younger and older) might be able to use these tools.

Moving forward, we want to encourage organizations to train their practitioners to design programs that achieve the outcomes presented in Generation Now. In addition, we want to aggregate data from multiple evaluations using a shared set of survey questions based on these outcomes in order to mine the results for cross-organizational learning. Developing this aggregated picture is critical for building a field with a set of uniform metrics premised on best practices and a culture of knowledge-sharing.

A report is only as useful as the degree to which its lessons are absorbed and applied. In the field of general education, for example, standardized tools are today used to both implement new practices and measure their results. But in the field of Jewish education, and religious education more generally, measuring one’s relationship to culture and faith is challenging. So, while we work to measure our community’s impact on Jewish teens’ life journeys, we also plan to refine the outcomes we would like to see and invest in the tools needed to achieve those outcomes as we learn more about their use in the field.

Advancements Lead to Smarter Investments

Generation Now catalyzes a significant shift in Jewish teen education and engagement. The field is moving beyond thinking about teens as passive recipients of Jewish learning experiences. Whereas before we would ask, “How can we influence the Jewish lives of teens?” we now ask: “How might we understand and engage the teen as a whole person? And how can Judaism enrich and deeply influence his or her life journey?” Equipped with this new understanding of Jewish teens, our organizations can make smarter investments in their success; evaluators have more strategic and accurate indicators and tools to determine whether our investments are having an impact; and teens themselves are more likely to be attracted to the offerings they and we create together. As we have learned, broad and deep research combined with a commitment to apply the findings of that research are an important way to advance a field.

Jon Woocher, Ph.D., is president of the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Josh Miller is program director at the Jim Joseph Foundation. The two foundations, along with theCharles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Marcus Foundation, commissioned the report Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today.

Source: A Collaboartive Investment to Build Shared Outcomes for Our Field,” Jon Woocher and Josh Miller, PhilanthropyNewsDigest, June 9, 2016

In San Francisco, the school year is about to end. Teachers and children (mine included!) are counting down the final days to summer. In the Jewish calendar, we are counting, too, but upwards rather than down as we mark the days of the Omer.

The end of the school year is a special time – one of marking accomplishments and celebration of learning. It is also a time to celebrate educators. We bring them gifts, make cards and take a moment to acknowledge their centrality to the process and cycle of learning.

At the Jim Joseph Foundation we do this daily. Since the Foundation’s inception, educating Jewish educators has been the first of three Foundation strategic priorities. To date, the Board has awarded more than $120 million to organizations that support educators’ professional credentialing and development, investing in programs that benefit thousands of educators. Consistent with our understanding that effective education occurs in myriad settings and at different life stages, this funding supports a variety of professional development and training opportunities engaging educators of all shapes and sizes – experiential educators, day school educators, Israel educators, peer-to-peer educators, early childhood educators. And these programs support educators at various stages of development, whether they are pre-service, early career, or veteran.

An obvious question is what compels the Foundation to award this amount of funding. There are many reasons. 1) there is a high demand for trained Jewish educators; 2) investments in educator training achieve a long-term multiplier effect through the large numbers of students and colleagues each trained educator ultimately influences; 3) investing in professional development and training programs provides peripheral benefits for advancing the field of Jewish education by contributing to the development and dissemination of knowledge and practice and enhancing the status of Jewish educators; and 4) even with this need and the benefits mentioned here, we still see asystemic under-investment in educator training at all levels, including both in-service and pre-service opportunities.

For the Foundation, another value of these investments (as is true for many of ours) is that the learnings from each have informed subsequent educator training grants. This enables the Foundation to continually experiment with new ways to structure investments to best support the field. Foundation professionals speak frequently both with the partners that conduct the educator training programs – such as the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, the iCenter, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah – and the many grantees that employee these educators, such as BBYO, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel, and many more. Through these conversations we gain a deeper understanding of supply and demand for these programs and the types of professional experiences that are most helpful to educators in different settings.

Certainly the seminal investment for the Foundation in this area of strategic priority is the Education Initiative – $45 million in grants for educator professional development and training programs at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, The Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University. Launched in 2010, 18 new certificate and degree programs were developed as a result of this investment focused on expanding educator preparation programs and building capacity to place and support currently practicing and newly trained educators.

This fall, the fifth and final evaluation report of the Education Initiative commissioned from American Institutes for Research (AIR) will be released. With more than 1,500 Jewish educators now part of the data set – including at least a third currently in middle or senior management positions in Jewish education – we are eager to share this summative report and substantial key findings with the field. Among many other areas, we anticipate the report will build on key lessons already learned from the Foundation’s work in the field, including:

1)     Working in partnership with prospective employers at the outset provides opportunity for strategic educator placements and increases the relevance of the learning offered through training programs.

2)     Cohort-based learning experiences establish strong networks for learning and endure well beyond the duration of the program itself, leading to greater alumni engagement and ongoing learning after the formal program conclusion. The exciting development of the Experiential Jewish Educators Alumni Network (about which we will share more soon) is indicative of this.

3)     Effective programs include ongoing and intensive mix of face-to-face, online and ongoing mentoring.

A decade into many of the Foundation’s educator training investments, it is rewarding to see their impact on the field, in action. Last week, for example, some colleagues and I went on a site visit to Stanford University. We met with talented professionals at Hillel working to educate, engage and nurture Jewish students on campus. We discussed the tools and training they need to do their work. We also met with Professor Ari Kelman, Jim Joseph Foundation Chair, and three of Ari’s current graduate students in the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies – all of whom are engaged in applied research that will help build the field and help to shape the future of Jewish education and Jewish educators.

A healthy educational eco-system requires a mix of investments with varying target audiences and areas of focus. But undoubtedly, high quality educators are necessary for almost any initiative to be successful. They come from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and interests, each bringing something special to their learners. We continue to hold them in high regard, with the deep belief that all of these educators count – just as we at the Jim Joseph Foundation count on all of these educators.

Dawne Bear Novicoff is Assistant Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation

Source: “Counting All Educators, and Learning as We Count,” Dawn Bear Novicoff, eJewishPhilanthropy, May 31, 2016

The Jim Joseph Foundation invests in curated immersive learning experiences and the training of talented educators who facilitate them. From a pedagogical view, these kinds of experiences stand in contrast to the simpler “trip to the museum,” which by itself typically lacks the educational component needed to catalyze learning. In contrast, an immersive learning experience provides an opportunity for a participant’s growth in terms of knowledge, character, and identity.

One example of the value of such an opportunity is found in a 1970 study of Sesame Street^[1] (which premiered in 1969). The study sought to determine whether socioeconomic status (SeS) was a determining factor in whether young children (ages 3 to 5) benefited from watching the program. In the study, there was a difference in baseline performance between those with low SeS and high SeS, although both segments exhibited material improvement on assessments after regularly watching the program.

In a subsequent study that examined the same age group^[2], however, researchers noted a profound divergence and determined that certain children not differentiated by SeS excelled at a far greater rate than other participants. The X-factor? Parents. When one or more parents collectively watched episodes with their children, researchers noticed that children’s measurable skill sets increased more than the skills sets of those whose parents did not. The result pointed to the “curated experience” as an important and defining one.

This idea of curation permeates each of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s strategic priorities: Increase the Number and Quality of Jewish Educators and Education Leaders, Expand Opportunities for Effective Jewish Learning, and Build a Strong Field for Jewish Education. Three grants — to George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development, the American Friends of the Israel Museum, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Innovation Fund — represent the symbiotic actualization of these strategies.

Increase the Number and Quality of Jewish Educators and Education Leaders. In 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation complemented its growing portfolio of grants to American institutions of higher education — which already included New York University, Stanford University, Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Yeshiva University, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah — to include George Washington University. One of the unique departments that differentiates GWU is its Department of Museum Studies, regarded by many as the premier program in the country. The Jim Joseph Foundation awarded a grant for a dual degree program at GWU’s Graduate School of Education and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences to create the first ever Master of Arts in Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts degree. The program specializes in creating interdisciplinary educators who emerge from the program as “scholar-practitioners” for the field of Jewish cultural education. In other words, they are specially trained in visioning, designing, and facilitating curated cultural experiences aimed at deepening Jewish learning.

Expand Opportunities for Effective Jewish Learning. Also in 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation co-invested with the Steinhardt Foundation to increase the learning opportunities for Birthright Israel participants at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Consistent with the foundation’s view with respect to meaningful outcomes, the grant was meant not merely to increase numbers (although small subsidies helped to grow the number of attendees from a few thousand in 2013 to 15,000 in 2014 and to more than 20,000 in 2015). Instead, the grant focused on the development of a curated curriculum for Birthright guides and stipulated that they be formally trained by the museum’s educational department before receiving the portion of the grant meant to subsidize a Birthright Israel group’s admission to the museum. Subsequently, hundreds of Birthright Israel guides attended at least one of the eleven trainings offered by the museum. While it is possible that without the training requirement more groups would have utilized the subsidy, the Jim Joseph Foundation was interested in making a curated immersive learning experience more accessible. In total, nearly half of all Birthright Israel participants worldwide were brought to the Israel Museum over the last twelve months, making it the third most-visited Birthright Israel site after the Western Wall and Yad Vashem.

Build a Strong Field for Jewish Education. In 2008, the Jim Joseph Foundation funded the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Innovation Fund, a central component of which is to educate museum curators and other practitioners from across the country. One example was the formation of the Jewish Education and Technology Institute (JET), an educational workshop for Jewish day school teachers designed to teach them how integrate tech applications into their regular curriculum. Another is the active partnerships that have been cultivated through the fund that include but are not limited to George Washington University and the Israel Museum. The partnerships complement local programming and content acquisition and provide resources ranging from early childhood education to young adult programming.

As a strategic grantmaking foundation, grants awarded by the board are intended to be part of a continuum of funding that helps build the field of Jewish education, particularly for young Jews between the ages of 13 and 30. Investing in the education of quality Jewish educators is one step toward the ultimate goal of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which is to inspire young people to discover the joy of living vibrant Jewish lives. The investment in cultural Jewish learning experiences is another important way the foundation attempts to achieve this goal. It is not enough to see a picture without knowing the story behind it, just as it is not enough to take a trip without understanding that you are walking through history.

Steven Green is director of grants management/program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

____

[1] Bogatz and Ball, The First Year of Sesame Street: An Evaluation, Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service, 1970.

[2] Lesser, Gerald S.  (1975) [1974].  Children and Television:  Lessons From Sesame Street.  New York: Vintage Books

Source: “Turning a Visit into an Immersive Experience,” May 11, 2016, Steven Green, Philanthropy News Digest, May 11, 2016

As I move through my eleventh and final year as executive director at the Jim Joseph Foundation, I find it helpful to reflect on key grantmaking principles that inform how I work with Foundation Board members and professionals to help to shape the Foundation’s philanthropy.

From the Foundation’s inception, Directors asked the professional team to collaborate with grantees and evaluation experts to carefully assess grants awarded. The Board believes the Foundation’s major grants (generally, awards of one million dollars or more over multiple years) should incorporate “right-sized” evaluation that produces valuable learning for the grantee, the Foundation, and the field of Jewish education.

Many developments and changes have occurred in Jewish education, the Jewish community at-large, and in the social profit sector as a whole during the past decade. In this blog, I want to focus on progress made in the sector regarding evaluation. In fact, the approach to evaluation that the Jim Joseph Foundation adopted in 2006 now is embedded within a grantmaking framework known as the Performance Imperative (PI).

In this regard, PI “ambassador”[i] Edward Skloot envisioned nearly a decade ago that, “the Foundations’ role needs to be re-imagined. Instead of funders, they become the information resources, brokers (and givers) of money and relationships, ongoing learners and listeners, and active promoters or success” (Beyond the Money, Reflections on Philanthropy, The Nonprofit Sector and Civic Life, 1999-2006, pg. 31).

The Performance Imperative features seven principles that represent the basis on which an organization can embark on this re-imagination and “deliver – over a prolonged period of time – meaningful, measurable, and financially sustainable results for the people or causes the organization is in existence to serve” (Leap of Reason, Performance Imperative). These principles – or pillars – are:

1. Courageous, adaptive, executive and board leadership (the preeminent pillar)
2. Disciplined, people-focused management
3. Well-designed and well-implemented programs and strategies
4. Financial health and sustainability
5. A culture that values learning
6. Internal monitoring for continuous improvement
7. External evaluation for mission effectiveness

At the Jim Joseph Foundation, due diligence and other interactions with prospective grantees that have been invited to submit grant proposals involve careful consideration of PI factors. While our review is not formally tied to PI pillars per se, the document reviews we conduct; conversations we have with prospective grantees; internal team meeting discussions about the grant seekers’ organizational health, executive and volunteer leadership, history of demonstrated results in programming; and the PI principles discussed previously are integral to this review. For an outcomes-oriented foundation like the Jim Joseph Foundation, the PI presents a platform for philanthropic accountability.

At the same time, we recognize that a 501c3 requires resources to ingrain PI principles into its operations and culture. Organizations that have annual budgets of less than $3 million likely will be hard-pressed to execute on all of the seven pillars. Funders need to be aware – acutely so, I would argue – of the capacity of grantees so as not to hold beneficiaries to unrealistic performance expectations. The Foundation itself needs to develop genuine appreciation for grantees’ organizational structure and finances; its leadership, staffing, and governance; its commitment to execute on strategic priorities of the organization; its project management; and its approaches to both monitoring and assessing its performance. In the same vein, understanding what grantees’ finances actually enable them to do creates the possibility that capacity building funding could be instrumental in positioning a grantee for future success.

At the Jim Joseph Foundation, many grantees benefit from major, multi-million, multi-year investments. It behooves the Foundation to develop trusting relationships with grantees based on conversation, disclosure, transparency, and shared commitment to understanding the extent to which the grantee is achieving what the Foundation’s partnership with it is designed to accomplish.

I have consistently found that acting on the PI pillars impels Jim Joseph Foundation grantmaking professionals to work in concert with grantee project personnel. As a Foundation staff, we grow more confident in our grant recommendations made to the Foundation Board of Directors when our relationship with new grant applicants and existing grantees (for grant renewals) is based on openness, integrity and a sense of joint Foundation–grantee responsibility.

I share this blog now—during a period of transition in the Foundation’s executive leadership and governance—because I have a responsibility as the Foundation’s departing Executive Director to describe the Foundation’s established grantmaking practice within the context of trends and emerging ideas in philanthropy. Certainly, as I look back over the past ten years, this surge in sector sophistication has been amply displayed in field leadership provided by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Fiscal Management Associates (FMA), Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, The Foundation Center’s Grantcraft, The Non-profit Finance Fund, and others. Their efforts offer the Jim Joseph Foundation and funder colleagues frameworks and tools to both measure and to demonstrate philanthropic effectiveness.

Candidly, there is a special connection between this type of accountability and the Foundation’s founder, Jim Joseph, z’’l. It is of great comfort to me that in his real estate business Mr. Joseph concentrated not only on “location, location, location” but also on “results, results, results.” Mr. Joseph would expect that the Foundation bearing his name would nurture a Performance Imperative orientation among organizations providing Jewish education—particularly those that are beneficiaries of his exceptionally generous support. In this spirit, it is both eminently reasonable for stakeholders in Jewish education to ask “how are we doing?” and for funders and grantees to have a thoughtfully constructed basis on which to respond.

[i]A community of likeminded individuals from corporate, governmental, and social profit sectors have organized as “ambassadors” for the PI. Highlighting Mario Morino’s Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity, David E.K. Hunter’s Working Hard – and Working Well, and David Grant’s The Social Profit Handbook as seminal PI resources, ambassadors strive to engage all those who are stakeholders in improving the independent sector to critically consider the application of PI pillars to their work.

The Jim Joseph Foundation invests in curated, immersive, learning experiences and the training of talented educators who facilitate them. From a pedagogical view, this learning experience stands in contrast to a simpler “trip to the museum,” which by itself typically lacks the educational component that catalyzes learning. Rather, an immersive learning experience provides an opportunity for a participant’s growth of knowledge, character, and identity.

One example of the value of such an opportunity is found in a 1970 study of Sesame Street,[1] (which had premiered in 1969). The study sought to determine whether socioeconomic status (SeS) was a determining factor for whether children aged 3-5 benefited from watching the program. In this study, for this demographic, there was a difference in baseline performance between those with low SeS and high SeS. Both segments, however, exhibited material improvement on assessments after regularly watching Sesame Street.

Yet in a subsequent study examining the same age group[2], researchers noted a profound divergence. Researchers determined that certain children not differentiated by SeS excelled at a far greater rate than others.  The X-factor?  Parents.  When one or more parents collectively watched the Sesame Street episodes with their children, they saw the children’s measurable skill sets increase significantly more than those who did not. This result pointed to the “curated experience” as an important and a defining one.

This idea of curation permeates through each of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s strategic priorities:  Increase the Number and Quality of Jewish Educators and Education Leaders, Expand Opportunities for Effective Jewish Learning, and Build a Strong Field for Jewish Education.  Three respective grants to The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development, the American Friends of the Israel Museum, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Innovation Fund represent the symbiotic actualization of these strategies.

Increase the Number and Quality of Jewish Educators and Education Leaders
In 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation complemented its growing portfolio of grants to American institutions of higher education—which already included New York University, Stanford University, Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Yeshiva University, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah—to include George Washington University.  One of the unique departments that differentiates George Washington University is its Department of Museum Studies, regarded by many as the premier program in the country.  The Jim Joseph Foundation awarded a grant for a dual degree program at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences to create the first ever Master of Arts in Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts degree.  The program specializes in creating interdisciplinary educators who can emerge as what is described as a “scholar-practitioner” for the field of Jewish cultural education.  In other words, they are specially trained in visioning, designing, and facilitating curated cultural experiences to deepen Jewish learning.

Expand Opportunities for Effective Jewish Learning
Also in 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation co-invested with the Steinhardt Foundation to increase the learning opportunities for Birthright Israel participants at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.  Consistent with the Foundation’s view on meaningful outcomes, this grant was not meant merely to increase numbers (although small subsidies helped to grow the number of attendees from a few thousand in 2013 to 15,000 in 2014 and to more than 20,000 in 2015). Instead, the grant focused on the development of a curated curriculum for these attendees at the Israel Museum. The grant stipulated that guides must be formally trained by the Israel Museum educational department before receiving the entry subsidy portion of the grant to bring a group to the museum. Consequently, hundreds of Birthright guides attended at least one of the 11 trainings offered by the Israel Museum over just the past year. While it is possible that without this training requirement more groups would have utilized the subsidy, the Jim Joseph Foundation was interested in making the curated, immersive learning experience more accessible. In total, nearly half of all Birthright Israel participants worldwide were brought to the Israel Museum over the last 12 months, making it the third most visited site on Birthright next to the Kotel and Yad Vashem.

Build a Strong Field for Jewish Education
In 2008, the Jim Joseph Foundation first funded the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Innovation Fund, a central component of which is to educate museum curators and other practitioners from across the country.  One example of this was the formation of the Jewish Education and Technology (JET) Institute, an educational workshop for Jewish day school teachers to integrate tech applications into their regular curriculum.  Another is the active partnerships and efforts towards collaboration that have been cultivated through the Innovation Fund that includes but is not limited to George Washington University and the Israel Museum. This complements the local programming and content acquisition that provide resources ranging from early childhood education for families with young children to young adult programming.

As a strategic grantmaking foundation, grants awarded by the Board intended to be part of a continuum of funding help to build the field of Jewish education, particularly for young Jews ages 13-30. Investing in the education of quality, experiential Jewish educators is one step towards the ultimate goal of the Jim Joseph Foundation, inspiring young people to discover the joy of living vibrant Jewish lives. The investment in cultural Jewish learning experiences is another significant way that the Jim Joseph Foundation attempts to achieve this goal. It is not enough to see a picture without the story behind it, and it is not enough to take a trip without understanding that you are walking through history.

[1] Bogatz and Ball, The First Year of Sesame Street: An Evaluation, Princeton, New Jersey: Educational Testing Service, 1970.

[2] Lesser, Gerald S.  (1975) [1974].  Children and Television:  Lessons From Sesame Street.  New York: Vintage Books

Today’s young adults possess passion and energy in abundance. They are ambitious, smart, creative, and driven by a desire to help others. They know how to bring new technologies and networks of peers to bear on the hard work of community building. They are dreamers and doers in equal measure.

All of which makes them integral to any effort to take on our toughest social, civic, and humanitarian challenges. Indeed, the question most grant makers — ourselves included — struggle with is not whether to engage this generation in our work but how to do so most effectively.

But helping organizations adapt to the needs of young leaders while remaining true to the needs of communities — and foster a mutually beneficial relationship between the two — is easier said than done.

We know young adults are attracted to opportunities for social and civic engagement. We also know they have high expectations for the quality and effectiveness of those opportunities and that they want them to fit neatly into their way of life, skills, and values.

A recent study by Repair the World, an organization our foundations both support for their work to promote volunteerism, offers one approach for achieving this intricate balancing act. “Building Jewish Community Through Volunteer Service” looks at the organization’s Communities program, which places full-time fellows in cities to put together projects that work on pressing local needs and involve young Jews in volunteer service.

COURTESY OF REPAIR THE WORLD
Repair the World, an organization that promotes volunteerism, offered various approaches to engage young adults in social work in a recent study.

While the report focuses on what the group learned engaging young Jews, its insights are relevant for any organization invested in taking a data-driven approach to engaging young adults in working for social change. It’s also notable that the group is led by David Eisner, who spent five years as the chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, where he got a national view of what matters most in jump-starting volunteerism.

Here are some of the findings:

Peer leadership is the name of the game. The Communities program rests on the creativity and influence of young adults. Fellows are in charge of forging collaborations with local organizations and recruiting volunteers from their own generational ranks. The study found near-universal appreciation among project participants for the fellows, and three out of four credit fellows with helping them stay involved with Communities.

Periodic and regular participants reinforce each other. One of the strengths of the Communities program is the interplay between occasional volunteers and the fellows who are in it for the long haul. For volunteers, the no-membership, no-commitment approach works: By the second year of the program, half are coming back three or more times for additional opportunities. The open-door policy means volunteers can carve out space in their schedules to do good while balancing other interests and demands on their time — a crucial perk for millennials. And interacting with the fellows gives volunteers a window on opportunities for an ongoing, meaningful engagement in service and Jewish life.

People walk through the door for different reasons. Young adults show up to make an impact for those in need. But the experience serves multiple purposes: Volunteers are there to do good, connect with like-minded peers, meet new people from other backgrounds, and have a positive social experience.

Reflection leads to meaning, and meaning to action. The Communities program helps volunteers put their service in a broader context, drawing parallels between the work at hand and Jewish thought and tradition. The program also allows for reflection at the end of the experience, facilitated by a skilled leader who uses a range of tools and methods — Jewish and secular — to help individuals find personal meaning in the service just completed. For example, volunteers might study a piece of Jewish text, discuss the history of civic engagement in their community, or share personal experiences of how their lives have been changed by service.

Doing this after the service activity is critical so participants fully absorb what they just accomplished and better understand the people they served. Moreover, as the study found, authentic reflection helps volunteers give deeper meaning to the work they have done — and that makes them more likely to return.

Importantly, the report also reflects the very real impact Communities is making. Organizations supported by Repair the World fellows now have additional capacity to pursue their missions, and volunteers and local neighborhoods have developed mutual trust and understanding.

For example, in its second year, Repair the World Pittsburgh recruited 30 percent of the volunteers who serve as mentors at Higher Achievement, allowing the organization to grow from serving 100 youths a week to 150.

In Philadelphia, Repair created the Philly Farm Crew, which provides volunteers to local urban farms, many of which donate their produce to local food pantries and which have significantly boosted their capacity with the additional help. At the same time, the Farm Crew has built community among the volunteers and increasing retention and a sense of belonging.

Building projects that appeal to millennials takes work, and there’s still more to be done. We invested in Communities with the knowledge that the most effective approach will take time to crystallize. But Repair the World is offering a promising path for all of us who want to empower young adults to pursue social change and are willing to speak their language.

Chip Edelsberg is executive director of the Jim Joseph Foundation. Lisa Eisen is vice president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

Source: “4 Steps to Get Young  Volunteers Involved in Social Change,” Chip Edelsberg and Lisa Eisen, Chronicle of Philanthropy, April 22, 2016