News & Blogs Category: From the Foundation Team

Leaving the confines of the Jim Joseph Foundation offices for an on-the-ground visit with grantees is both an important and genuinely enjoyable part of the job as a program officer. I credit these “site visits” for playing a significant part in my continued growth at the Foundation over the last six months. They have strengthened my relationship with grantees and greatly improved my understanding of a grant program or organization in which the Foundation invested.

Yet, the lessons learned from a site visit are not always immediately obvious or what one might expect. Sometimes this learning occurs in surprising ways and at surprising times. Moreover, what has crystalized for me is the idea that both the formal and informal parts of site visits have profound effects on how foundation staff and grantees interact with each other and approach their work together.

Traveling Between Sites is as Productive as the Site Visit Itself
This summer, on behalf of the Foundation, I visited three camps as part of the Foundation’s Specialty Camp Incubator II grant. Dynamic directors Greg Kellner at 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy and Isaac Mamaysky at Camp Zeke hosted my east coast visit, and Josh Steinharter at JCC Maccabi Sports Camp hosted here in California. Certainly, seeing first-hand the enthusiasm of campers—whether at a “Boker Big Bang” or an all-camp song session—and the dedication of talented camp staff, brings to life the Incubators’ impressive outcomes: 3,000 unique campers for the first cohort of camps, and year-over-year increase in enrollment for the second.

Beyond seeing these immersive camp experiences, Michele Friedman, Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Director of New Camp Initiatives and director of the Specialty Camp Incubator, spent three full days traveling with me by car across five states. This time with Michele ended up being as productive and valuable as visiting the camps themselves.

Michele is a true expert in the field of Jewish camping. While I have a significant understanding of Jewish camping from both my personal and professional experience, one-on-one time with Michele was an unparalleled opportunity to meaningfully enhance my knowledge. She shared stories of decades of successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We talked about the evolution of the field of Jewish camping and what it may need next. Of course, I also grew to know Michele much better—more than I could from any phone call—as I absorbed some of her significant experiences in the field. Our interactions since have been more productive as a direct result of the time we spent together.

Seeing a Database Beyond the Computer
While on the east coast, I also had an opportunity to visit JData, housed at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. JData is the only comprehensive census of Jewish day schools, overnight camps, day camps, part-time schools, and early childhood centers in North America. For those who work in Jewish education, JData sounds impressive. And it is. Yet, at the same time, envisioning the day-to-day work of JData and its strategic approach can be difficult.  Meeting with every member of JData’s small but mighty team changed this equation for me. From strategic conversations with Len Saxe, Director of the Cohen Center, and Amy Sales, Director of JData, to detailed conversations with members of the operations team I grew to better understand the integral role of JData in the context of the Foundation’s strategic philanthropy. JData is the realization of detailed, data gathering and analysis that contributes to one of the Foundation’s three strategic grantmaking priorities of strengthening the field of Jewish education. Funder-grantee relationships, and the field at large, benefit when a grant initiative is understood within the big picture of the Foundation’s overall mission.

Understanding a Grantee’s Important Strategies
The Foundation has awarded multiple grants to the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, supporting various initiatives that train and support some of Jewish education’s most dynamic, skilled leaders. As I began to work with Pardes’s talented team, I quickly learned that Pardes’s open Beit Midrash provides a unique experience, integral to the development of these educators. It also is a defining element of the institution. On Pardes’s website, the open Beit Midrash is described as the place where:

we spend most of our time; it is where we study in an open, embracing and challenging environment. There, we come into direct contact with the text as we wrestle with its meaning for us personally and for our people and the world. Working with our havruta in the Beit Midrash, we sharpen our text skills, acquire content knowledge and deepen our understanding of ourselves as learners and as future educators.

Undoubtedly, this sounds inspiring as a highly effective way to share knowledge and to develop educators. Yet only after I spent time at Pardes in Israel—meeting with various staff, faculty, and students—did I actually understand why the open Beit Midrash was such a defining and important part of Pardes. At a table in the back of the Beit Midrash, meeting with two members of the faculty, I couldn’t help but shift my focus at times to what surrounded me. Every seat was filled with students huddled around Jewish texts, deep in conversation with their peers. I had to strain to hear my own conversation because of the energy and the learning in the room.

What Site Visits Mean for the Big Picture
Monitoring the progress of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investments is an important part of the professional teams’ work. Complementing phone check-ins and reports with site visits is critical. And sometimes, a professional team member’s “ah-ha moment” about a grant will occur when least expected. The same is true regarding deepening a relationship with a grantee. Who really knows exactly when these important developments will happen? I am fortunate that I have experienced a number of site visits in my short time at the Foundation, and I am better positioned to support Foundation grantees and carry-out future Foundation awards as a result of these face-to-face interactions.

Over the past several years the Jim Joseph Foundation has invested significant time and resources into deepening our understanding of how the Jewish community can better engage teens in effective, compelling Jewish learning experiences. Two essential lessons we have learned are that:

1. Having a meaningful influence on teens in any context starts by taking a genuine interest in what matters most to them.
2. The role of adults is to work with teens, in partnership, to help them to create Jewish learning experiences they seek.

The adolescent years represent an important stage in the development of one’s identity. It is an intense time of discovery and experimentation. For many teens, this stage of life also is stressful and complicated, as they navigate increasing pressures from parents, peers and their communities about what they must do, believe and achieve.

When at its best, the Jewish community has much to offer to help teens face these challenges – supportive community, adult role models, guidance on ways to strive towards a life of meaning, purpose and fulfillment. Conversely, the Jewish community also has much to learn from teens; they offer a unique perspective on how Judaism is relevant today, and they are a window into how future generations will continue to shape it.

But, for teen education and engagement to be a positive experience, Jewish adults must listen carefully and maintain an open mind.

This guiding principle means that Jewish adults who seek to educate teens need to first set aside their adult Jewish agendas and constructs – whether in politics, ideology, or desired attitudes and behaviors. If we have specific lessons to impart to teens, our challenge is to set them aside and begin by earning their trust. Then we can guide our teens towards experiences where we invite them to come to their own conclusions about Jewish topics that we believe are important. The best Jewish educators I have met accomplish this by asking good questions, listening, being their authentic selves, modeling their beliefs and values through their actions, and integrating Jewish content that is meaningful and relevant, all while letting teens lead the way.

When asked about what matters to them, different teens I have met have provided different answers. But some interests and desires that have consistently been referenced include: gaining the core skills and experiences they need to navigate life as a teen; helping prepare for college and a career; learning how to stay healthy, both physically and mentally; having relationships with adults who are willing to listen to them; expressing their creative selves; feeling connected to something bigger than themselves; making a difference in the world.

What can we, as a Jewish community, do to support these teens?

• Encourage our best and brightest to devote their professional and/or volunteer talents towards working with teens. Provide these adults with high quality training in Jewish experiential education and adolescent development. Offer appropriate incentives to ensure that adults who work with teens receive the respect and compensation they deserve.
• Provide many more experiences for teens to step into leadership roles in the Jewish community. This applies not only to programs for teens specifically, but across all of our organizations. Invite teens to have internships, take on board positions, attend and speak at conferences, contribute their voice to writing projects, and help plan and lead new initiatives.
• Support our teen leaders by ensuring that they have adults who are ready to work in partnership with them to help them succeed in their leadership roles. We must remember to see these teens not as ‘leaders of the future’ but rather as ‘leaders of today.’
• Help teens cultivate their own sense of why Judaism matters to them by allowing them to know and understand our own relationships to Judaism. If Judaism is going to be relevant to them as teens, we have to model how and why it is relevant to us as adults.

For any Jewish adults who are apprehensive about this proposed approach, test it out. In my experience, the most enriching part of developing the Jim Joseph Foundation’s teen education and engagement strategy has been the opportunities to learn directly from Jewish teens. They have been some of my greatest teachers. Certainly, these teens have helped me develop a better appreciation for how the Jewish community can best support them and their peers. Beyond that, they have provided my Foundation colleagues and me with new insights about how we can be better Jewish leaders, learners, creators, and supporters of meaningful Jewish life.

Josh Miller is a Senior Program Officer for the Jim Joseph Foundation, which seeks to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States.

Source: “Developing Teen Leadership with a Peoplehood Orientation: What Does it Take and Where Do We Start?” The Peoplehood Papers 16, October 2015

Towards the end of the summer, I had the privilege to attend Moishe House’s National Conference and Alumni Leadership Summit at Camp Chi in the Wisconsin Dells. The National Conference brings together more than 200 current Moishe House residents for three days of engaging and interactive learning and social activities. As the name suggests, the Alumni Leadership Summit is a gathering of about 20 former residents of houses looking to continue their involvement in Moishe House and connect with their peers. Truly, the alumni there represented the geographic diversity of Moishe House. Residents hailed from Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Jerusalem, Melbourne, Baltimore, Shanghai, Palo Alto, and Hoboken, among elsewhere.

An interesting and challenging element of Moishe House’s alumni engagement is that many of the more than 630 Moishe House resident alumni live in a city other than where they lived as a Moishe House resident. This factor and others created a constellation of questions that arose at this gathering: from the big picture, “What’s next with this increasing alumni base?” to the pragmatic, “How does Moishe House reach these young alumni in transitioning from Jewish programming to Judaism and Jewish spirituality?”

A highlight of the weekend for me was the opportunity to engage in an informal “Ask the Funder” session over lunch with Moishe House alumni and a few Moishe House staff. As we sat at picnic tables on a pleasant, August summer day, we had an open conversation about grantmaking at the Jim Joseph Foundation and, to some extent, my own professional journey.

Indeed, at the Jim Joseph Foundation, transparency and the value of relationships are paramount. Through site visits such as this Alumni Summit and taking time to meet with individuals, share insights, and listen to others, the Foundation strives to act on the relational grantmaking values in which it deeply believes. Alumni asked a range of questions: “How do you get into grantmaking?” “How does the Jim Joseph Foundation decide what to fund?” “What does success look like for the Jim Joseph Foundation?” This dialogue was the chance to engage with others around questions of mutual interest, to build relationships, and to sharpen my thinking around ways the Foundation could be an even better partner and leader.

These values crystalized even more at a recent professional development experience organized by Northern California Grantmakers of the New Grantmakers Institute. Designed specifically for professionals new to the field, the conference was an opportunity to engage and connect with peers from foundations across Northern California and to learn about best practices in effective philanthropy. Time and again, a theme at the center of conversations and presentations was the significance of relationships. More specifically, we learned that there is a direct connection between genuine funder-grantee partner relationships and the success of shared work on the ground. I take pride — as I know other staff and Board members do, too — in knowing that the Foundation takes to heart this relational focus. We know that without good partners on the ground, the Foundation could not effectively pursue its mission and vision.

The Moishe House “Ask a Funder” session was premised on this understanding. After all, good partnerships don’t simply happen. They are developed, cultivated, and valued. The Foundation is fortunate to have many good partners; Moishe House certainly is one. And the alumni I interacted with on behalf of the Foundation likely are leaders of the Jewish community — today and tomorrow. Part of demonstrating appreciation for their partnership is to engage them in substantive dialogue about Jewish learning and Jewish life. Their visions, their ideas, and their questions deserve nothing less.

As we head into the final months of 2015, the Jim Joseph Foundation prepares to complete its tenth year of grantmaking. During this decade, the Foundation has been fortunate to partner with grantees, an array of talented technical assistance professionals, and like-minded funders. The relationships we have developed made it possible to translate strategic planning in the Board room to on-the-ground initiatives and programs that create and support robust Jewish learning experiences.

We regard ten years of the Foundation’s strategic grantmaking to be a milestone. While the Foundation has drawn little attention to this, earlier this year the Foundation approved preparation of a special package of ten-year anniversary materials to develop and share with the field. I’m honored to unveil those here.

A ten-year retrospective timeline traces the evolution of the Foundation from the death of Jim Joseph, z”l, through the Foundation’s operations today. We have done our best to design this interactive timeline so that its use is engaging, meaningful, and even fun (three traits, incidentally, often found in effective Jewish learning experiences). For those familiar with the Foundation’s philanthropy, you will not be surprised by the major content of the timeline: the work of grantees and their significant projects and outcomes; evaluations from which we have gleaned insights; and the various contributions from thought leaders and experts in the field that have helped to shape our efforts.

The timeline allows one to travel back to 2006 to revisit the important early work done with trusted madrichim. Their valued perspectives informed the Foundation’s formulation of strategic priorities. Moving through the years, the Foundation’s evolution has some defining elements. Many grantees are referenced multiple times at key dates, a sign of the Foundation’s deep relationships with grantees. Successful initiatives are often noted more than once, too, having been adapted by others to further advance Jim Joseph Foundation initiatives. Once the timeline hits the Foundation’s midway point in 2010, third-party evaluations of grants are prevalent, offering rich insights for the field.

In addition to the timeline, I also am excited to share two other materials that help to answer a question I have been asked many times since 2006 (when I began serving as the Foundation’s executive director): “Who was Jim Joseph?” While a brief bio on Jim Joseph is available on the Foundation’s website, in many ways this question remains not fully answered. To this end, the first new item is a short film on Jim’s family history, his professional career, and the legacy he left behind with the Foundation that bears his name. Interviews from his children and business associates offer unique insight into Jim’s values, beliefs, and views on American Jewish life and Israel’s place in it.

The second document of note is a touching memoir written by Jim’s son Joshua, who also is a Foundation Board member. Through interviews with family and Jim’s old friends and associates, Joshua chronicles the family’s history from Eastern Europe to Jim’s life in the U.S. Anyone who has wondered what shaped Jim’s life and drove him to leave such a lasting legacy for the Jewish community should  find both materials informative. They are available on the timeline and our main website (in addition to the links above).

We created this package of ten-year anniversary materials in an effort to tell an interesting story about the Foundation’s first decade. As we close this chapter, we anticipate continued collaboration with philanthropic partners—grantees, funders, and expert consultants alike – in the service of Jewish education and its ongoing improvement.

There is an unprecedented level of attention being given to the value and applicability of assessment tools, particularly in the field of education. Certainly this positive development is in part a result of the vast amounts of data seemingly at our fingertips. Practitioners, target audiences, funders, local organizations and other key stakeholders recognize that there are ways to measure the programs, initiatives, curricula, or any other intervention in question. And while not every situation lends itself to assessment, the Jim Joseph Foundation has a guiding principle that if the results of an assessment will inform that educational opportunity and others, then, yes, assess!

In too many instances for too many institutions, however, deciding to assess is the end of the conversation. Yet, a second, equally important, issue needs to be addressed: which assessment tool (or tools) will yield the most useful results? Not every assessment is high quality, and certain assessments are more effective than others for specific classroom settings or other educational environments. Educators and education leaders often focus—on improving learning outcomes or improving the learning experience. This same mindset should be applied to assessments, as there are always ways to improve how we measure our educational efforts and interventions.

At the Jim Joseph Foundation, we are funding the development of an assessment of teen Jewish learning and growth outcomes. This work is part of our Cross Community Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, which is a platform for shared learning and collaboration among grant making professionals at Jewish foundations and federations. All involved parties plan to invest in (and in many cases already have) community-based Jewish teen education initiatives designed to achieve the group’s shared measures of success (for example, engaging Jewish teens, and achieving sustainability).

The Foundation funds this assessment because, along with our partner communities, we want to glean as many learnings as possible from the Collaborative’s efforts. Which grantmaking strategies are most effective in which communities? What program characteristics lead to better learning and growth outcomes for Jewish teens? These are complex questions that require time and resources to answer.

Developing a set of common outcomes for the initiative itself was no small feat. But under the leadership of The Jewish Education Project, the Collaborative came to agreement on what outcomes the various local initiatives would strive to achieve (i.e., Jewish teens establish strong friendships, and Jewish teens feel a sense of pride about being Jewish, to name just two). The evaluation team then developed a teen survey to measure initiatives against those outcomes through a rigorous process of expert interviews, teen focus groups and pilot testing to ensure the survey questions are measuring the intended construct.

The survey was piloted in three communities this summer. Now the evaluation team is analyzing the survey results, seeking input from key stakeholders and experts, and conducting another round of cognitive testing—all in order to revise the survey items to even more effectively measure the impact of Jewish teen initiatives moving forward. Undoubtedly this is a lengthy process. But by “getting it right,” we will improve our assessment ability in this space, benefitting teens and the entire field.

From the Foundation’s perspective, equipping grantees to assess their programs represents sound use of funder assets and grantee time. We welcome the decision of many grantees to contract with independent evaluation firms to help them develop assessment tools tailored to measure their programs and desired outcomes. A truly valuable resource in these efforts is the Jewish Survey Question Bank (JSQB) (funded in part by the Foundation), which gathers survey questions used across the Jewish education field and categorizes them by topic. This vast collection intends to make it easier and more efficient for schools, organizations and individuals to develop their own surveys to assess their efforts.

As we look to further advance the quality of assessment of Jewish education initiatives, the secular education arena is a good model to reference. There, many longstanding assessment tools exist, designed to be used by a range of education programs. From my past experience in this arena, I am aware of key questions asked before deciding whether to begin an assessment and—if so—which assessment to use. Some useful questions for day schools to keep in mind include:

1) Is the administration of the assessment a burden or relatively easy? For example, some schools have unreliable technology or Internet access, so a web-based assessment tool may be too cumbersome to administer. In other schools, a paper-and-pencil version may be better.

2) Does the timing of the assessment sync with our need for information? For example, some classrooms may benefit from an initial assessment at the beginning of the school year so the results can be used for diagnostic purposes. Other classrooms might benefit more greatly from a mid-course assessment. Either way, both assessments could be informative to the entire school, or even the broader field, and should be leveraged appropriately.

3) Does the assessment measure the learning outcomes we are trying to achieve? Naturally, some assessments are more aligned with the actual curriculum being taught than others. It is well worth the time to review multiple assessment frameworks before selecting the appropriate one.

4) Are the results easy to understand and act upon? Some assessment reports are so complicated and data heavy that it becomes impossible to wade through or to glean best practices. The best reports offer clear findings and essentially lay out a road map of small tweaks or large-scale changes to improve the education experience being measured.

5) What is the value of having comparable data from previous years? While seeking the best assessment tool is always a worthy endeavor, there are real benefits, too, to comparing current results with past results or to a wider pool of respondents. If a program has been assessed a certain way for years, or even decades, the best decision may be to stick with that framework.

Whether in Jewish or secular education, assessment is a best practice—and high quality assessment is an even better practice. From Jewish camping initiatives, to teacher training programs and other grants, we at the Jim Joseph Foundation and its more than three dozen major grantees have used assessment to improve existing efforts and to inform new ones. Its value certainly applies to day schools as well.

Stacie Cherner is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, which seeks to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States. Established in 2006, the Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded more than $350 million in grants to engage, educate, and inspire young Jewish minds to discover the joy of living vibrant Jewish lives. [email protected]

Source: “Holding Yourself to a High Standard of Quality When Using Assessments,” Stacie Cherner, HaYidion The Ravsak Journal, September 24, 2015

“When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more.[1]” This finding from a 2002 study affirmed a philosophy already held by many that guided significant national education policy and programs. Head Start, a program endorsed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, incorporated a family component[2]. Today, the idea is widely accepted that parental involvement in students’ educational pursuits provides lasting benefits for the students. Disparate competing programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top[3] incorporate this idea as a cornerstone.

While parental involvement in secular learning is almost a given, this has not been the case in religious education.  Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of Great Britain describes this as sending “mixed messages” to our children about the value of education[4].  He noted that many parents expect their children to place importance on Jewish learning and practice for the sake of tradition even when the parents choose not to engage in particularly Jewish practice.

Strategies for Student Success

The Southwest Education Development laboratory lists the following two items as a subsection of recommended strategies to achieve student success:

• “Engage [parents] at school so that they understand what their children are doing”
• “Give [parents] a voice in what happens to their children”

While belonging to a booster club or even a Parent Teacher Association at school provides valuable connections, these affiliations do not offer opportunities for parents’ deep engagement and understanding about a child’s secular education.  Rather, meeting with individual teachers, working through homework problems with students, and even developing formal relationships between families and their schools can achieve more lasting success for the students and understanding for the parents. Moreover, these extra steps also show the value and importance of the education to both children and parents.

In a religious school context, parents might belong to a church or synagogue, but that membership does not inherently lead to their engagement in a child’s spiritual journey and education. Parents, instead, must be proactive and seek opportunities to be deeply involved in this learning.  Engaging children around their education both at the Jewish institution and at home is a core part of this process.

A Case Study on Parental Involvement in Education

In the field of Jewish education, Wilderness Torah—an organization committed to connecting individuals to Judaism through the environment—offers a case study on the importance, evolution, and potential of deep parental-child-teacher engagement in learning. Its B’naiture program for students in grades 6 and 7 was designed as a complement for religious education[5].  The ultimate objectives of Wilderness Torah’s program design and their early adaption to engage parents more deeply, provides profound insight into how parent involvement in children’s learning can entirely transform religious education.

B’naiture 1.0 – Taking Youth on Journey

Wilderness Torah created B’naiture as a response to the call for “life-centered” youth education— experiences that deal with the whole person and her or his set of human concerns, as Jonathan Woocher explained in “Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21st Century” (2008). The desire for these experiences often comes in the early teen years, during that critical phase between childhood and adolescence, when youth need help building confidence in themselves as unique individuals. Wilderness Torah developed B’naiture with this guiding principle and the understanding that focusing on soul-development at this time of passage in life is essential. Thus, the program prioritizes self-awareness, self-responsibility, and the discovery and empowerment of one’s own inherent gifts.

This all plays out over the course of the two-year program in—as the name implies—nature. Participants embark on a journey during which they learn hands-on survival skills such as fire-making, and do-it-yourself skills such as making shofars and mezuzahs from raw materials. It also challenges them to face fears, expand their beliefs of what’s possible and share their hearts around the fire with peers and adult mentors. All of this is framed and woven together by designing the experience according to the Hebrew calendar throughout the year and framing all the activities with Jewish stories, teachings from the Torah and Pirkeh Avot, and Jewish prayers and song.

While after seven years, B’naiture’s life-centered model has proven successful—parents consistently report their B’naiture graduate teens demonstrate high levels of newfound confidence, respect, accountability around the house and at school, and self-responsibility—Wilderness Torah faced an unexpected challenge at the program’s inception. Some parents were not ready for the changes their children exhibited during program participation. As a result, over the program’s first two years, B’naiture had nearly a 30% dropout rate, in many cases because of parent resistance.

B’naiture 2.0 – Parents Join the Journey

Wilderness Torah inevitably wanted to know why parents held this sentiment and what, if anything, could be done to overcome the challenge. The answer to both questions affirms the theory that parents and children together are part of the education process.

Historically, in traditional societies “rites of passage” were all-family, often all-community events because the passage out of childhood is not just experienced by the child. It is also experienced by the parents and the community. Parents need to feel that they are supporting the transformation of their child into adolescence. This is part of their process of embracing their own “loss” of their child to adolescence. For a variety of reasons, if parents feel left out of this critical stage, they may unconsciously “sabotage” this life experience for their child process.

After absorbing this information, Wilderness Torah conceptualized its solution—a parent track that takes parents on the B’naiture journey. Now, parents participate in an opening 3-day camping trip where they learn about rites of passage, what changes to expect in their child, learn skills and reflect upon their own experience when they were their child’s age. How were they met or not met at this life transition? What do they need to be able to fully support a healthy transition for their child? Parents form a supportive parent group that meets periodically throughout the year to learn some skills B’naiture teaches their children, to learn Torah relevant to the rite of passage, and to provide on-going parent-group to understand how to support their child.

The creation of this parents’ track has been a game changer. The B’naiture drop-out rate has shrunk to a nominal number each year and parents’ involvement has made this work even more transformative. Children feel fully supported and parents feel a part of this important developmental stage of their children’s lives. As one parent, Jenn Rader, commented:

The parent track was an invaluable part of our family’s experience in B’naiture. At an age when young people’s activities often separate them from their families, the B’naiture program sets out a model for a young person’s development that is closely held in family and community. B’naiture found the sweet spot in their capacity to create an experience that both young people and parents can really own on their own terms and have those experiences infuse a shared family culture and set of values.

 The opportunity to share with and hear from other parents passing through this same portal offered a lot of support and insight to my partner and I as we navigated this stage with our two boys. We also felt a sense of partnership with the Wilderness Torah mentors in supporting our boys, which was powerful.

For Wilderness Torah and the Jim Joseph Foundation (one of its supporters), the evolution of B’naiture has been a learning process offering many insights we believe are helpful to both the secular and Jewish education fields. Incorporating parents into their child’s education in meaningful and substantial ways is an effective strategy for all involved.

[1] A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement A. T. Henderson & K. L. Mapp. (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2002) Report Conclusion.

[2] National Head Start Association http://www.nhsa.org/about-us/mission-vision-history

[3] No Child Left Behind was an initiative introduced by George W. Bush and Race to the Top was introduced by Barack Obama

[4] “Four Ways to Look at the Wicked Child” The Wexner Foundation http://www.wexnerfoundation.org/blog/four-ways-to-look-at-the-wicked-child

[5] Turns out that around 50% of the families engaged chose B’naiture as their primary B’nai Mitzvah experience.

This blog appeared originally in eJewishPhilanthropy. Zelig Golden Is Founding Director of Wilderness Torah, which reawakens and celebrates the earth-based traditions of Judaism, including a focus on life-centered mentorship of youth kindergarten through teen years. Beginning summer of 2016, Wilderness Torah will offer training and consulting in its nature-based curricula and Jewish mentorship model.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is in its tenth year of existence. In a few weeks, we will share an online interactive timeline on the Foundation’s philanthropy, significant grantee outcomes, and lessons learned since its inception. The Foundation website will feature an insightful memoir on our founder thoughtfully crafted by Jim Joseph’s son and Foundation Board member, Josh Joseph. We will also share a microdocumentary on Mr. Joseph, his family history, and his lasting legacy.

As we mark this tenth anniversary, the Foundation continues to be a work in progress. Striving for continuous improvement involves concentrated time and effort among Foundation Directors and professionals. The Board is conducting a search for my successor while also taking steps to plan for transition of its founding Directors. Concurrently, the Foundation has intensified its focus on strategy in its grantmaking, governance practices, and the Foundation’s own financial and staff capacities.

All this activity has created a change management agenda for the Foundation. But the Foundation’s commitment to a founding strategic principle has not wavered: careful consideration of invited grant proposals for significant amounts of funding over four and five year periods.

We are often queried why the Foundation makes such “big bets,” enriching relatively fewer organizations with philanthropic capital when many others might benefit from Foundation grant funding. This question tends especially to surface when the Foundation determines to renew funding to one of its major grantees, often doing so at significant levels of funding support. Two very recent examples of this type of funder/grantee partnership – Hillel International and Moishe house – offer insights regarding how and why the Jim Joseph Foundation chooses to strategically fund well-aligned grantees with large grants and long-term funding.

First, it bears noting that much of the social sector struggles incessantly to achieve organizational stability. Mario Morino posited years ago that:

Non-profit organizations exist in a culture of dysfunction – limited capacity and modest outcomes pervade critical organizational elements such as strategic planning, staffing, training, management, financing and performance measurement. This dysfunction makes success highly improbable and calls into question the sustainability of organizations unable to adequately capitalize future growth (Community Wealth Ventures, Inc., “Venture Philosophy: Landscape and Expectations,” Reston, VA: The Morino Institute, 2000).

In this regard, the Jim Joseph Foundation spends a great deal of time conducting due diligence on potential grantees. For organizations that are mission aligned, potentially scalable with their reach, and critically positioned within the Foundation’s focus on education of Jewish teens, youth, young adults and young families, deep investment is inviting.

Recognizing, for example, that Hillel reaches and engages 400,000 college-age students annually, the Foundation determined early in its existence to explore effective partnership with the organization. We learned quickly that Hillel would require repeated infusions of funding to build capacity in order to most effectively engage as many college students and communities as possible. The Foundation’s grants for the Senior Jewish Educator/Campus Entrepreneur Initiative; evaluation of it; funding for the Heather McLeod Grant and Lindsay Bellows study about Hillel’s effective strategy to leverage social networks for student engagement; resources for business planning; and seed capital for Hillel projects deemed to be of high priority to a new CEO bespeak the Jim Joseph Foundation’s commitment to long-term investment in high performing grantees.

The new $16 million, five year grant the Foundation just awarded to support Hillel in accelerating its ambitious Drive to Excellence campaign affirms this deep commitment.

An organization at an entirely different stage of its development – and one that is distinct in its nature – than Hillel is Moishe House. The Jim Joseph Foundation is a “both/and” funder. This is to say that both new, fledgling organizations and legacy institutions are beneficiaries of Foundation investment. In the case of the former, the Foundation understands keenly that:

Organizations do not emerge full blown and high performing. It takes years of thoughtful design, capacity building, and program implementation for an agency to know its work thoroughly enough, learn from its efforts, understand its strengths and weaknesses, and refine its strategy to the point where it has a robust framework and platform for managing its performance (Hunter, David. Working Hard and Working Well. Hunter Consulting LLC, 2003).

Repeated Jim Joseph Foundation funding of Moishe House, totaling $8,230,000 over nine years, has been awarded with intent to steadily build the organization’s capacity and to help it become more proficient at monitoring its performance and measuring achievement of targeted outcomes. Jen Rosen, Moishe House’s chief operating officer, reflects this interest in commenting that Moishe House “needs to assess the longer term impact on residents and participants. As a relatively new organization, the data we have collected has been helpful, but as we near our 10 year anniversary, it’s time to begin assessing the longer term implications of involvement in Moishe House. During the recent study, roughly 900 respondents agreed to be contacted for follow up within three years in order to begin a longitudinal study” (Rosen, Jen,  August 26, 2015. “How Moishe House Looks Different Post Evaluation,” eJewish Philanthropy).

Numerous Moishe House accomplishments, all well documented, encouraged the Jim Joseph Foundation to extend grant application renewal invitations to Moishe House several times. The Foundation relies on Moishe House to execute smartly on its objectives and goals, thereby helping the Foundation realize its vision of “ever increasing numbers of young Jews engaged in ongoing Jewish living and choosing to live vibrant Jewish lives.”

There are clearly forces at work bringing pressure to bear on not-for-profits for improved efficiency, performance, and results. The steady proliferation of 501c3s—“the number of non-profits in the United States has nearly doubled since 1995, from 518,000 to more than 1 million today” (Stoolmacher, Irwin. 2015, September. “With Money So Tight, We Need to Get Rid of Poor-Performing Charities,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, page 29.)—leads many to contend the sector is riddled with duplication, redundancy, and inefficiency. Moreover, given that systematic, right-sized evaluation of Jewish education funded programs and projects is still not normative, it is extremely difficult to find credible comparative data for philanthropic decision making.

In this environment, programs that effectively prepare and professionally develop Jewish educators are not readily identifiable. The Foundation candidly could not project with any certainty if its $45 million Education Initiative grants—$15 million each over seven years to HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU—would produce outcomes ultimately worthy of the investment. Yet, the Foundation decided to not only award the grants for credential and degree granting courses and programs, faculty, and instructional technology, but also to avail the institutions of exceptional technical assistance as a means to augment the funding. This contract expertise included the American Institutes for Research (AIR), which is conducting the Education Initiative’s formal evaluation. The Parthenon Group provided upfront analysis and guidance on each institution’s structures for project management and administration. A premier college enrollment firm, Noel Levitz, offered much needed counsel on marketing and recruiting, enrollment trends, and setting of tuition rates. The Foundation’s funding made it possible for the institutions to contract with Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning for a cross-institutional technology fellowship. Now, with four comprehensive formative evaluations completed, findings reveal the following:

• 1,412 educators have received certificates or degrees from one of the three participating institutions.
• The degree and professional development programs under the Education Initiative promoted leadership development through improved management skills and content knowledge.
• The degree programs supported entry into Jewish day school teaching and the professional growth of experienced Jewish day school teachers and school leaders.

AIR will produce a fifth and final evaluation next year. At the Foundation’s upcoming October Board meeting, Foundation Directors will discuss with AIR Vice President Dr. Mark Schneider and the evaluator’s project director, Dr. Yael Kidron, a discrete set of questions to be addressed in this summative evaluation report. The Foundation’s learning over seven years of this initiative will hopefully be captured in the 2016 report and disseminated to the field. Already—as we anticipated—it is clear that improving the quality, breadth, and depth of education training in institutions of higher education necessitates a long-term strategy to achieve results premised on extended, multi-year commitments of funding.

As one last example of more than a dozen of these relatively large, long-term grants, consider the Foundation’s award in its early years to BBYO for BBYO’s Professional Development Initiative (PDI). This grant for continuing nonprofit management and Jewish education was awarded again without much relevant data on similar professional development efforts to inform the Foundation’s grantmaking. Yet BBYO’s mission alignment with the Foundation, its growth trajectory of Jewish teen membership and engagement, its effective organizational management and controls, and an active, diligent Board of Directors governance made PDI an attractive investment opportunity for the Foundation.

Jim Joseph Foundation professionals interacted routinely with BBYO leadership and key PDI personnel over eight years of grant implementation in a project the Foundation generously funded. This shared persistence by BBYO and the Foundation is a recognition that success, or lack of it, in improving education of young Jews is neither a simple nor necessarily short-term proposition.

To that end, Informing Change just completed Briefing papers and evaluation on BBYO’s PDI. The ten lessons Informing Change describes in the report suggest ways the Foundation could have more effectively supported BBYO in its implementation of PDI. The evaluation also points out a few shortcomings in PDI’s program design. Overall, what is noteworthy is that the amount of funding awarded and the duration of time afforded to BBYO in its PDI experimentation allowed the organization to learn. Additional investment of time and money produced an evaluation, as the Briefing papers note, that responds to a human resource talent issue that is fundamental to the field:

Leaders across the Jewish communal sector have a number of strategic questions to consider related to developing talent. These questions range from considering what types of education are most beneficial in which circumstances (e.g., considering a generalist degree or a credential offered through a Jewish institution), to the role of personal learning, to the tension of helping professionals do their jobs better today while also preparing them for the future.

PDI has contributed to these discussions by testing new approaches to professional development. As the program comes to a close, it surfaces the lessons shared in this brief and provides a case study of Jewish community practitioners and employers to look to when building future endeavors. As the discussion of professional development continues in the Jewish communal sector, the considerations and practices that emerged through the PDI experience can hopefully strengthen development opportunities going forward (Advancing Early-Stage Jewish Careers: Lessons from BBYO’s Professional Development Institute, Informing Change, July 2015).

The Jewish high holy days enjoin us to personally reflect and repent, atone and account—to recommit to principled, purposeful lives reflecting time honored Jewish values.  Describing above one important aspect of Jim Joseph Foundation philanthropy is an effort to be professionally reflective and accountable, with the hope that valuable lessons the Jim Joseph Foundation has learned will contribute to your practice.

Editor’s Note: As we shared previously, the Jim Joseph Foundation Board and professional team traveled to Israel this summer for a week of special immersion activities and our regular quarterly board meeting. Conducting a Board meeting in Israel was part of the Foundation’s ten-year anniversary and an important opportunity for the Foundation to pay respect to Jim Joseph, z”l.

Upon returning, each member of the professional team was asked to share reflections on their time in Israel and visits with grantees. Sharing excerpts with you, we believe, offers insights to the field about the place of Israel in the Foundation’s grantmaking strategy; the knowledge gained from site visits; and the benefits of Board and staff engaging in an immersive experience together. Below is part two of a two-part blog series of reflections from the professional team:

There is no question that an immersive trip to Israel provides an exceptional opportunity for participants to deepen their relations with one another and bond as a group. This was certainly my experience from nine intense days with staff and Board colleagues at the Jim Joseph Foundation. I am deeply grateful we were able to travel together and learn as a team. l am already seeing ways in which these deepened relationships are strengthening our ability to advance our work together.

While in Tel Aviv, with the help of a colleague from The AVI CHAI Foundation, I had a chance to visit with a select group of Israeli entrepreneurs working to advance the field of educational technology, including Avi Warshavsy from MindCET, and Gil Ilutowich from Compedia. There is no question that Israel is home to world-class talent in this area, and the infrastructure these industry leaders are building is a resource that has yet to be fully tapped. Israel is an important place for American Jewish leaders to turn when seeking partners to help understand how to apply cutting edge technology tools to improve Jewish education or to implement technology initiatives that require developers with Jewish expertise.

The talent, the vibrancy, and the thoughtfulness of everyone with whom we met—these are the sentiments I take away from our trip to Israel. They provide the foundation for important new knowledge that informs my work with grantees to foster even more Jewish learning experiences.

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I have traveled to Israel multiple times while employed within the Jewish community.  I lived in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and Arad for a year.  Still, I had never experienced Israel quite like this.

Throughout the trip, there remained a tenor of humility.  Only one educational building in the world bears the name of the Foundation’s benefactor.  The gravesite of Jim Joseph (Shimon ben Yosef z’’l) is lovely yet unassuming. This attitude of humble reflection and introspection made this experience what it was meant to be, a tribute to a man who achieved greatness in quiet benevolence.

This visit afforded the professional team the opportunity to further our efforts in relational grantmaking by finally putting a face together with a name for many of our international grantees at Taglit Birthright Israel, Pardes, the Shalom Hartman Institute, the Israel Museum, and Bar Ilan University. It is rare to have the opportunity to participate in discussions and attend site visits with Foundation Directors.  We were able to hear the questions asked by Directors of our grantees and vice versa and to learn firsthand from the discourse among veteran and newer members of the Foundation’s Board.

Last month, I shared reflections on our special Board Meeting in Israel to mark the Foundation’s ten year anniversary. Next month I will offer some thoughts on transitions occurring at the Foundation as we welcome in the new year. Bookended by these two substantial themes, one might think the August blog would be a “light read.”

Thankfully, that’s not the case, primarily because of intensive work that Jim Joseph Foundation grantees do during critical summer months. I am heartened by the thoughtful ways Jewish education organizations utilize this time of year, recognizing the special learning opportunities summer presents for youth, for young adults, and for educators.

In fact, summer is an ideal time for “teachers to become students.” Pardes held its annual summer curriculum workshop for educators, along with its first-ever Tefilah Symposium at the Pearlstone Center in Maryland to help educators apply best practices to tefilah education. Additionally, the Pardes Institute in Israel welcomed Hillel professionals for three weeks to gain fluency in Jewish text study and ideas. As they return to campuses for the school year, these Hillel professionals are better equipped to engage students in serious Jewish learning.

Various other Hillel professionals studied this summer at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel as part of an Israel education program. Others explored Jewish texts as part of Mechon Hadar’s weeklong Hillel Professionals Institute. One participant commented, “Now, I am able to bring back to campus a new attitude towards learning, and an idea of how and when to implement text. Beyond that, I have built strong relationships with others in all areas of Jewish professionalism, who wish to gain great personal understanding and apply that to educating others.”

These opportunities were in addition to the Hillel Educators’ Kallah in Pennsylvania and its Summer Institute in St. Louis that trained student interns along with professionals. Hillel’s strategy to blend substantive Jewish learning with personal relationship building is premised on its educators and student interns having the knowledge and confidence to impart relevant Jewish content to the students they serve.

In the post-college space, Moishe House held learning retreats for residents throughout the summer. It brought alumni together to strengthen and sustain those relationships nationally. Meanwhile, the new cohort of four Wexner Field Fellows spent the summer engaged in one-on-one Jewish learning and executive coaching. This cohort includes an artistic entrepreneur, day school head, executive director of a Hillel, and a development office for a day school—indicative of the varied settings of Jewish learning and the diverse backgrounds of those who make these experiences possible. The cohort will gather at the end of the summer with the other Field Fellows and all 80 Wexner Graduate Fellows for the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Summer Institute, exploring the theme of God, Spirituality, and Belief.

One of the Foundation’s largest current endeavors, the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, has helped catalyze many new summer learning opportunities. Los Angeles (led by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles) launched its Community Internship Program in June, a three week long program for rising High School juniors and seniors. The program introduced participants to the workplace, offered an opportunity to learn from successful Jewish non-profit organizations, and benefit from mentorship at the side of communal leaders (read a reflection from a participant here). New York launched seven new summer teen Jewish learning programs (operated by The Jewish Education Project with matching funding from UJA Federation of New York)—from service learning and internships, to Jewish surf camp, to an Israel experience for Russian teens focusing on arts and technology. And the National Incubator for Community-Based Jewish Teen Education Initiatives, run by The Jewish Education Project, just held its first ever gathering for practitioners representing 10 communities implementing initiatives within the Collaborative framework.

In another exciting “first ever,” the National Yiddish Book Center held its Great Jewish Books Teacher Workshop (supported by the Foundation). 20 participants from around the country, primarily from middle and high Jewish Day Schools, gained skills and knowledge to introduce a wider variety of modern Jewish literary and cultural materials into their classrooms

The evolution of these summer learning opportunities is an important development in the growth of the field of Jewish education. Programs and initiatives of this sort fill voids that previously existed and leverage opportunities that previously were squandered. For Jewish educators of this sort specifically, the opportunity to add to one’s skillset and to develop new, innovative curriculum for the coming academic year is integral to their professional development.

Finally, any conversation about summer Jewish learning must include two areas where the field continues to thrive. First, Jewish camp is known to be an effective, immersive Jewish learning experience for children. Over the past several years, the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Specialty Camp Incubator has launched nine new Jewish camps that blend a specialty interest with Jewish learning and traditions. A Jim Joseph Foundation program officer recently visited 6 Points Sci-Tech, (one of the camps in the second cohort of specialty camps), and reported on the unique environment it creates for Jewish learning.

The camp offered a seemingly endless list of very high quality activities including robotics, video game design, movie making, makerspaces, and much more. Linked to a high quality program, the facilities also need to be high quality, which was true here.

The presence of Judaism throughout all aspects of camp was incredible. The Jewish values of camp are very present, both visually and in program design. Counselors start every morning with a Boker Big Bang where they blow something and discuss its meaning to Judaism. They created daily prayers specific to their camp. They play a slideshow at meals of notable Jewish scientists. They ask a Jewish question of the day to which campers respond. 6 Points Sci-Tech seamlessly incorporates Jewish learning into nearly everything they do.

Second, travel opportunities also continue to be a staple of Jewish summer learning—and with good reason. Whether trips to Israel, such as with Birthright Israel or BBYO, or to Jewish communities around the world, such as with JDC Entwine, traveling and learning with peers is a powerful experience. It often lays the foundation for continued Jewish learning and growth through the rest of the year and throughout individuals’ lives.

The Foundation is fortunate to work closely with organizations that offer such a wide range of engaging, innovative summer learning experiences. Jewish education seen in this bright light truly is a year-round endeavor.

Editor’s Note: As we shared previously, the Jim Joseph Foundation Board and professional team traveled to Israel earlier this summer for a week of special immersion activities and our regular quarterly board meeting. Conducting a Board meeting in Israel was part of the Foundation’s ten-year anniversary and an important opportunity for the Foundation to pay respect to Jim Joseph, z”l.

Upon returning, each member of the professional team was asked to share reflections on their time in Israel and visits with grantees. Sharing excerpts with you, we believe, offers insights to the field about the place of Israel in the Foundation’s grantmaking strategy; the knowledge gained from site visits; and the benefits of Board and staff engaging in an immersive experience together. Below is part one of a two-part blog series of reflections from the professional team:

Narrowing down a week full of highlights is a difficult task but a few stick out as examples of how this experience put me in a better position to thrive in my role at the foundation. First, our time in Israel provided an opportunity to better familiarize myself with the history of the foundation, notably its founder, Jim Joseph. Visiting his gravesite was by far the most moving experience of the trip. It was accompanied by a group lunch with members of his family who shared stories about who he was as a person and what motivated his philanthropy. Never having the chance to meet him, my relationship is through these stories and upon hearing so many touching reflections, I immediately felt a deeper connection to Jim and the mission of the foundation that he so generously funded.

The trip also provided the unique opportunity to see in operation many programs that offer Israel experiences for youth and young adults. These visits not only demonstrated the growing number of immersive Israel programs that exist but brought them to life more than any story, website, or picture could. We spoke directly with the participants and providers. We heard their stories and motivations. We felt their passion. An evening with participants from Birthright Israel Excel and TAMID, programs that feature high-level summer internship opportunities in Israel, was particularly inspirational. To a person, the participants exuded nothing but positivity, to both the programs and their time in Israel. They gained a new appreciation for the country, its culture, people, and innovation, while receiving invaluable experience working for some of Israel’s most reputable businesses. To me, speaking with these participants during their experiences in Israel demonstrated how important it is to provide opportunities like these to as many people as possible.

We met with the leadership and participants at Birthright Israel, the iCenter, Moishe House, the Israel Museum, Bar Ilan University, and more. Each meeting provided greater insight into the important work of these grantees and offered firsthand insight into the outcomes each are achieving. For me, spending a morning at Pardes, a grantee in my portfolio, was particularly beneficial. In my first few months I have been on calls with Pardes, read their reports, and familiarized myself with their work, but seeing it in person provided an understanding that is difficult to gain from afar. We met with a variety key stakeholders including the CEO, program staff, teachers, and participants. These face to face meetings will only help future discussions and collaboration. Pardes is known for its open beit midrash, something I’ve heard and read about but never fully understood. Upon seeing it in action I was left thinking to myself, “yes, I get it now.”

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The central theme of my experience, both in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, was one of exploration and meaning-making. Tal Becker helped frame our time in country by speaking to the complexity that is Israel in 2015. He spoke with humor and wisdom. His quip, that Judaism is not a twitterable religion, speaks to how we make the old new and use the new to facilitate the old. It’s clear to me that young adults are searching for meaning in their lives. Beyond Judaism. They are searching for successful models in which to live their lives. Models laden with value and purpose. What they are finding is that their ancestors struggled with the same questions, the same eternal truths that they struggle with today. How to live a life of significance and meaning? How to live a life of lasting impact? How to live a life of value to others? How to remain steadfast and true to oneself? Judaism has something to say about these questions. It has text and discussion which to offer. And teens, I believe, understand this more than we know and are willing to drink from the fountain so long as they are allowed an unadulterated drink.

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This whole experience made me recognize the productive intersection of the heart and the head.  As a grantmaker, I believe it is important to balance both the experience of seeing and “feeling” a program’s impact first hand with the intellectual pursuit of closely analyzing what the data indicate as impact and lessons learned.

It is important as a grantmaker to really struggle with understanding an issue or problem in order to develop effective strategies.  Recognize the time and effort required to logically develop an intervention and an appropriate funding model.  Despite the excitement at being immersed in the setting, use that experience to inform, but not to solely drive, your grantmaking strategy.

Finally, I was reminded to constantly gauge the willingness of grantees and potential grantees to collect and analyze data, to use evaluation data to improve their programs and attain desired outcomes.

Please check back soon for part 2 of this blog featuring more reflections from the professional team.

Federations in the 21st century will be as much about meaning as money, as concerned with results as much as with resources, and be held to higher standards of both efficiency and effectiveness similar to what they have imposed on their beneficiary agencies.

[The following piece is an abridged version of an article I wrote nearly ten years ago for the Journal of Jewish Communal Service.  At the time, I was Vice President of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

Amid the current rancorous conversation about federations, I recalled this article.  I submit it here to eJP in an effort to advance conversation about substantive matters of organizational performance.  My interest is to offer actionable items intended to assist federations (and foundations) to improve their philanthropic effectiveness.

This article obviously does not address directly criticisms of federations as ineffectual workplaces – a perspective I do not share, at least when indiscriminately applied wholesale to all federations. But it does suggest the following, namely, that truly transparent social sector organizations actively accountable to their stakeholders are compelled to create professionally supportive, organizationally healthy work environments as a sine qua non for achieving organizational mission and strategic priorities.]

Jewish community federations enjoy an unparalleled 100-year history as trusted depositories for annual contributions of philanthropic resources. Yet, a century of success in annual campaign transactional fundraising cannot obviate the need for intensive efforts to develop much more highly participative forms of philanthropy. Similarly, just as campaign achievements are a necessary but insufficient means of raising funds to meet the system’s needs, the Jewish federation’s hard-earned reputation as a safe, trustworthy Jewish community chest is now inadequate to satisfy growing expectations of increasing numbers of contemporary donors (Edelsberg, 2004). Indeed, grantees themselves are asking to be held to higher standards because of the sector-wide realization that “no cause is worthy enough to justify a gift that is not making a truly positive difference in the lives for whom it is intended (Streeter, 2001, p. 11).” Furthermore, it costs money both to develop federation resources, as well as to give them away (Litman & Karen, 2005; Siegal & Yancey, 2003).

Federations raise funds and build community. They also engage in grant making – as much as $3 billion of it, system wide, in any given year. The challenge to federations is this: Today’s donors demand accountability, seek value, and expect performance. In other words, federations need to become philanthropically effective organizations.

Effective philanthropy is an approach to raising, stewarding, and granting funds that relies on transparency and accountability plus the measured advancement of mission to achieve its purpose. Effective philanthropy for federations is grounded in partnerships with beneficiary agencies, a key component of which is the measurement of outcomes achieved with funds granted to projects deemed to hold the greatest promise for producing communal benefit. Federations are best served when they balance their relentless pursuit of resources with resolute efforts to demonstrate results.

FUNDER, AND GRANTEE PRESSURES FOR PHILANTHROPIC EFFECTIVENESS

Peter Frumkin (2004) of the Hudson Institute argues that foundation philanthropy is “quietly in the midst of a crisis” (p. 3). Frumkin writes, “At the core of the angst gripping funds are two complex and enduring issues that have confronted foundations of all kinds: effectiveness and accountability (p. 6).” As he points out, no one would suggest, given the choice between effectiveness and ineffectiveness, that foundations would voluntarily choose the latter. Federations, Mark Kramer observed in a recent conversation, “will not lose points by demonstrating effectiveness.” However, there is more than a straw man argument to make here. Federations need to acknowledge the strong and mounting donor sentiment that accounting for effective use of donated dollars is critical to its mission. Younger funders are particularly vocal about matters of effectiveness and impact. They often define themselves as “investors” and are every bit as interested in hard data on grant outcomes and results as they are in stories of grantee success (Grace & Wendroff, 2001).

Federations would do well to recognize that the system’s prevailing fundraising mission, ethos, and culture create a standard of money metrics that fails to satisfy and motivate contemporary funders. Such measures as numbers of new and lapsed campaign donors, size of individual gifts, card-for-card percentage increases in giving, and total dollars raised in and of themselves do not inspire donor trust or engagement.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Federations can begin assessing their philanthropic effectiveness by asking three deceptively simple questions: What are our critical goals? How are we doing? What have we accomplished? Federations will need to hold themselves to the same standards to which they expect grantees – especially agencies that receive annual campaign allocations – to conform. They will need first to create and to cultivate a culture of measurement in which funds raised are complementary to the work of describing and determining what goals have been achieved in the investment, management, and use of funds. In this scenario, federations would immerse themselves in more purposeful monitoring of funds allocated from the annual campaign and granted from endowment funds and supporting organizations. This calls for studying significant allocations and grants to see whether grantees achieved the stated project outcomes. On a broader level, federations would systematically examine their philanthropic effectiveness, beginning with a more penetrating substantiation of the basis on which community funding priorities are determined. They would conduct a thorough, open, and well-communicated annual review of their overall performance in the raising of funds, stewardship of resources, and results realized in the funding of grantees.

The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Birthright Israel, and the Jewish Health Care Foundation of Pittsburgh (Prager, 19994) are among the major Jewish communal enterprises in which principles of effectiveness pervade grant making. Although approaches to describing and documenting philanthropic effectiveness are distinct (Ostrower, 2004), each of these funding organizations seems to accept the Porter and Kramer proposition that essential elements of effectiveness include the following:

• clarity of organizational purpose and mission focus
• articulated theories of change for individual projects
• fiscal accountability
• efficient operations
• organizational transparency
• grant monitoring
• outcome assessment of grants
• knowledge assessment (what is learned in the grant making by funder and grantee alike)

THREE INITIAL STEPS IN DEMONSTRATING PHILANTHROPIC EFFECTIVENESS

This business of effective philanthropy cuts across three levels of federation activity: evaluating individual grants, describing more explicitly how it decides to grant funds, and working closely with grantees to build value through results-oriented philanthropy.

The first and most easily accessible realm is the monitoring and evaluation of its individual grants. Grant making is a major function at every federation in the country (even if it occurs entirely in the form of campaign allocations). In the independent sector, project and program evaluation is generally considered to be a given in most grant making of any meaningful amount (Walker & Grossman, 19995). There is no evidence, however, that evaluation has a firm foothold as a common practice in the federation system. In addition, although it is obvious, for example, that a social services project, a social action initiative, a curriculum innovation in a day school, or a capital project each requires different approaches to evaluation, each also necessitates the expenditure of funds and the application of professional expertise if its success is to be measured.

Federations as a rule neither budget significant dollars nor routinely hire trained personnel to conduct grant evaluations (Litman & Barth, 2005), although there are notable exceptions. Additionally, models already exist in the system in which philanthropic effectiveness is displayed through rigorous grant evaluation. The challenge is to make this practice a standard one.

What we are seeing in the field is a pronounced shift from intention-based charity to investment-based philanthropy. Funders, particularly next generation and entrepreneurial philanthropists, clamor for a focus on performance. They expect the federation to work with grantees to determine whether funded projects produce outcomes and results.

To measure their philanthropic effectiveness, federations need to describe more explicitly how they reach decisions to allocate and grant funds and on what basis they make awards. Federations then should account for the ways in which grantees achieve desired outcomes, as well as analyze situations in which unrealized or unanticipated goals characterize the funded project.

Federations are well positioned to measure their philanthropic effectiveness. Around the country, they enjoy excellent relationships with donors and grantees alike. Volunteer leaders, working together with trained professionals, can ensure that dollars raised in annual campaigns and funds contributed to donor-advised vehicles and supporting organizations are managed with full and open disclosure. Investment tactics, strategies, and performance should be reported broadly and available for public scrutiny. Granting funds from the campaign, philanthropic and federation endowment funds, and supporting organizations creates opportunities for funder and grantee interaction that will advance the dynamics of effective philanthropy. At each point in these interactions there is the opportunity to deepen donors’ involvement with the federation and to enliven the spirit of mutual responsibility the federation and its grantees have to one another for the stewardship and effective use of funds.

A NEW COVENANT

Jewish community federations are among the most successful fundraising organizations in the entire not-for-profit world. However, the amount of dollars raised and the metrics of money alone will not sustain the system. Federations in the 21st century will be as much about meaning as money, as concerned with results as much as with resources, and be held to higher standards of both efficiency and effectiveness similar to what they have imposed on their beneficiary agencies. The stakes are high, as Cleveland Federation president Tim Wuliger (2004) notes: “Successful organizations which do not seek to change or worse yet, have erected impediments to change, are the successful organizations which have begun to fail.” We have a new covenant to create. Funders are asking the federation to develop an architecture of tzedakah that produces blueprints for the transparent management of bountiful philanthropy. Contributors who entrust federations with their donations and philanthropic assets expect that the federation will make a demonstrable difference in the world with their grants. The federation faces an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen abiding bonds with loyal donors and to enter into authentic relationships with all funders through a sacred commitment to philanthropic effectiveness.

Chip Edelsberg, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which fosters compelling and effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States. When the full version of this piece was originally published in the Journal of Jewish Community Service, Edelsberg was Vice President of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

References

Edelsberg, Charles. (2004, Winter). Federation philanthropy for the future. Journal of Jewish Communal Service, 31-38.

Frumkin, Peter. (2004). Trouble in foundation land: Looking back, looking ahead. Indianapolis: Hudson Institute.

Grace, Kay Sprinkel, and Wendroff, Alan L. (2001). High-impact philanthropy: How donors, hoards, and nonprofit organizations can transform communities. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Litman, Sacha, and Barth, Karen. (2005, February). Federation planned giving and endowments economics study. New York: United Jewish Communities.

Ostrower, Francie. (2004). Foundation effectiveness: Definitions and challenges. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy.

Prager, Dennis J. (1999, November). Raising the value of philanthropy. Pittsburgh: Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

Siegal, Dan, & Yancey, Jenny. (2003). Philanthropy’s forgotten resource? Engaging the individual donor. Mill Valley, CA: New Visions Philanthropic Research & Development.

Streeter, Ryan. (2001). Transforming charity: Toward a results-oriented social sector. Indianapolis: Hudson Institute.

Walker, Gary, and Grossman, Jean Baldwin. (1999, April). Philanthropy and outcomes: Dilemmas in the quest for accountability. Public/Private Ventures Brief.

Wuliger, Timothy F. (2004, December 5). Board Chair’s remarks. Annual Meeting of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

Source: “More Than Money: A Covenant of Federation Philanthropic Effectiveness,” Chip Edelsberg, eJewishPhilanthropy, July 15, 2015

“Israel”

Say the word in a gathering of almost any diverse group of Jews, and the room divides.

“Israel”

Write the word for almost any Jewish audience of readers—as I have done here—and expect that each individual immediately conjures up a passel of highly personalized associations and passionate opinions about political matters. Proceed with caution and make no assumptions as an author that there is agreement on what Israel means to your readers.

That in mind, the Jim Joseph Foundation Board of Directors and professional staff recently returned from a week in Israel that included special immersion activities and our regular quarterly board meeting. Israel embraced us with her people and landscapes, language and culture. For whatever differences of opinions exist among the Directors and professionals, there was a palpable, compelling cohesiveness to our Israel experience. Each in his or her way affirmed how essential Israel education is to the Jewish education funding mandate the Foundation pursues. We repeatedly recognized and communicated with conviction to one another the unique place Israel holds within the Foundation’s mission.

The Israel to which I referred above—the one which divides rooms and evokes oppositional opinions—was superseded by a Jewish homeland and nation-state that exercised a profoundly unifying force on the Foundation family.

A new grant award to the iCenter reflected the Board and professional staff’s own “Israel education” during the trip. This three-year grant (the Foundation’s third) represents a substantive field building investment. The grant supports the iCenter’s operations and helps expand its capacity to provide an array of critically important Israel education curricular, instructional, and professional development initiatives.

Additionally, the Foundation continues to support the Birthright Israel Foundation by subsidizing Birthright experiences for thousands of young Jewish adults. It is a direct, effective way for the Foundation to help young adults develop personal connections to Israel and Israelis during formative years.

The grants by design are complementary, strategically enabling Jewish youth, teens, and young adults—and their educators—to explore Israel through different encounters that contribute to personally relevant meaning making.

Beyond the Board table, Directors and staff professionals saw first-hand what Israel education and engagement looks, feels, and sounds like on the ground, in Israel.  This included a memorable Shabbat dinner at the Jerusalem Moishe House; meetings with participants from the innovative EXCEL, Onward Israel, and Tamid programs; and hearing the unique perspectives on the Taglit-Birthright Israel enterprise from Taglit CEO Gidi Mark, Senior Educator Zohar Raviv, American Birthright alumni, and IDF personnel who served as Birthright Israel madrichim. In fact, while in Jerusalem, we divided the Foundation Directors and professionals to ride buses and engage in site visits with three different Birthright groups.

Additional experiences further affirmed previous grant awards. Given the Foundation’s desire to learn about and support alumni networks, it was gratifying to hear from Pardes Institute graduates benefitting from its Foundation-funded educator alumni program. We all were excited when the chief engineer of the iCenter-supported Israel Space IL project, along with its primary Israeli investor, Morris Kahn, highlighted progress being made in this international moon landing competition.

Fortunately, we also had time for private conversations with leading Israeli thinkers and officials. We participated in separate meetings and conversations with the Hartman Institute’s astute Tal Becker and inspirational Donniel Hartman. Discussions with Itamar Rabinovich and Ari Shavit challenged us to think about Israel education in historically grounded, nuanced ways. United States Ambassador Daniel Shapiro briefed us for over an hour. Directors and professionals enjoyed an enlightening tour of the Israel museum with its inimitable Director, James Snyder.

In all instances, Israel’s shimmering immediacy suffused conversations with a powerful sense of her presence.

One of the Foundation’s greatest challenges is to continually seek out the most effective strategies for funding Israel education. The Foundation’s founder—whose gravesite in Israel we visited to honor Jim Joseph’s memory —possessed an exceptionally keen, almost prescient sense of the need for Jews in the United States to diligently weave teaching and learning about Israel inextricably into the fabric of Jewish education. Jim Joseph, z”l, believed the Jewish people could not flourish absent ongoing Jewish education—with the study and experiencing of Israel elemental to both vibrant Jewish community in the Diaspora and a safe, secure Jewish state in the volatile Middle East. Jim Joseph clearly saw that Jewish and Israel education animated each other, bound perpetually together.

Finally, then, as I ruminated how to capture for readers the magic that the Jim Joseph Foundation family experienced in Israel, I grasped for words that ultimately elude me. Others fortunate enough to experience a peer or family trip to Israel surely know the feeling of trying to “explain” the special feeling that an immersive Israel experience creates. In this instance, let me conclude by invoking the message Tal Becker persuasively conveyed to us, one which resonated powerfully with Directors and professionals alike: If we are intent on establishing a civil dialogue on Israel, we must become character witnesses to the reality that is contemporary Israel. For Jim Joseph Foundation leaders and professionals, intensive time together in Eretz Y’Israel enlightened us and will assist Foundation efforts to advance Israel education.