Fostering Joy at the EJE Network Day of Learning

Editor’s Note:  An inaugural retreat in October 2015 launched a new network of experiential Jewish educators, comprised of more than 200 program graduates from HUC-JIR’s Certificate in Jewish Education specializing in Adolescents and Emerging Adults; The Davidson School’s Master’s Degree in Jewish Experiential Education program and Jewish Experiential Leadership Institute (in partnership with the JCC Association); and YU’s Certificate Program in Experiential Jewish Education

Earlier this summer, members of the Experiential Jewish Education (EJE)  Network gathered again for a Day of Learning on the topic of “Fostering Joy: How can we harness joy to meet our goals as experiential Jewish educators.” Network members had the opportunity to learn together, to challenge each other, to try new education strategies, to strengthen their relationships with one another, and to think about how they can bring joy into the lives of learners through the educational experiences they create.

The Jim Joseph Foundation supports the EJE Network through its Education Initiative with HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU. We are pleased to share the following reflections on the Day of Learning from three of its participants:

Bringing More Joy into the Lives of Teens,” by Kara Liu, Youth Director of Temple Israel in Long Beach, CA and a member of cohort five of HUC-JIR’s Certificate in Jewish Education specializing in Adolescents and Emerging Adults

Finding Joy in Data Analysis,” by David Rosen, Associate of Campaign Analytics and Support for JEWISHcolorado and  a member of cohort one of JTS’s Master’s Degree in Jewish Experiential Education

Prioritizing Joy as a Solo Consultant,” by Lily Lozovsky, Director of Bring Back Shabbat and Network Engagement Manager for OU Next Gen and Platforma Global Network and a member of cohort three of YU’s EJE Certificate Program

 

CEO Onboarding: An investment in the Jewish Future

This blog appeared originally in eJewishPhilanthropy. 

How do we hire and fire?

What constitutes leadership? And what’s the difference between leadership and management?

What are the values of Jewish institutions? And how should their executives display them?

One of us (Dov) has been CEO of his Jewish Federation for slightly more than 18 months; the other (Abby) starts officially in her new role July 1. And together, with nine colleagues from across the nation, we form the first cohort in the innovative CEO Onboarding Pilot Program.

We come from a diverse collection of Jewish federations, public/community relations and service organizations that work to create robust, vibrant Jewish communities. At this time when our American Jewish community is refashioning how it facilitates expressions of Jewish life, this CEO Onboarding program is an invaluable support for the heads of leading Jewish nonprofits who will wrestle with these challenges. And, CEO Onboarding is a laboratory for exploring how such support might create a pipeline for and buoy future leadership of our communal organizations. Through independent evaluation of the program and feedback from current cohort members, program organizers and other stakeholders are gaining a deeper understanding about the specific leadership support and learning opportunities most helpful to current and future Jewish nonprofit heads. Subsequent cohorts thus will receive even more refined and focused professional development. Ultimately, tens of thousands of employees of Jewish organizations, and the hundreds of thousands of community members impacted by our work, all will benefit.

Stewarded by TBF Consulting and operated in partnership with Leading Edge, the program offers us the unique opportunity to learn from mentors, from experienced CEOs, and from other leadership experts; to analyze work-place scenarios and case studies; and to discuss best practices and strategies for success. The one-on-one professional coaching and the webinars and conferences with elite consultants throughout the year create a support system within the cohort that aids the development of a community of practice among participants.

The cohort’s first conference just concluded in Chicago. What were the highlights? For some, it was the opportunity to learn from thought-provoking authors in the areas of adaptive leadership and American Jewish history and politics. We explored a number of complex questions that any communal leader today must address: Do we have one community? What are the core messages that we deliver? How are the messages transmitted through our generations and across our geographies? For others in our cohort, the highlight was the guidance and toolkits offered by skilled practitioners in the fields of psychology of philanthropy, financial management, and nonprofit governance. For others still, the in-depth peer coaching or best practice materials brought the greatest insights. For each of us, the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading thinkers, along with the foundation leaders who host the program, was unprecedented.

But the impact of the program is not just in the practical guidance and support we receive. Impact also is felt through the spirit with which the program is being delivered. The organizers have, time and again, explained their intention to learn from this experiment with evaluation and feedback. And we are mindful of the way in which moral leadership has been articulated in the program implementation. Our second convening was slated to be held in North Carolina. But with the passage of that state legislature’s HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, reversing a Charlotte ordinance that had extended rights to gay and transgender people, and nullifying local ordinances that would have expanded protections for the LGBTQ community, the organizers determined that they would model what it means to exercise leadership. Our convening was moved to a different state as a result of this discriminatory legislation. We in the cohort, observing this shift, were made aware again of the sacred obligation to demonstrate Jewish values of inclusion and fair treatment for all through our stewardship of our organizations and work.

We are grateful for the incredible support of the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and other generous funders. We’re grateful to our own Boards of Directors and organizations, who see the benefit of their new CEOs participating in a forum that shepherds our learning and growing together.

And we’re grateful for a Jewish community – here, in North America – that believes in the future of Jewish leadership, invests in that future, and commits to it.

We are:

Tami Baldinger, Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches · Robert Bank, American Jewish World Service · Dov Ben-Shimon, Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ · Jodi Bromberg, InterfaithFamily · Marci Glazer, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco · Danny Grossman, Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco · Michael Hoffman, The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County · Abigail Porth, Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco · Stefanie Rhodes, Slingshot Fund · Todd Schenk, Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington · Elana Silber, Sharsheret

Dov Ben-Shimon is the (fairly new) CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, NJ; Abby Porth is the (brand new) CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the San Francisco Bay Area.

A Look Back at Nadiv – What Have We Learned for the Future?

This blog appeared originally in eJewishPhilanthropy

Five years ago, the Nadiv program was launched as an innovative pilot program involving six camp-school partnerships whose primary objective was enhancing and deepening the quality of Jewish education at the camps and enriching experiential education at the schools while building a mutually beneficial and sustainable camp-school model. The Nadiv model created six new full-time positions for experiential Jewish educators, each shared by a camp and a school in geographic proximity to each other. The educators, whose responsibilities were defined by each camp and school based on its needs, toggled their responsibilities between them. In most cases, this meant spending four days in the school during the academic year with one day devoted to planning the camp program for the coming summer, with the entire camp season being spent in camp. The hope was to create a career path for select, talented educators. The program began with a preparatory year in 2011 and is concluding its active four-year phase this month.

You could say that the theme song of this pilot was “partnership,” since it involved not only camp-school partnerships but also a $3.3 million funding partnership of the Jim Joseph and AVI CHAI Foundations, which remained actively involved throughout the five years. In addition, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which operates three of the six participating camps and with which three of the schools are associated, was represented in the inception of the project. The entire project was directed by Ramie Arian under the auspices of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, with intensive involvement of two veteran experiential educators in the role of mentors. From the outset, Nadiv was an enterprise with “many moving parts.”

Each camp-school partnership was unique in character, structure, expectations and possibilities. Four of the schools were Jewish day schools and two were Reform congregational schools. In addition to the three URJ partnerships (Camp Coleman and Davis Academy in Georgia; Crane Lake Camp in Massachusetts and Temple Shaarey Tefila in New York; Camp Kalsman and Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Washington), there were two independent camp-school partnerships (Herzl Camp in Wisconsin and Heilicher Minneapolis Day School; Camp Mountain Chai and San Diego Jewish Academy in California) and a Young Judaea-Solomon Schechter partnership (Camp Young Judaea Sprout Lake in New York and Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, New Jersey).

Each Nadiv educator was mentored by a veteran experiential educator. In addition, the group had periodic conference calls with the Nadiv director and the two mentors, and a yearly two-day seminar.

The Nadiv model was compelling in its potential for:

  • Improving the quality and consistency of experiential Jewish education in the camps and schools
  • Nurturing collaboration between two major approaches to Jewish education in North America: the formal and the experiential
  • Being an innovative experiment on behalf of engaging Jewish children through the intellect, the senses and the emotions.

On the other hand, it faced some daunting challenges such as:

  • Creating camp/school partnerships built on shared goals and visions rather than only on the relationship with the shared educator
  • Retaining Nadiv educators in the face of the heavy time demands of working in both school and camp settings
  • Juggling the sometimes conflicting expectations of two sets of supervisors
  • Handling the upheavals imposed by leadership changes in the schools and camps.

Nadiv was closely followed and its progress evaluated through its mid-point in December 2014 by the strategic consulting firm Informing Change. The executive summary of its report found gradual progress in improving Jewish education at the camps. A positive relationship of the Nadiv educator with camp staff influenced the extent to which change occurred in the camp’s Jewish program.

In the schools, the report found variance in the nature and scope of improvements in Jewish experiential education due to the differences in the roles of the Nadiv educators and in the schools’ priorities. In terms of the Nadiv camp-school partnerships, Informing Change reported communication between each partner camp and school, but little evidence of the kind of shared vision and mutual need that are characteristic of genuine collaborations. This last observation isn’t surprising, given that the original Nadiv vision was of a shared employee, not necessarily of a full collaboration.

In the final year of the Nadiv grant ending in June 2016, the three URJ partnerships remain intact. Of the three other partnerships, one of the schools appointed its Nadiv fellow as Judaic Studies Department Chair and Director of Jewish Life, and his new responsibilities made it impossible to continue in his camp position. The two other Nadiv fellows were dissatisfied with their school positions and took positions at other schools, which made continuation of the original camp-school partnership impossible.

What lessons can we share from Nadiv now that it’s approaching the end of its four-year active phase?

The Nadiv program resulted in positive results for the camps. Having a master’s level Jewish educator with camp experience (rather than an undergraduate or graduate student) overseeing and devoting time during the year to Jewish programming and education in camp raised the level and professionalism of Jewish programming in all six camps. It resulted in more creative and innovative educational programs and contributed to improving the preparation of teaching faculty in the camps. In addition, the Nadiv educator’s presence in the camp for a number of consecutive summers provided much needed continuity to the Jewish program that had often suffered from a high turnover of seasonal staff.

Depending on the educator’s role, Nadiv also resulted in enhanced experiential education in the schools, to an extent. The educators with responsibilities beyond the classroom, such as tefillah or “Jewish life,” were better positioned to introduce experiential elements into the life of the school than those who were primarily in the classroom.

Despite the heavy demands of switching between school and camp responsibilities, most of the Nadiv educators reported high job satisfaction and professional growth during their years in the program. The supervision provided by the partner organizations together with the intense mentoring and professional seminars provided by Nadiv added up to high-level, concentrated in-service training in both formal and experiential education.

There were nonetheless substantial challenges and obstacles to the goal of continued camp-school partnerships after the end of the philanthropic funding. None of the original partnerships will continue employing the same model after June 2016. The key challenges include:

  1. The difficulty in building true camp-school partnerships and establishing an overarching common goal and vision, along with the lack of conviction on the part of some of the schools that an experiential educator adds real value that would otherwise be absent. In the case of Nadiv, the camps were the primary drivers, searching for a school with which to partner. True collaborations call for each partner to see a compelling need for the partnership, and to spend time and energy on exploring areas of mutual interest. In addition, partnership goals have to be reviewed with an open mind over time and revised or even discarded.
  2. The high cost of the shared salary and of the ongoing mentoring and professional development. The budget limitations of camps and schools pose a serious challenge to an unsubsidized shared educator model accompanied by mentoring and professional development.
  3. This year-round employment model places heavy demands on the educator, especially in the high intensity planning times of late spring (for camps) and late summer (for schools). This raises the question of the price exacted from an educator in terms of having sufficient time to devote to camp and school responsibilities as well as to personal and family life.
  4. Leadership changes in the partnership organizations can, and usually do, have an impact on the work of a shared educator. The transition can disrupt lines of authority, and the new camp or school leader may not have the same buy-in to the model as the previous leader. Half the Nadiv partnerships experienced transitions in a camp or school leader.

Even when the camp-school partnership model does not continue, however, a positive ripple effect can be seen. The Nadiv partner camps value the professional planning and expertise that have raised the bar over the past four years for their Jewish educational programming. They are looking for different ways to maintain that level of professionalism. One camp hired its Nadiv educator as its associate director with the intent of keeping Jewish education high on its leaders’ priority list; another camp arranged for its Nadiv educator to continue during the summer and on a part-time basis during the academic year even after she left the partner school.

Inspired by Nadiv and by the model of the Ramah-URJ Service Corps, URJ is now supporting the creation of employment partnerships between selected congregations and URJ camps. Each congregation-camp partnership hires a full-time staff member, who usually serves as youth director in the congregation and unit head (or other senior staff role) in the camp. The staff members are generally early-career professionals with a bachelor’s degree and extensive camp experience. URJ contributes significantly to their salaries, and it provides a one-year training program that includes a professional development retreat in the fall, and webinars every six weeks throughout the school year. URJ anticipates that 20 such joint positions will be in operation for 2016/17.

A second example is a program supported by the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. “Springboard Teen Engagement Specialists” has engaged one professional this year in a year-round position to work with Jewish teens and will add one per year over the next four years. During the academic year, they work in the Chicago community providing teen programming for an array of Jewish youth groups, synagogues, and school clubs. During the summer, they will engage in outreach as part of the programming staff at a Jewish summer camp. The summer relationships they forge will help guide the subsequent year’s programming.

We owe thanks to all those whose dedicated efforts made the Nadiv pilot happen and to the talented Nadiv Fellows who pioneered this initiative, bringing their passion for experiential education into Jewish camps and schools. This pilot program enhanced Jewish educational programming in all six camps, brought camps and schools into working partnerships, and led others to consider what else can be accomplished by building bridges of collaboration between our educational organizations. We see Nadiv’s story as unfinished, and will wait and watch patiently to see what new collaborations it will inspire.

Rabbi Ramie Arian is a consultant working with Jewish camps and other programs of experiential education in the Jewish community. He serves as project manager for Nadiv.

Leah Nadich Meir is a Program Officer at The AVI CHAI Foundation.

Steven Green is Director of Grants Management/Program Officer for the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Hiddur: Deepening Jewish Experiences at Summer Camp

This blog on Hiddur ran originally in eJewishPhilanthropy

Think for a moment of nearly any activity you associate with Jewish camp. Whatever comes to mind, chances are that the experience is communal, engaging, and fun. Now, more camps increasingly recognize that any camp experience can also be a quality Jewish experience for their campers and staff – if designed in a thoughtful, intentional way.

Over the last decade, multiple investments by different funders have focused on developing the Jewish experience at camp, and camps now have a wide range of professional development and training opportunities with this focus available to their seasonal and year-round staff. The field’s enthusiastic reception of these offerings has shown a steady appetite for learning how to deliver a better Jewish program. Now, our three foundations – AVI CHAI, Jim Joseph, and the Maimonides Fund – are advancing this vision even further by helping camps look comprehensively and systematically at where and how they are delivering the Jewish experience, and introducing ways to do it better.

The result is Hiddur, a new program of Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC). Camps work one-on-one with coaches who are highly experienced Jewish educators to develop specific Jewish experiential learning outcomes for their campers, staff, and camp community. Camps can choose to address a number of different areas, including Jewish peoplehood, connections to Israel, Jewish perspectives on nature and environment, Hebrew language, social justice (tikkun olam), marking sacred time through Shabbat and Jewish holidays, spirituality and mindfulness, and personal ethics (middot).

Hiddur is our attempt to answer critical questions, as explained by Michelle Shapiro Abraham, a Hiddur coach: “When children leave camp, what five or six Jewish components from the summer will the camp want them to retain? What outcomes from these summer experiences would we hope to achieve? How do we train our staff to support those outcomes? Jewish camp experiences shouldn’t be siloed – how do we bring the camp’s Jewish values to life, in every aspect of the camp experience, blended with that camp’s overall culture? Hiddur is like holding up a mirror and giving the opportunity for camp leadership to think about what’s important to them.”

The first Hiddur cohort is comprised of eight camps across the U.S., representing geographical, denominational, and mission diversity: Camp Daisy & Harry Stein (Arizona), Herzl Camp (Wisconsin), Camp Judaea (North Carolina), B’nai B’rith Camp (Oregon), Camp Sabra (Missouri), Emma Kaufmann Camp (West Virginia), B’nai B’rith Perlman Camp (Pennsylvania), and Camp Tel Noar (New Hampshire). These camps have committed to a three-year process and each has formed a Hiddur team – including professional and lay leadership – to work with their coach. The pilot camps also are participating in a Community of Practice to share their progress and challenges, as well as to further develop their skills to effectively implement Jewish experiential learning. Additionally, camps will have access to Ignition Grants to fund new Jewish initiatives during the summer.

Camps want to grow and evolve their Jewish experiences for a variety of reasons. Hiddur offers space to learn, experiment, and analyze regardless of why camps are driven to do this. Tom Rosenberg, a 27-year veteran of the Jewish camp field and current executive director of Camp Judaea, says Hiddur “provides the opportunity to increase the camp’s intentionality about the type of Jewish education being provided in camp. It does it in a systemic way, weaving together enrichment of diverse components of camp, from Ivritand Israeli music to daily middot and tefillah. As a pluralistic camp serving a pretty diverse Jewish population, we want staff to demonstrate that diversity so all our campers can learn the many flavors of Jewish life and practices of Judaism in the world. We want to reinforce that we’re all Jewish, and to create a stronger Jewish community worldwide.”

Another director, Efraim Yudewitz of Camp Tel Noar, explains how he sees Hiddur helping to integrate Judaism further into the camp experience. “Our campers love Shabbat. They love Israel Day. These are things we do Jewishly that we love. Then there are things they love about camp that happen more on a routine basis, that are actually also Jewish things, but we haven’t talked about them in a Jewish context. For example, what kids love the most, what keeps them coming back next summer, are the relationships – community, friends, role models. There’s lots of things we do to help foster those relationships. The way we treat and relate to each other in Jewish law – ben adam l’chavero – is a language we talk about in camp, but campers don’t understand it as a ‘Jewish’ concept. I want to help our kids understand and feel like the regular routine camp stuff is Jewish too.”

The Hiddur model is an unprecedented endeavor in our field – in terms of the length of the initiative, its collaborative funding structure, and who it involves. Hiddur involves camp directors, as well as the inner circle of camp leadership, both lay and professional. This makes it more likely that all of the camps’ desired changes will be implemented regardless of staff turnover, new priorities that arise, and other extenuating circumstances. Joe Reimer, Professor of Jewish Education at Brandeis University and a longtime consultant in the field serving as a mentor to Hiddur coaches, makes the argument, “When you bring the broader camp community, including staff, parents, and lay leadership, into the discussion, everyone can see how the enhanced Jewish mission of the camp is an asset to the overall vitality of the camp.”

We recognize that implementing this type of change effectively and sustaining it for the long-term takes proper planning. That’s why our foundations made Hiddur a three year investment, offering ample time for the coaches to work with the camp’s Hiddur team to assess strengths and weaknesses and plan for change. The cohort of camps and coaches will grow together, benefiting all involved. Yudewitz explains the important cohort dynamic: “We’re not doing it in our own bubble, but getting the guidance to be really reflective over a longer period of time about what’s working and what isn’t. It helps us stay on task, be productive, and also do it much better.” And the coaches themselves will be able to collaborate and learn from each other over this time period as well, helping to ensure that each Hiddur team receives the highest quality level of training.

As foundations that already have invested in Jewish camp, we believe deeply in the power of the immersive experiences it offers. FJC’s strategy of focusing intently on the Jewishness of camp experiences is potentially game-changing – for the pilot camps andfor the entire field. Learnings and strategies that come out of this initiative will be shared with the broader camp community.

Our three foundations now are working with FJC to help the pilot group with strategy and execution, and we again are reminded that there is much to be celebrated in the world of Jewish camping. We hope this program will drive success one step further by advancing the ability of Jewish camps to enhance and more effectively execute their Jewish missions.

Joel Einleger is a senior program officer at the AVI CHAI Foundation.
Aaron Saxe is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.
Aimee Weiss is a program officer at the Maimonides Fund

Elevating Teen Engagement through Community Collaboration

For many Jewish families, the bar or bat mitzvah is a child’s transition to Jewish “adulthood” and, unfortunately, the end of their active involvement in Jewish life. The jarring statistic is that less than 20 percent of Jewish teens remain involved in Jewish life post-bar or bat mitzvah.

In response, many in the Jewish organizational world are re-focusing efforts on those critical, formative teen years.  What more can we do to create connection and meaning for Jewish teens, both now and as they move into adulthood? The answers to this question should reflect the major engagement opportunity that the teen years actually present.

During these years, as identities are forming, young people want to explore, to question, and to learn. Organizations such as Moving Traditions, for example, have set a high priority on Jewish teens by presenting field-tested programs, such as Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing, and Shevet Achim: the Brotherhood. These programs engage teens in conversations about ‘who am I’ and ‘who am I becoming’ as they navigate their adolescent years with Jewish context, peers, and mentors.  Through these and many other substantive Jewish opportunities, teens become more connected to themselves, to each other and to the Jewish community.

Thankfully, more and more of these programs are part of the Jewish teen landscape because of the innovative philanthropic experiment known as the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative. National and local funders in ten communities are working together to develop and support new teen initiatives that draw on the collective strength of local organizations.  And, for the first time, we can point to an evaluation about one of the local community initiatives—in this instance, the Denver-Boulder initiative—to understand some of the tangible outcomes on local teens, as well as the broader successes and challenges.

When launched in July 2014 with local funds from Rose Community Foundation and other donors and national funds from the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Denver-Boulder Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative was an ambitious endeavor that looked to maximize the collective efforts of five local agencies. Moving Traditions and Jewish Student Connection were looking to scale their efforts in the community; jHub, Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative and PresenTense Colorado were all new.

The Year 1 local evaluation report (prepared by Informing Change, released November 2015) draws on a survey of teens and parents, and interviews with professionals and community leaders, to present a comprehensive picture of the engagement initiative so far. By increasing professional collaborative opportunities, and investing in agencies that support strong adult mentors and role models for teens, the Jewish communities in Denver and Boulder are making progress to engage local Jewish teens in Jewish life and learning.  We are excited to share a few key insights and lessons below:

Local Impact on Jewish Teens

“[To me, being Jewish means] a sense of community and belonging—a guide, more or less, to life.” – BJTI Teen

The findings for local teens are promising, while also prompting us to ask, “what more can we do?” The positives are that several hundred teens engaged in the Initiative’s programs in the first year. Overwhelmingly, Jewish teens are involved with the five grantees because they want to spend time with Jewish peers and because the offerings sound fun. The data point to two key areas to address: 1) expanding the Initiative’s reach to teens not previously engaged in Jewish life, and 2) continuing to find creative ways to bring Jewish life to teens where and when it makes sense for them. Not surprisingly, the evaluation found that homework and other extracurricular activities are the leading factors limiting teens from participating in Jewish opportunities.

The Emergence of JHub

With its roots in what was formerly called the Jewish Youth Professional Council, jHub supports professional development and collaborative opportunities for teen youth professionals throughout the Denver and Boulder communities. Through the Initiative’s funding this now staffed collaborative professional network has expanded far beyond the five Initiative grantees to include 27 current member organizations.

jHub offers these members a structure to share knowledge and data, draw on each other’s organizational strengths, build exciting new partnerships, and bring more Jewish teens together. Any challenges that arise can be confronted as a cohesive community with a sense of shared purpose. jHub also offers its members professional development and educational grant opportunities.

The evaluation shows that Jewish youth professionals now experience a more supportive peer network through jHub, contributing to increased job satisfaction. jHub professionals feel more connected to one another and the missions of their respective organizations. Moreover, they are interested in ongoing learning and growth, specifically to support them as they move through their careers.

“Through jHub, I have a greater understanding that we should let teens know about other programs and activities.  And if I do this, others will do the same for me when I have an event….” – jHub member

A New Level of collaboration

The Initiative’s five grantees report a great commitment to collaboration, rather than competition, for teen education and engagement in the area because of their work together in the Initiative. With the understanding that each organization is different and offers unique opportunities for teens with varied interests and personalities, the organizations work together to promote and support one another.

Each grantee organization models a structure where adults serve as mentors and role models for teens, while also emphasizing opportunities for teen leadership. The organizations focus primarily on a relational, rather than a programmatic, model, of Jewish engagement. Building on the approach in synagogue life outlined in Dr. Ron Wolfson’s book, Relational Judaism, the grantees are shaping the next generation of Jewish adults by facilitating relationships with adult mentors and empowering teens through different modalities of Jewish engagement.

Beyond the Initiative

On the ground, we also see that the Initiative’s mere presence brings a positive energy and attention to quality programming for Jewish teens outside of grantee programs. Parents of Jewish teens involved with Moving Traditions and BJTI report more individuals in the community dedicated to supporting Jewish teen engagement. Grantee professionals are raising communal awareness through meetings and one-on-one conversations with Jewish organizations and parents. This first year has been an important period of foundation-building and community awareness-raising.

Lessons Learned Year 1

As the evaluation notes, the Initiative’s first year was not without challenges. As a result, we learned valuable lessons that can inform future initiatives, particularly those in the similar teen education and engagement space. First, start-up took longer than anticipated. Bringing together this many partners for an entirely new approach to teen outreach and education necessitates significant planning and coordination before even one program is ready to officially launch. Second, we cannot minimize the challenge of recruiting uninvolved teens. Simply, it is very difficult. Reaching them alone is a major accomplishment. Persuading them to actually engage and to give something a shot is a true success story—and not easy. And third, there are limits to setting up shared data-systems. In fact, it may be unrealistic to build a single technology tool and database for all organizations to utilize and access. Yet, we realize that this is not the only way to share and aggregate data. Finding the most useful, effective, and efficient tool, however, will require a more nuanced solution. We believe this to be attainable, but appreciate that it will require additional time and collaboration among multiple stakeholders to come up with systems that work for all involved.

Concluding Thoughts

We are counting on the Denver-Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative to succeed. In our community, 25% of teens have a bar or bat mitzvah; only 16% attend post bar/bat mitzvah programs sponsored by or connected to the congregations, synagogues, and other Jewish institutions providing bar/bat mitzvahs.[1] So this is a crucial conversation we are having and a deeply important initiative we are implementing. We have to get it right.

And we believe the evaluation shows that we are making the right initial steps—and that other communities can too. By working with grantees such as Moving Traditions, Jewish Student Connection, Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative, jHub, and PresenTense Colorado, the Initiative reflects an investment in communal collaboration and new models of engagement. There are more and better opportunities for teens to find Jewish experiences relevant to their interests and needs and that can lead to ongoing engagement in Jewish life. As a result, teens build relationships with adult mentors and continue their own conversations about their development as young Jewish adults.

We look forward to sharing more as we learn more. To be sure, there are more successes and challenges to come. But this first look at the early, local results of the national-local Funder Collaborative, suggest that this is an exciting moment for all who care about Jewish teens.

Melanie Gruenwald is the Colorado Director for Moving Traditions. Ellen Irie is President and CEO of Informing Change.

[1] Kidron, Y. and Cohen, S.M. (2015) Jewish Teen Population Estimates: Denver/ Boulder Metro Area.

Building a Network for Experiential Jewish Education

Throughout the Gathering, I was aware of what a privilege it is, as an educator, to immerse myself in a focused space of ideas and learning, removed from the day-to-day elements of my professional role. I am very grateful for this gift.
—Erica Frankel, Director of Strategy for the Jewish Learning Fellowship at Hillel International, graduate of Yeshiva University Certificate Program in Experiential Jewish Education

In late October 2015, 45 experiential Jewish educators came to the Kaplan Mitchell Retreat and Conference Center at Ramah Darom, in Clayton, Georgia, to learn, to reflect, and to form a network for experiential Jewish educators. This inaugural retreat launched a new collaborative initiative funded through the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Education Initiative—the combined $45 million grant to three leading educational institutions: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU).

Facilitating and supporting collaboration among the universities is a core focus of the Education Initiative. This work leads to increased knowledge-sharing and creative new learning opportunities. Other collaborations address areas such as e-learning and Jewish early-childhood education. The goal of this specific collaborative endeavor is to form and strengthen a network of graduates from each school’s experiential Jewish education professional training initiatives: HUC-JIR’s Certificate in Jewish Education specializing in Adolescents and Emerging Adults; The Davidson School’s Master’s Degree in Jewish Education program and Jewish Experiential Leadership Institute (in partnership with the JCC Association); and YU’s Certificate Program in Experiential Jewish Education. By bringing together participants from these different programs, the EJE Network hopes to strengthen individual educators, as well as the field of Jewish education as a whole.

The EJE Network Gathering centered on the topic of memory as a tool for educational program development and participant engagement. Erica Frankel explained, “The Gathering gave an opportunity to revisit and deepen attendees’ understanding of memory as it relates to experience-building. We investigated memory textually in our opening beit midrash (study session), intellectually through conversations with notable academics, and practically in sessions with experts from the fields of education, psychology, and business.”

Joshua Jacobs, Assistant Director of Eden Village Camp and graduate of The Davidson School’s MA program, picks up this theme as he continues, “Rabba Yaffa Epstein, [Director of Education, North America, Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies] led a thrilling text study. The lessons contained within about the Torah and memory, combined with Rabba Epstein’s enthusiasm for the material, made for a great opening to the seminar.”

A highlight for many participants was hearing from Dr. Ryan Hamilton, professor at Emory University and facilitator for Beyond Philosophy, a consulting group that focuses on consumer experience. Andrew Paull, Director of BBYO Manhattan and a graduate of HUC-JIR’s Certificate in Jewish Education for Adolescents and Emerging Adults, reflected on how he “greatly appreciated the focus on how we design an experience by keeping in mind the memory afterward.” Joshua Jacobs further explained, “His presentation showed how to utilize reverse engineering to strengthen a good experience in a participant’s mind. This was extremely interesting and applicable to my work at Eden Village Camp. Some of the behavior and psychology principles upon which he touched will affect the ways we market and price our camp, create the staff’s schedule, and plan the arc of the camper experience.” Erica Frankel added, “People evaluate experiences both cognitively (comparing it to their expectations of what will happen), and affectively (based on how they felt during the experience).”

A third component of the gathering, a structured Peer Consultancy experience, provided a unique opportunity for attendees to meet new peers and to collaboratively support one another’s initiatives. Small groups focused on current work challenges and brainstormed individualized approaches. Andrew Paull commented, “This was a valuable piece of the Gathering and helped [us] form deeper relationships with other people in this network.”

The Gathering concluded with a new beginning: formally launching an ongoing EJE Network that supports more than 200 program graduates as they implement experiential Jewish education across the Jewish spectrum. Participants had the opportunity to develop a set of future activities to be rolled out over the next year, including ongoing remote learning, additional in-person learning opportunities, formal and informal mentoring and networking, new resource creation, and interest groups to allow individuals working on similar projects to partner and support one another. As Erica Frankel concluded, “Most importantly, I’ve returned to my desk with a new set of helpful phone numbers from my peers.”

Rachel Meytin is Director of the Experiential Jewish Education Network, a joint project of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University

A Different Kind of Risk-Taking: Improving Evaluation Practice at the Jim Joseph Foundation

A version of this blog originally ran in Philanthropy News Digest

“We’re in the business of risk-taking,” is a frequent refrain of Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation. Generally speaking, Edelsberg’s notion of risk-taking refers to the investments the Foundation makes in its grantees and their programs. The Jim Joseph Foundation is a foundation with assets in the range of $1 billion whose mission is to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews.  Between 2006 and June, 2014, the Foundation granted over $300 million to increase the number and quality of Jewish educators, to expand opportunities for Jewish learning, and to build a strong field for Jewish learning (Jim Joseph Foundation, 2014). Rarely is there an established research base for the kinds of initiatives the Foundation supports in Jewish education. In the spring of 2013, though, Edelsberg had another kind of risk in mind.

What might be gained, Edelsberg ventured, if the Foundation staff brought together a group of competing evaluation firms with whom they had worked in the past to consider ways to improve the Foundation’s practice and use of evaluation? The idea had emerged from a study of the history of the Foundation’s evaluation practices from its inception in 2006 through 2012, commissioned by the Foundation and conducted by Lee Shulman, President Emeritus of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University. Edelsberg thought it was a risk worth taking, and the board of the Foundation agreed. Edelsberg made another bold decision—to allow a doctoral student in Evaluation Studies from the University of MN to study this experimental venture.

In the winter of 2013, a colleague of mine from the field of Jewish education who was then a staff member of the Foundation heard about my research interest in the role evaluation plays in the work of foundations and their grantees. She offered to connect me with Edelsberg because of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s interest in and commitment to evaluation in their work. Edelsberg described the idea for what became the “Evaluators’ Consortium” and I asked about the possibility of studying the process as a case study for my dissertation. By the time the consortium met for the first time in October of 2013, and with the agreement of the Foundation board and the participating evaluators, I launched the research. The purpose of the study was to explore what occurred when a foundation inaugurated an innovative approach to evaluation practice, examining factors that supported successful implementation of the innovation and the impediments to its success. It sought to provide insights into the elements of organizational culture, practices, circumstances, and structures that can support effective practices of evaluation in the foundation sector. The Foundation gave me access to documents and invited me to observe meetings of the Consortium held both in person and electronically. Over the course of the first year of the Consortium’s operation, I interviewed all Foundation program staff members, Shulman (who served as the facilitator), a member of the board, and each of the participating evaluators.

In the initial stages of the work, the goals for this experiment were general and somewhat vague. The Foundation hoped to establish a more efficient process for selecting evaluators for foundation grants, to stimulate collaboration among the evaluators, to explore possibilities to conduct cluster evaluations or meta-analyses, and to examine ways the foundation could improve its overall program of evaluation.  One hope was that in their coming together, the evaluators would help the Foundation define an agenda for their work together. In spite of the uncertainty of the initiative’s outcomes, all the evaluation firms that were asked accepted Edelsberg’s invitation to participate—a testament to the nature of the relationship they already had with Edelsberg and the Foundation, and an indication of what a deeper relationship with the Foundation meant to the evaluators. The Consortium met for two face-to-face gatherings and two web-based conferences, and there was email communication among the participants between convenings. When the group gathered, members of the Consortium shared samples of their work with one another.

There was some discomfort among participants about the initial lack of clarity about the outcomes and timeline of the Consortium, especially since the evaluators were participating without compensation. Both Foundation staff and evaluators wondered how long they would be able to continue without a clear focus.  An idea that emerged toward the end of the first gathering gained traction in the months leading up to the second meeting—what if the group developed a set of outcomes and measures for Jewishness (or Jewish identity/growth/development) that could be used across organizations, initiatives, and programs? Nothing like this existed in the field of Jewish education. The notion of a tangible product, one that could be used by the evaluators, by the Jim Joseph Foundation, and by the field at large, had broad appeal. There were some concerns about committing to this goal among the evaluators–while worthwhile, such a goal was ambitious, difficult, and time consuming to achieve.

The Consortium’s work on measures of Jewish growth came at a critical time for the Foundation. At about the same time as the Evaluators’ Consortium was launched, the Jim Joseph Foundation had begun work on one of its most large-scale projects to date—the Initiative on Jewish Teen Education and Engagement. The initiative linked directly to the Foundation’s mission to “foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences” for teens and young adults. The initiative’s strategy included working in partnership with funders in up to ten local communities in the US to incubate new models of learning and involvement for Jewish teens. It grew out of an understanding of the importance of this stage of the life cycle in human development coupled with a reading of the data on low participation rates of Jewish teens in the Jewish educational experiences available to them in their communities (Informing Change, Jim Joseph Foundation, & Rosov Consulting, March 2013). On the eve of the launch of the Teen Initiative, the Foundation was particularly interested in measures of Jewish growth that could play a role in evaluating the work within and across communities.

Over the course of the first year of work, the Consortium helped the Foundation develop the vision for a cross-community evaluation of the Teen Initiative, including more in-depth work on outcomes and measures of Jewish growth.  In a step unprecedented for the Foundation, the staff asked the members of the Consortium for feedback on a draft of the evaluation RFP, and made changes on the basis of their suggestions. At the end of the year, the Foundation awarded a million dollar, four-year contract to two of the participating firms to conduct the cross-community evaluation. Another member of the Consortium is participating as a consultant on pieces of that work. The fourth member of the Consortium has been contracted by several of the local communities to conduct their community-based evaluations.

In addition to shaping of the cross-community evaluation and taking first steps on the development of outcomes and measures of Jewish growth, the initiative produced several other outcomes for the Foundation and for the participating evaluators. The foundation clarified its ideas about effective evaluation practices.  Foundation staff members developed the capacity to think differently about evaluation. Relationships were strengthened between Foundation staff and evaluators and between individual evaluators and evaluation firms. The initiative created relationships among competitors who entered into collaboration with one another to their own benefit and to the benefit of the Foundation and its grantees. Through its success with the Consortium the Foundation was emboldened to consider other new approaches to evaluation. Finally, as a result of the work done with the Consortium, the Foundation was able to introduce evaluators and high quality evaluation practices to other funders and communities.

The data collection for my dissertation came to a close in August of 2014, nearly a year after the first convening of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Evaluators’ Consortium. Since then, the Consortium has continued to meet. Their current goals, according to a Foundation blogpost written by Sandy Edwards and Stacie Cherner (2015) of the Foundation staff, include:

  • A plan for researchers, funders and practitioners to agree on common constructs [of Jewish learning and growth];
  • The development of a set of standardized questions that can be utilized across the Foundation’s portfolio of grantees;
  • Field testing of a “universal toolkit” for collecting data on common outcomes and demographics;
  • A plan for longitudinal testing, and recommending resources to disseminate and encourage the use of universal sets of tools.

Various factors supported the success of the Consortium. One was the Foundation’s willingness to take a risk and to anticipate the possibility of failure. A learning culture at the Foundation and a commitment to field building were other contributing factors. Another contributing factor was the Foundation’s ongoing approach to evaluation.  Program officers work in partnership with grantees to develop evaluation RFPs and to hire evaluators; the Foundation then funds the evaluation of their grants. Members of the program staff are engaged in nearly all stages of the evaluations of grants they manage. The staff cultivates relationships with the grantees and evaluators with whom they work. The Foundation is committed to learning from evaluation, not just using it for accountability. They use evaluation for making decisions about grantmaking. The Foundation shares the majority of completed evaluation reports on its website.

To understand the success of the Consortium we also must consider its leaders and its participants. The Foundation’s professional leader, Chip Edelsberg, his commitment to the initiative in particular and to evaluation in general, and his ability to cultivate relationships with others played important roles. Also critical were the intellectual leadership and facilitation of Lee Shulman. For the participating evaluators there were benefits to participating—possibilities of evaluation contracts with the Foundation, enhanced relationships with Foundation staff, and opportunities for professional development and colleagueship. These incentives certainly encouraged participation, and all those invited agreed to participate. It was no small feat, though, that these evaluators agreed to work alongside the organizations with whom they compete for contracts, to share their expertise with one another, to participate without direct compensation, to engage without promises of future work—and to do so with an uncertain timeline and undefined outcomes in the early stages. The small size of the field of Jewish education and the sub-field of evaluation of Jewish education added other facilitating factors—the players were known to one another at least by reputation even if they did not know each other personally and the impact of the work of these participants had the potential to be felt in the field.

Establishing the Evaluators’ Consortium required overcoming a number of challenges.  The logistics involved in scheduling the leadership of the four evaluation firms took much longer than the Foundation anticipated. Some of the evaluators worried that the outcomes were not clear at the beginning, nor was the timeline. Some worried about the scope of the project and the amount of time they had to give. Some were concerned that the competing firms might be reluctant to be fully open and comfortable working with their competitors. While the Foundation worked to create an atmosphere of collegiality among all the participants, the power differential between the Foundation and the others operated beneath the surface.

The model of the Evaluators’ Consortium is worthy of consideration by other foundations engaged in strategic philanthropy. It is likely, however, to demand practices that are a departure from “business as usual.” Strategic philanthropy involves specifying outcomes in advance and looking at progress against those outcomes. When contemplating this type of innovation in the practice of evaluation, a foundation ought to be aware of the need for emergent goals and uncertainty. Not only is it impossible to specify all possible outcomes of an innovation, attempting to define the outcomes may limit the foundation’s consideration of promising courses of action. Working in an emergent way requires some faith in the process, trust in the people promoting the innovation, and some concrete promise of potential benefits. It requires a champion who is willing to take risks and to bring others along an uncharted path. The use of developmental evaluation to document and learn systematically about the work as it progresses could address strategic concerns.

It may be counter-intuitive to bring together competitors to work together on behalf of a foundation’s evaluation program. Convening competitors in a collaborative venture, though, can create capacity, build networks, and magnify potential outcomes. Careful consideration needs to be given to the conditions under which collaboration is done, who facilitates it, and what expectations are established throughout the process. Cultivating relationships is a critical step in introducing and sustaining innovation in evaluation practice.

Innovating in the area of evaluation practice through the convening of evaluators, staff, and outside experts requires a commitment of staff time and attention for a range of tasks from engaging potential participants to defining questions to address to making arrangements. Making staff available for this work may require the shifting of responsibilities and priorities among staff members. Financial resources are another consideration. It may not always be possible to draw on the good will and trust or even the promise of future contracts with a foundation or its grantees to induce evaluators to participate in an undertaking like the Evaluators’ Consortium. Foundations considering the use of this model ought to establish a budget that would allow for compensation of the participants.

The practice of risk-taking is central to the work of foundation leaders as they hone their strategies, strive to make effective investments in organizations and programs, and pursue their missions of social betterment. The model of the Evaluators’ Consortium is a risk worthy of consideration by foundation leaders. Working collaboratively with a diverse group of external evaluators who bring a range of skills, perspectives, and expertise has potential for significant pay-offs for foundations and, ultimately, for the spheres they hope to impact.

Cindy Reich is an evaluator and Jewish educator based in Minneapolis, MN. This article is based on her dissertation, Improving Evaluation Practice in the Foundation Sector: A Case Study of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Evaluators’ Consortium, scheduled to enter library circulation in spring 2016. She received her Ph.D. in Evaluation Studies from the University of MN in 2015.

 

Bibliography

Informing Change, Jim Joseph Foundation, Rosov Consulting (2013, March) Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens: What Jewish Communities Can Learn from Programs That Work. Retrieved from https://jimjosephfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Report_and_Appendix_Effective_Strategies_for_Educating_and_Engaging_Jewish_Teens.pdf

Jim Joseph Foundation. (2014). Jim Joseph Foundation 2013-2014 Biennial Report . San Francisco, CA, USA.

S. Edwards & S. Cherner. (2015, April 9). A Behind-the-Scenes Look at an Evaluators’ Consortium (Blogpost). Retrieved from https://jimjosephfoundation.org/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-an-evaluators-consortium/

 

Making Jewish My Own: Gleanings from Reboot

Editor’s Note: The Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded three grants to Reboot totaling up to $6,547,490 beginning in 2008. The following guest blog from Reboot’s Robin Kramer and Amelia Klein ran originally in eJewishPhilanthropy

“Reboot showed me that if community wasn’t there
then the best thing to do was to get up and make it happen.”

This is the sentiment of a Rebooter, a member of the network launched by Reboot, the young nonprofit now just past its bar/bat mitzvah year. Reboot affirms the value of Jewish traditions and creates new ways for people to make them their own, principally through the doors of creative culture. Inspired by Jewish ritual and embracing the arts, humor, food, philosophy, and social justice, Reboot creates highly imaginative projects that spark the interest of young adult Jews and the larger community through live gatherings and events large and intimate, and through exhibitions, recordings, books, films, DIY activity toolkits, and apps – a distinctive blend of digital, analogue and the bridge between.

Reboot recently commissioned Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR) to study its impact and effectiveness in creating opportunities for members of the Reboot network to explore their Jewishness and what, if any, changes in their Jewish lives have emerged as a result. Since Reboot’s creation in 2002, the network of Jewish cultural creatives in their late 20s to early 40s, has grown to 480, and who live primarily in the hub communities of LA, SF and NY, with smaller cohorts in DC and London. The network is self-organizing and created via nomination by existing members. A critical point is that a vast majority of the network say they were un or disconnected from Jewish life prior to Reboot. The GQRR research engaged 42% of the network and encompassed an online forum, an opt-in web survey and in-depth interviews.

The results of the GQRR study are instructive, offering lessons for us and other organizations to draw upon. The findings are particularly illuminating, as they run counter to the headline narratives of a spiraling dismal future for Jewish connection and identity among younger generations.

In our view, there is no “secret sauce” here but many transferable notions to draw upon from Reboot’s design – authentic open space methodology, welcoming ways, great questions and low barriers of entry that invite exploration of Jewishness; creative peers and support from amazing teachers, all combined with a hip contemporary sensibility of style, beauty and experimentation, and importantly, a do-it-yourself mindset with support coming over time, not just one time. The emergent big “ah-ha” is at once forward-looking and ancient: that Judaism is malleable, mine to shape and share.

Opening Up Judaism

“Reboot has made me feel as though I can claim the label of Jewish even though I didn’t have a typical Jewish upbringing nor do I live a very Jewish (religious or traditional) life.”

“Reboot puts Judaism in play, makes it active and alive. It presents the same big question, but from dozens of angles a year: What am I going to do with my Jewishness? It asks questions that beg answers. Questions that cannot be ignored. Dozens of times a year, those questions put me in play, and those questions pull me toward interacting with Jewishness.”

The research show that Rebooters feel a greater sense of ownership over their Jewishness, and have a new found confidence around rituals, practice and spirituality. Just over three-quarters (77 percent) said they have a strengthened connection to being Jewish. 92% attach importance to Reboot as a forum to explore Jewishness that fits with their values and lifestyle. The organization’s local programming model encourages members of the network to design and create their own Jewish experiences, fromShabbat dinner gatherings to text study salons to reinterpretation of holidays and rituals. The flexibility in both programming and creative brainstorming opportunities fosters ongoing, open and fluid pathways for exploration and collaboration.

Engaging and Participating in Jewish Life

“The Jewish rituals I know… are largely, my parents’ traditions. The twist Reboot has enabled/inspired in me is the process of figuring out how to make them my own (and, more broadly, that of my generation).”

For many members, being part of Reboot has raised their consciousness of being Jewish and Jewishness, and led them to take a greater interest in Jewish themes (64% in Jewish culture or history, and 61% in Jewish religion or ritual). Nearly half (47%) say they have more Friday night Shabbat dinners and over half (55%) say they are doing more to celebrate Jewish holidays.

Though involvement with Reboot does not, for many, translate into an embrace of conventional Jewish institutions, just under a fifth (19%) have joined a Jewish congregation and 22% have joined other Jewish groups. A quarter have taken a leadership or board position within the Jewish community.

The study offers further impetus about how best to impart Jewish identity and knowledge and to raise a Jewish family. Nearly half (49 percent) of Rebooters with children indicate that they do more to raise their kids Jewish and many asked for further exploration and assistance. One member noted: “One thing Reboot has done for me in this regard is approaching my children’s interaction with Judaism in a different light. I’m thinking about what a Jewish education means in relation to their lives (and how that Jewish education should look) and weighing meaningful experiences differently within that context (the embrace and execution of Jewish values vs. rote Jewish learning, for example).”

Welcome and creativity at the core

Reboot’s program methodology places Rebooters at the center of the design process whereby projects are generated by the network for the network. The emphasis is placed on an invitation to create (or not), on member-generated content rather than a top-down approach. The peer-to-peer learning, creativity, idea generation, incubation and piloting of ideas feeds back to the network in the form of programs, events, gatherings and listserv conversations. These projects and products then are grown to become tools and resources for Reboot’s 700+ community organization partners who utilize the ideas, content and DIY materials to engage their own audiences and constituencies. Hundreds of thousands have now participated in Reboot and such Reboot-inspired programs as the Sabbath Manifesto/National Day of Unplugging, 10Q for the Ten Days of Awe, forSukkot, Six Word Memoirs on Jewish Life, etc. through this inventive process.

The key to “making Jewish my own/our own” starts with creating a welcoming, flexible space to explore Jewishness on the terms of participants, enabling young Jews to take ownership of their Jewish lives and inspiring them to think about their families, careers and communities through a Jewish lens. Simultaneously the project ideas generated by the network are making Judaism relevant and accessible, translating ancient traditions into modern language for current and future generations. The findings from this research are instructive for all who care vibrantly, and optimistically, about the future of Jewish life.

The executive summary of this study is available at: www.rebooters.net/impact. For further inquiry, please contact Graeme Trayner, principal investigator from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research: [email protected], or Amelia Klein: [email protected].

Robin Kramer is Reboot’s executive director; Amelia Klein is Associate Director. 

A 5-Point Plan to Build Your Local Engager Network

Since 2012, we have witnessed the growth of local networks for Jewish engagement professionals – “engagers” who are responsible for Jewish millennial engagement and programming – in cities across the country, including Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, and more. These networks serve as local engager hubs, complementing a national network such as the NEXTwork. They also uniquely further engagement efforts by:

  • Increasing trust, mutual respect, and transparency among local engagers;
  • Accelerating knowledge, skill-sharing, collaborations, and connectional intelligence – a term coined by business/leadership consultants Erica Dhawan and Saj-nicole Joni that emphasizes “driving innovation and breakthrough results by harnessing the power of [our] relationships and networks”;
  • Diving deep into the nuances and needs of Jewish millennials and engagement issues; and
  • Serving as local platforms for professional development and peer mentoring and support.
NEXTwork

For engagers – most of whom are millennials – working connected “to get things done and develop creative solutions to challenges” is a natural concept that supersedes any organizational politics and related barriers to collegial partnerships and collaboration. In successful local networks, we’ve seen engagers and their organizations move past perceived differences, and into mutual respect, trust and openness, leading to the creation of new, innovative engagement strategies and programs. After some time, we’ve seen these outcomes lead engagers – and their communities as a whole – to better engage young Jews by building more integrated and cooperative landscapes.

We realize others may seek to create networks in their own communities, so, from our experiences, here are the key steps to get a local engager network off the ground:

Step 1: Determine if you are well-positioned to convene a network. A well-positioned organization and leader needs to convene the network. This means an organization with a solid grasp on the local Jewish landscape, strong collegial connections, and the bandwidth to coordinate the group. We’ve seen JCCs, Hillels, Federations, and others take on the convenor role in different communities. It’s a great opportunity to collaborate!

Step 2: Create a list of local professional engagers and meet with them individually. If you already meet and communicate regularly with fellow engagers, that is a good start. If not, now is the time to open those lines of communication, which will help you understand their specific interests and needs. Practice active listening in these conversations: find out what each person wants to achieve, what they value, and what frustrates them. In order to create a supportive network, you’ll first need to deeply understand the needs of the local landscape.

Step 3: Meet up! Convene the group to increase everyone’s understanding of the local landscape and to establish a shared purpose for the network. This meeting should be led by you or another strong facilitator in your community. Elise Peizner, Director ofJconnect in Seattle, told us that having a “third-party facilitator [NEXT] helped level the playing field – it made people feel equal which was an important goal for us.” Regardless of who facilitates, be sure to:

  • Communicate the meeting’s purpose in advance.
  • Use safe space guidelines to encourage open conversation among participants.
  • Start with a relationship-building activity to establish new professional relationships and strengthen existing ones.
  • Map out the community, identifying areas of both engagement saturation (overserved geographic and/or program areas) and opportunity (underserved areas).
  • Determine meeting frequency, duration, and focus through consensus, to set expectations and keep the group focused moving forward.

Step 4: Define priorities. Let the network’s shared purpose and core values, which should be discussed and agreed upon in a subsequent meeting, be your “true north.” Evaluate the network’s effectiveness in responding to engager needs periodically through individual and whole-group check-ins and surveys. Be sure to capture and track this data, as it tells the network’s growing story and can highlight successes and where additional progress is needed.

Step 5: Continue cultivating relationships. Utilize your individual check-ins as a method to monitor participants’ feelings on their involvement (is it meeting their needs?) and continue building the participant list (who else should be at the table?).

As your network continues to meet, additional needs and questions will emerge (such as, “can we create a forum for our volunteer leaders?”) and your role as network convenor will continue to evolve. But these steps build the foundation for strong networks in which new communication lines between organizations have opened, deeper collaborative relationships have blossomed, and most importantly, young Jews find it easier to navigate the Jewish life landscape and get involved!

If you run a local engager network, what advice would you give to a new network convenor? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Adam Pollack is the Senior Western Regional Director at NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation and can be reached at [email protected]. Dan Fast is the outgoing Senior Northeast Regional Director at NEXT and can be reached at [email protected].

 

Helpful Insights From a Working Funder Collaborative

Recently, a group of 15 different organizations (15!) released a case study –Finding New Paths for Teen Engagement and Learning: A Funder Collaborative Leads the Way – detailing the two-years they’ve spent working together, learning about and investing in Jewish teen education and engagement initiatives. There are a litany of insights and interesting lessons to pull from the study, which we believe are beneficial to organizations well beyond the Jewish teen education and engagement arena (and even beyond the Jewish education arena). In fact, funders in all philanthropic sectors are increasingly pooling or coordinating funding for greater impact, or to address particularly challenging social and environmental problems. Because of this trend in collaborative efforts, we – one of us the evaluator who wrote the case study, and the other a member of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative – want to highlight key items that have been integral to the development and initial successes of this funder collaborative.

First, let’s start from the beginning. This funder collaborative – different from many others – formed early connections around research, specifically a report, Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens. There was a mutual desire of all involved to make sense of the research learnings and to determine strategic ways to move forward, fund, and implement the best practices identified in teen education and engagement.

While other collaboratives often come together on a wave of dissatisfaction or frustration, or when one funder has a single idea and wants to build support for that alone, in this instance the research created a shared learning environment. Open discussion and creative ideas were, and are, encouraged. As a result, the various local funders “around the table” have access to many voices all focused on teen education and engagement – a rarity and a real value-added for these individuals given that their organizations focus on many areas of Jewish engagement. Now, the Collaborative is their unique space for delving deeply into this specific area.

Second, the Collaborative benefited from members’ shared beliefs, knowledge of the issue, and particularly shared experiences. The first two points admittedly are not entirely unique. Many collaboratives might bring individuals and organizations together around an issue about which all care deeply and are knowledgeable – be it homelessness, the environment, hunger, or other societal challenges. But this collaborative brought talented, passionate people together who live their work and have common experiences – Jewish life cycle events, trips to Israel, and other formidable moments – that are unique to this group. These common experiences, the close linkage between work and personal life, and the now multiple years of working together for a common goal have led to very genuine, strong relationships between Collaborative members. There is a true sense of a “team” because everyone wants to be a part of the Collaborative.

With this relationship-based environment, the Collaborative is positioned to do much more than just try to fix the problem by merely aggregating funds or aligning grants. Instead, Collaborative members aggressively tackle large challenges and problems where solutions have been frustratingly elusive. Participants say that learning and problem-solving together has been one of the reasons they stay in the group, participate actively, and take on the local initiative work. They appreciate that the Collaborative is a space beyond their home communities. It offers different voices, and similar to traditional chavruta study, members interact with each other in ways that push their thinking and creativity.

Third, the dynamic of national-local partnerships has many benefits. From a funding standpoint, the challenge that the Jim Joseph Foundation offered has been a catalyst for change in the five local communities that already have implemented initiatives. Beyond the funding, collaborative members from local communities take conversations that start within the Collaborative framework – i.e. measurement of Jewish growth outcomes, developing sustainable programs, and the like – and bring them back to colleagues working in areas outside of the specific Jewish teen education arena. In other words, local foundations and federations who commit staff time to the Collaborative are seeing benefits across their organizations.

A final key ingredient for the Collaborative’s success was clear-eyed and generous leadership. As discussed previously, the Jim Joseph Foundation committed money and time of Foundation staff, and did it looking to create something positive for all involved. The Foundation had clarity about its own objectives and hoped-for outcomes, but also a realistic appreciation that the Collaborative would have to both challenge and meet the individual needs of the funders in the group.

Now entering its third formal year, the Collaborative has an impressive number of accomplishments, which not all funder collaboratives can claim within such a short time: active participation by a consistent group; funding commitments for new initiatives in more than half of the participating communities; common measures of success adopted by all; and a cross-community evaluation that will aggregate data across multiple initiatives.

Collaborative members continue to address the common challenges that all communities face, regardless of unique characteristics or size, regarding Jewish teen education and engagement: how to increase it, how to sustain it when you get it, how to assess whether teens are gaining any lasting benefits. There is an excitement around being a part of something that is new, challenging, and, at least initially, effective all at the same time. And while we understand that no two funder collaboratives are alike, we believe that these insights can help other organizations who strive for deeper collaborations that simultaneously increase learning and strategic grantmaking.

Ellen Irie is President and CEO of Informing Change. Reuben Posner is Director of Youth Engagement at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. Read the full case study here about the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, comprised of four national funders and funder representatives from ten communities.

Creating 21st Century Jewish Experiences: A Look Back at the 2015 Council of American Jewish Museums Annual Conference

From March 8 – 10, 2015, The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) was delighted to host the 2015 Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) Annual Conference. Over 250 delegates convened at The CJM, as well as the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley, for animated discussions revolving around the conference’s theme: “Open Source:  Jewish Museums and Collaborative Culture.” Inspired by the Bay Area’s status as a national symbol and a harbinger of the future, the conference explored how California’s experiments in the social, cultural, political, and economic realms can inform Jewish museum practices.

CAJM participants enjoying a performance by “The Crooked Jades,” and the activated Hardly Strictly Warren Hellman exhibition

Even before the conference began, building community was a focal point. I was so touched by the opportunity, made possible by the generous support of the Jim Joseph Foundation, to host a special dinner at my home for the early-arriving attendees, preceded by a special Havdallah ceremony and architecture tour of San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El. It was a wonderful way to introduce the CAJM participants to our local Jewish community.

The first day of CAJM included the conference’s plenary session, which I was thrilled to moderate. “The Anticipatory Museum” keynote address explored the question of how Jewish museums must change to anticipate societal transformations—demographic, technological, and cultural. Skyping in from Warsaw was NYU Jewish historian and cultural scholar, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. She spoke about the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and how it acts as an agent of social change in the country by reconnecting Jews of Polish ancestry with more than 1,000 years of their history in Poland and, in turn, introducing the Polish people as a whole to their country’s and culture’s deep interconnectedness with Jews.

 Rabbi Noa Cushner speaking about her spiritual “start-up,” The Kitchen, during the March 8 plenary session

Rabbi Noa Cushner speaking about her spiritual “start-up,” The Kitchen, during the March 8 plenary session

Rabbi Noa Kushner, founder of San Francisco’s The Kitchen, shared her experience creating a spiritual start-up and practicing “irreverent reverence”—the creation of a community where there are no insiders or outsiders and where the primary concern is that Jewish practices be relevant. She encouraged Jewish museums to recognize the diversity of points of view of their visitors and meet them where they are—Jewish, non-Jewish, agnostic, atheistic, believing. Along with this approach she also urged museums to de-emphasize offering opportunities for visitors to consume “Jewish culture” and instead help visitors participate in the act of “doing something Jewish.”

Hillary Moss, lead strategist and researcher for the La Placa/Cohen-New York Times study Culture Track 2014, rounded out the conversation by sharing key findings about millennials and their museum-going habits and desires.  She cited several trends that CAJM attendees would be wise to note, including that younger people don’t feel the same loyalty to cultural institutions as older generations did, and they tend to see the museum-going experience as an intensely social activity to be done (or shared digitally) with friends. Ms. Moss’ call to action was for Jewish museums to recognize this as a transitional moment and boldly experiment with new ways of engaging with younger audiences through social media and social interaction.

CAJM attendees also had the opportunity to explore Ai Weiwei’s @Large exhibition on Alcatraz Island

CAJM attendees also had the opportunity to explore Ai Weiwei’s @Large exhibition on Alcatraz Island

Among other highlights of the conference was the final session on philanthropic trends entitled “Measuring Impact:  New Directions in Philanthropy.” Lucy Bernholz, Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, spoke to the intrinsic need for good measurements of philanthropic impact in the digital age—pointing to not only quantitative metrics, but also to the tremendous value of the qualitative, the affective, and learning outcomes.  Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, discussed the acceleration of change in the digital era, and how public measures of philanthropy are in flux.  He also discussed the rise of investment-style philanthropy, where mission alignment between the funder and the fundee is key, and mutually agreed upon outcomes are monitored, reported, and amended as organizations and circumstances evolve.  He stressed trust as a critical pre-requisite for a healthy relationship between funders and fundees, along with a shared commitment to success, and open and ongoing communication.

Stephen Smith and Michael Abramowitz, presenters during the March 10 session, “The Future of Holocaust Education”

Stephen Smith and Michael Abramowitz, presenters during the March 10 session, “The Future of Holocaust Education”

In hosting CAJM’s 2015 Annual Conference, The CJM was intentional about grounding the conference in the daily activities of The Museum. Most conferences take place in hotels or conference centers, but this one took place when The CJM was at the height of its public programming.  In addition to hearing from thought-leaders and engaging with colleagues, CAJM attendees could explore multiple exhibitions, attend gallery tours, view the new Lamp of the Covenant installation in The CJM’s Koret Taube Grand Lobby, attend education programs for preschool students and their families, and hear a live performance by local artists “The Crooked Jades.” In doing so, CAJM participants were immersed in the real work of The CJM—giving them a first-hand look at how The Museum is advancing our mission to make the diversity of the Jewish experience relevant for a 21st century audience.

Lori Starr is the Executive Director of The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. She previously served as Executive Director of the Koffler Centre of the Arts, Toronto, and as Senior Vice President and Museum Director of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Two-Year Faculty Development Program Represents a Microcosm of CCNMTL’s Work at Columbia

Maurice Matiz is Director of the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). This blog originally appeared on the CCNMTL website.

Last week, CCNMTL reached two important milestones: the center completed its 15th year of operations, and the eLearning Faculty Fellowship (eLFF) concluded its two-year run. The appreciative smiles on the part of the eLFF faculty fellows reminded me how much that program represents a microcosm of CCNMTL’s 15 years.

The eLFF program provided year-long support for two sets of faculty fellows selected from three participating schools (Jewish Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University, and Hebrew Union-Jewish Institute of Religion). It was made possible because of our existing successful partnership withJTS and support from the Jim Joseph Foundation.

eLFF2015Round.JPGA cohort conversation to discuss program implications for each institution.

Faculty participating in the eLFF program—mostly self-selected, though a few were nominated—sought exposure to educational technologies that they felt could help them become more effective teachers. This is similar to how and why Columbia faculty have approached CCNMTL over the years. There is a yearning to understand the fast-moving technology front, and one sure way is to seek assistance from experts who are also willing guides, such as our educational technologists (ETs). The field is highly dynamic, and it can be difficult to sort through dozens of tools and platforms without such guidance.

Faculty in the eLFF program started out unsure and lacking confidence in their grasp of new technologies. Similarly, over the years we have encountered many Columbia faculty who are wary of their own abilities to master any classroom technology beyond the chalkboard. CCNMTL staff become therapists of a kind, boosting instructors’ confidence and believing in their ability to learn new technologies and incorporate them into their pedagogy. Our ETs use many tactics, including starting small, or encouraging more time-on-task, knowing that familiarity will overcome uncertainty. Our ETs also understand that teaching is a performance, which can breed anxieties of its own, and that the technology experimentation can lead to more exposure—additional time “on stage” and more opportunities to miss a cue.

eLFF2015Workshop.JPGFaculty fellows describe their experience with technology in the classroom.

At the eLFF symposiums, held after each year’s program, the faculty spoke expertly and with confidence, demonstrating how they’ve integrated video lectures, collaborative editing tools, presentation tools that go beyond the staid PowerPoint, and other cutting-edge technologies into their classroom and curriculum. We saw faculty learn how to evaluate new tools and new technologies. We saw caring educators, investing time and energy in media and educational activities that help students learn more effectively. For the CCNMTL staff, seeing that transformation was quite rewarding, and echoes much of what we have experienced over the years working with Columbia faculty.

A select few in the eLFF program came with some prior experience or jumped in with such earnest enthusiasm that they immediately pulled ahead of their less experienced colleagues. For these technophiles, the program became fertile ground to develop a latent interest or capability. Likewise, over the years, a few pioneering Columbia faculty have proudly showcased possibilities and innovations in the classroom. This important subgroup leads to rapid results that help to inspire others.

The eLFF was at its heart a faculty development effort, and I applaud the three schools for taking steps to provide strong support for their faculty, allowing them to explore and experiment with their teaching methods. Each of the three schools’ administration aims to create a sustainable educational technology support group, much like Columbia did with CCNMTL 15 years ago. The eLFF program certainly gives them excellent results to build on, and vocal faculty advocates to lead the way.

The eLFF program was a collaboration with Deborah Miller and Debbie Kerschner from JTS, Rob Weinberg and Gregg Alpert from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, and Allison Rubin and Judith Cahn from Yeshiva University. At CCNMTL, the program was led by Dan Beeby, Kenny Hirschmann, and Ellen Maleszewski.