THE FUTURE OF JEWISH FUND RAISING A PANEL DISCUSSION
THE FUTURE OF JEWISH FUND RAISING A PANEL DISCUSSION Last month, moment convened a panel of fund raising professionals to consider the future of Jewish philanthropy. The participants included: Mel...
...To say that we can't raise as much as we used to because of Begin or because of any other factor of that kind is just a cop-out...
...I don't think that's just rhetoric...
...But new things strengthen the sense of Jewish involvement every day...
...But you can't think through a problem of that magnitude during a one-day conference...
...I've just come back, and I have to say that since my first trip in 1966, when I lived there, I've never seen the country in such dire straits, with such low morale...
...We introduce something like Project Renewal, and we talk about slums, slums, slums, instead of showing the evidence of how successful we have been...
...We raise funds and we give funds in order to keep the dream alive...
...The demographic analysis may be accurate, but the conclusions don't follow...
...There is a great deal that is happening that we have not yet figured out how to take into account...
...There doesn't have to be a change in the allocation, there has to be a change, a real growth, in the amounts we raise...
...They want to see the magic...
...BL: In San Francisco, we sent 160 of our kids to spend seven weeks in Israel this past summer, a program we've had going for some years...
...BL: Your premise is correct, but it could easily be changed, because the sense of excitement, of wonder, of the dream, depends on leadership...
...They help us to recall our sense of mission...
...They want to know the relationship between their gift and the services that get delivered in Los Angeles or in Tel Aviv, and we've not yet refined the system so that people can see that relationship...
...And the view that we are coming to is that a kind of capital investment is required that will help us during the transition we now face...
...BL: In San Francisco, for example, which is not very different from many other cities, we have between a hundred and a hundred and fifty gifts of over $10,000...
...I'm less concerned with what the gift-giving potential of this new Left: Dov Sinai Right: Rabbi Brian Lurie generation is than I am with the fact that we're not making plans now that will tell us where we need to be ten years from now in order to be able to reach these new people at all, whatever their capacity turns out to be...
...I saw one glimmer of hope, and that was Project Renewal...
...We are talking as if the kinds of problems that concern us are of major concern to large numbers of people "out there...
...And that includes some of our largest contributors...
...And people have that sense of purpose...
...moment: It's still quite rare to find someone withholding his gift on purely political grounds...
...MB: And you have to add another factor: There are people who are now going to Israel for the fifteenth or the twenty-eighth time, people who've been involved for many years, and they can really see the payout of their investment...
...A l Gillens, Campaign Director of the Allied Jewish Appeal in Philadelphia...
...MB: What you're proposing is terribly important...
...We can find other sources...
...Today, when we say long range planning, we usually mean planning for the next year or two...
...And that is oound to impact on campaign as well...
...Our task today is to emphasize positive motives, to stress the excitement of future possibilities, here and in Israel...
...The questions aren't demographic, not at all...
...I don't think that's wrong...
...And it seems to me that Project Renewal may represent a real bridge between the generations, because it accomplishes a variety of tasks—it gives people the chance to follow their dollars, it involves people in more than financial ways, it is a bridge to fund raising in peace time...
...BL: In that context, the issue of our resettlement of the Russians should be mentioned...
...Fund raising is only a manifestation of the issue...
...We really do have to be thinking about the next ten years, and not in an ad hoc way, but in a systematic way...
...New courses, new study centers, new interest...
...Even we ourselves forget that...
...We have become experts in reacting to crisis situations...
...Now that's an issue that can be shaped by the nature of our leadership, here and in Israel...
...Actually, we should be saying to people, "Please stay tuned, we're experiencing temporary difficulties in transmission...
...HM: Yes, Renewal gives us the opportunity to bring more people into an awareness of the real issues, to involve them to a point where they understand the impact of their dollars and feel more comfortable as a result...
...The participants included: Mel Bloom, Associate Executive Vice Chairman and Director of the Campaign Department of the United Jewish Appeal...
...So, however critical of ourselves we may be, let's not imply that we have accomplished less in these last 40 years than we have...
...So can we spend some time on that...
...moment: You are proposing that Renewal offers us—and the Israelis—a sense of a common task, and that that sense of common purpose is the way to overcome the fatigue that appears to have afflicted our effort...
...And that's how it has to be put...
...I'm not entirely happy with all these negative stimuli, but they are there, and we would be foolish to ignore them...
...And for this new generation, guilt has been removed from the package of charitable motives...
...That is simply another way of expressing our dependence on Israel for leadership...
...and Dov Sinai, National Coordinator for Project Renewal at the United Jewish Appeal...
...These kinds of tangible connections have to extend to large numbers of people...
...Let's turn to the first of these four issues, to Israel's image...
...Things that have to be done are done, if there is an adequate sense of purpose, of cause...
...We are no longer supporting the Israel of Entebbe, are we...
...The essence of the matter is how we are going to motivate people to give, how we are going to stimulate and sustain people's Jewish commitment...
...momknt: I don't see why a new generation will feel any less drawn to an activity that adds dignity and purpose and meaning to life...
...The resources are there...
...TK: I just came back from spending three days in Musrara, which is "our" neighborhood, together with our laypeople who are in charge of Renewal in Los Angeles...
...The costs can be staggering, and we've never really looked at that aspect of it...
...Our question now is how to multiply that...
...There's not a community in the country that has tapped its own potential...
...And to determine a common future...
...And, for that matter, even to keeping the morale of the current generation, since it's their kids that we are sending...
...The lower figure is what we send to Israel...
...We have to find ways to keep people continuously informed and involved, with a view to the long range, because these needs will be with us for as long as we and our children and our grandchildren are alive...
...We do not give money to Israel...
...That's what we're on the brink of now, and that's the investment that's needed, and once it is made, we will see a real take-off in the quality of American Jewish life...
...And we have a whole other group, a new generation, where we simply don't know whether it's the dream, or the reality, or what it is that will lead them to care...
...The problem for us here is the quality of the leadership we offer...
...Our fund raising becomes a way for us to own our future, to give it the shape we want...
...It isn't now, it wasn't then...
...it is these people, these needs...
...And I would rather we turn to the basic problems in our discussion...
...The Yom Kippur War comes, and within five days every community in the United States is mobilized, people are standing in line to give money...
...None of us expected...
...And that relationship keeps happening...
...And again, that means that we have to raise more dollars, and that if we are experiencing a dip, we have to view that as a temporary thing, until we can remind people of the purpose of the dollars and of their importance...
...Right now, for example, we raise 80 percent of our dollars from 10 percent of our contributors...
...You're saying that the presentation of Israel's position, or perhaps the position itself, has caused unrest among some people...
...Because if, for example, we are now concerned with the Jewish education of Russian children, it's going to occur to somebody that we really can't be less concerned with the Jewish education of all our children...
...You're talking about a very large slice of that person's income...
...AG: We've talked about dreams, but we have to recognize that most of the people who went to Israel didn't go there with a dream...
...And some of them are lawyers, or doctors, or accountants...
...Through Renewal, we are going to be following our dollars, and we are going to be involved in spending them at the Israeli end...
...And, just to get all the issues on the table, it seems to me as well that there is a rising concern these days, as there was between 1967 and 1973, with local needs...
...But we have to hope that we will live without crisis, and we have to be ready for that...
...And our experience with the Russians is going to move us closer to providing universal Jewish education for all our children...
...moment: I guess the fair conclusion to all this is to say that when people suggest that things aren't as good as they used to be, the proper answer is that they never were...
...I have in mind, for example, the sense that we are in the midst of a major demographic change, that we are witnessing the end of the generation of the fabulous self-made men, many of them immigrants with strong ties to the folk community, and their replacement by a generation of managers and professionals who lack both the financial capacity and the emotional connection to continue their parents' generosity...
...And for that to happen, we have first to understand that money isn't everything, that people can relate to Israel and to the Jewish people in sincere and in profound ways that may lead to financial involvement as well, but that are fully justified in their own terms...
...Israel today is far more complex and rather more querulous...
...I think we are surfeited with major gift potential...
...If we in San Francisco decide to subsidize afternoon Hebrew schools, we can do that...
...There are many people out there who are giving nothing right now who are capable of giving very large gifts, and if we approach them properly, they will...
...I might add, incidentally, that you obviously can't blame current campaign problems on what's happening in Israel today...
...can we raise funds without the romance...
...In my city there have been ten anti-Semitic incidents in the last two months alone, firebombings and such, and I'm also struck by the degree to which the new generation has developed such a massive appetite for information about the Holocaust...
...moment: What you seem to be saying is that using the ego-trip as the fuel for the fund raising effort is no longer adequate...
...Ted Kanner: The problem with the leap from demographic change to charitable decline is that you can't assume that just because a person is salaried he doesn't also have capital assets...
...And in the context of those programs, we are doing our job...
...And each one is very, very important, because there's only so far you can go with rational appraisals and with empirical evidence and with data...
...The issue is really how we help the Jewish people, here and in Israel, to determine its future...
...TK: We've all said it...
...Yes, it is about a dream, and when you go to Israel you meet a very large number of people who have come to live there for the sake of the same dream, a dream that is still a long way from fulfillment, and maybe if we had done a better job at our end all these years the dream would be just a little closer to reality by now...
...we're not doing all we should, and we haven't "been, which has created certain very urgent problems, and so we have developed new programs, like Project Renewal, that try to do things on a larger scale...
...AG: We're starting a similar program in Philadelphia this December, and I think that such a program of involvement is not only the key to Renewal's success, but also to keeping the next generation involved...
...And we don't stress that, we don't remind ourselves of that often enough...
...the rest stays here for local needs...
...There are physicians around, for example, who are earning as much from their business investments as the most daring entrepreneurs of ten years ago...
...And the fact is that most people tell me that's a conservative estimate...
...If there are still problems, and there surely are, we have to accept some of the blame right here...
...Our dream of the future is to build a connection between the stimulation of Jewish life in the United States and the stimulation of Jewish life in Israel...
...Cleveland, which has about the same size Jewish community as we do, has 300 gifts in that category...
...We have to accept that the dream of the past, the dream of an ideal Zionist state that will be the total center of Jewish life, is no longer an appropriate dream...
...I don't think that's misleading...
...In the past, one major reason for giving was guilt— guilt because of the Holocaust, guilt because of how well off we'd become, guilt over the dangers that the Israelis face...
...In 15 minutes of debate, the Congress of the United States may decide to add or subtract a quarter of a billion dollars in aid to Israel—and that is, after all, the total size of the package which UJA transmits to Israel...
...The two places must feed each other, and our challenge is to develop a relationship between the two activities...
...I've looked at the data, and there's simply no question that we could also have 300...
...Israel is a very depressing place today...
...We can't quite romanticize it as we used to...
...I saw bright faces, I saw people getting plugged into the mainstream of society, people who had been without hope now coming to believe in their future in Israel...
...And by the same token, the majority of people who have given money to Israel haven't given because of Israel's needs, but because of their own need to give...
...Now they are people who don't fool around...
...It is a way of going beyond philanthropy, towards a true partnership...
...I really would like us to talk about Project Renewal, because in my judgment, Renewal is a statement of the maturation of the American Jewish community...
...And we're just not laying an adequate foundation for the future...
...MB: For the record, I want to make it clear that our campaigns add up to half a billion dollars, not to a quarter of a billion...
...The real choice reposes in the American Jewish community...
...we don't need Israel to tell us to do that, or even to give us permission to do that...
...moment: You've all agreed that there is no crisis of capital formation, that the capital is there...
...we're talking about genuine involvement, and you can't achieve that through governmental allocations...
...But 90 percent have been wonderfully absorbed, and I challenge anyone to produce an example of greater success anywhere in the world...
...That's why Renewal matters so much, and that's why it's so important to the Jewish people...
...What is the reality...
...They are very real, and their needs are very real, and they impact on all of our local agencies, on all of us...
...My guess is—and our experience on this year's Prime Minister's Mission bears this out—that the real room for progress is in the $50,000-$ 150,000 giving range, that there are very many people who belong in that category who are doing much less, and sometimes doing nothing at all...
...But 1 don't think we should go overboard with this hard-headed, realistic approach...
...We might decide that it would be more efficient to spend our energies lobbying for larger Congressional allocations...
...Mel Bloom: The fact is that there's a great deal we don't know about demography, about the distribution of Jewish wealth in this country...
...And we know that it is precisely the affiliated people who are involved in campaigns...
...They want to know what happens...
...They went to our neighborhood, and they worked side by side with the kids there, painting and cleaning...
...The central problem is that we're dealing with a generation that doesn't relate at all...
...I think that's wrong...
...We're dealing now with college-educated people, and they're not content to give to a large pool of money and to know nothing about what happens to their money after they sign the check...
...BL: The new generation may have different memories, but they still are looking for dreams...
...Thirty thousand millionaires, and 7,000 gifts of over $10,000...
...We have 1500 gifts of $ 1000 or more, and we could have 3000...
...And we can do it without diminishing our efforts on Israel's behalf...
...If people really do want to identify where their dollars are going, then Project Renewal is made to order for them...
...The campaigns have been going straight downhill ever since the Yom Kippur War, and that suggests there are very different things involved...
...That's the problem we face with the next generation...
...They know where to look, and what to look for, and they can see that their annual gifts are an example of investing good money after good...
...The problem doesn't lie with a lack of potential resources...
...The basis is reality, regardless of what stirs people...
...But this summer there was a difference...
...UJA dollars represent a declining percentage of Israel's gross national product or of its budget...
...BL: I can illustrate that point exactly...
...The Jewish Left: Mel Bloom Right: Ted Kanner Agency may not be so eager for our involvement, but the local communities are...
...If Israel is a fund raising problem in any sesne, the problem does antedate Begin, and may not even be particularly political at all...
...The principal value of giving is to the giver rather than to the recipient...
...HM: Again, our major failure is that we don't engage in long range planning...
...BL: As does the feeling that there's a real relationship being built...
...And the involvement leads to many things, including greater financial investment, but going beyond that as well...
...We are now asking ourselves about the ends of our fund raising effort...
...even a few years ago, that the level of aid supplied to Israel by the government of the United States would reach the heights it has...
...But that's not the point...
...TK: Yes, they can be an important turning point for us...
...Now if we can do that in 50 or 60 communities, then I think we are helping in a very real way to change the present mood in Israel...
...You can have fun playing with the data, but you've got to remember how soft they are...
...I don't think the central problem has to do with images of Israel or anything like that...
...We have a problem today in that 10 percent of the immigrants to Israel have not yet been adequately absorbed into the fabric of society...
...What Israel does can help the campaign or can hurt the campaign, but in the end it can't really deter us...
...Not that we'll make the final decisions, but we will be involved in the process, and we'll also be involved in meaningful ways in the life of the communities we're working with...
...That is not less true for today's money...
...I can tell you that a day care nursery or an elementary school, as mundane and even banal as such things may seem compared to the large problems Israel faces, ends up being the kind of thing a person gets up and talks about in the lobby of the Knesset when he is announcing his $200,000 gift...
...And now we're sending social workers, and we're beginning to develop a whole variety of different relationships...
...We have a humanitarian program which we undertook in Israel, and it has very little to do with Israel's budget or anything like that...
...The question is whether the bursting pride which used to be associated with Israel still has the bite it once did...
...Harold Morgan: Let's not delude ourselves...
...If we save a community in Morocco, for example, the Moroccan Jews are as much the responsibility of American Jews as they are of Israel...
...it lies with our own lack of a way to reach these new people...
...DS: I couldn't agree more...
...People give when they have confidence that their giving will make a difference, and we have overwhelming evidence that the money of the past has made an enormous difference...
...We have to revise the basis on which we raise funds...
...That's true all across the country...
...Instead of money going through such traditional agents as hospitals, homes for the aged, community centers and such, I think we're going to see more money going into day schools, Jewish camps, adult retreat facilities...
...Brian Lurie, Executive Vice President of the Jewish Federation of San Francisco...
...Maybe we should be looking to change the basic premise of our campaign, maybe we need to be thinking about raising the 80 percent from 40 percent of the people...
...Isn't there also, these days, a problem that might be called the problem of futility...
...we're raising money for an Israel that is in our hearts and in our minds, for an Israel that really has almost nothing to do with the policies of this government or that...
...So what are the needs of the new generation, how can giving become something they feel the need to do...
...We've been fund raising in this country for quite a number of years with a certain approach, and that approach was always terribly superficial...
...AI Gillens: We may have fund-raised around Entebbe, but the Israel we have supported for all these years never was the Israel of Entebbe...
...why not...
...And a very substantial number of those gifts come from people who are very, very far from being millionaires...
...We're not raising money for Begin...
...But we must bear in mind that it's not the State of Israel that we are trying to help...
...At least the lay and professional leadership must understand the reality...
...I don't think what motivates people to give has much to do with how the money is spent...
...They went there because they had to...
...they're a generation removed from the Holocaust, they're a generation removed from the creation of Israel...
...We need to take a year to do just that, perhaps even relieving some people from ongoing campaign responsibilities in order to get the job done...
...For the older generation, much of it derives from the Holocaust...
...HM: Project Renewal is an important part of that mix...
...It was attached, instead, to the dream, to the hope, to all those glorious beliefs we have and statements we make about Jewish responsibility and Jewish possibility...
...Hasn't Israel come to be perceived as a matter of fairly unprepossessing fact, a place where some nice things happen and some ludicrous things happen, and isn't it hard to raise dollars on the basis of that kind of Israel...
...A final word: The problem of local needs is also a problem of increasing the total campaign...
...its needs are changing...
...Are we more closely related to the Moroccan Jews than you are...
...The issue goes beyond fund raising...
...They now have six people in Musrara that they write to, and whom they'll be seeing every other month...
...But we have a way of overcoming such difficulties...
...I've been thinking lately, for example, about the costs,of being Jewish...
...I'm afraid, however, that we do have a number of unusual problems in campaigning...
...TK: I agree that our ability to give is not the issue...
...Dov Sinai: Actually, if you look at the changing demography, and you set those data next to the data on giving, which has, after all, increased, you may find that we should be encouraged rather than discouraged...
...We have a terrible habit of stressing the negative rather than accentuating the positive...
...And 1 believe we're paying for that today...
...The dollars provide one set of means, a kind of lubricant that helps that happen...
...And that provides us a whole new sense of mission, the kind of mission that young, intelligent, educated leadership can identify with and can raise money for...
...We have a covenant, we've assumed a responsibility for a certain area of endeavor, and in that area we've saved and enriched Jewish lives for a long time...
...MB: Isn't it significant that what people are now beginning to talk about is not the fact that they met with Begin or with Navon or with Dayan, but that they've met in outlying places with some crazy young people who are devoted to making things work better in very tangible ways...
...And they came away from the visit ecstatic, because they saw what they could do...
...Left: AI Gillens Right: Harold Morgan...
...BL: But I would totally reject the point that the way to make it easier for such people to finance their own lives as Jews, or to help finance the American Jewish institutions that serve those needs, is for Israel to relax its claims on the American Jewish community...
...People give or refuse to give for a whole variety of reasons, and unhappiness over West Bank settlements or bombing in Lebanon does impact on the campaign...
...So it's obvious that we have a long way to go in terms of our own ability to conduct the campaign...
...We're looking at a generation we know very little about...
...Unless we understand that, we might conclude that our philanthropy is of limited value...
...They'll put money into something if they have a voice in determining what happens to that money...
...We can't just come to people at the beginning of the year and collect their money and then forget them for the rest of the year...
...We did what we had to do in the past in order to meet the emergency needs, but now a more serious and mature partnership needs to be developed, and Renewal is a chance to develop it...
...Ted Kanner, Executive Vice President of the Jewish Federation—Council of Greater Los Angeles...
...And there's one other thing that's very important...
...Brian Lurie: I don't accept that...
...They don't come out of the Holocaust, they don't come from Eastern Europe, their response isn't instinctive...
...And our problem is not that the total has been declining, but that we've only been growing by two or three or four percent a year, and that's not nearly enough...
...We're now talking about the heart, and that's the guarantee that we'll stay personally connected to Israel and involved with Israel forever...
...BL: It's probably true that a large proportion of the money we've raised over the years was not attached to the Israeli reality...
...Some of it is no doubt atttributable to the annual precampaign jitters, but much of it seems rooted in several unnerving perceptions, new perceptions which cause uncommon concern regarding the future of Jewish fund raising...
...People know that we have to do the job, that we haven't any alternative...
...You've said that the management of the monies and the lack of clarity about how they are disbursed is a problem...
...Most people have no idea at all of how it is spent, and they don't seem to care very much...
...So our approach has to be thought through more carefully...
...it's as simple as that...
...Because in Tel Chanan, with which San Francisco is linked, I saw hope...
...We are all products—or victims—of our past...
...They even did a mural of the Golden Gate Bridge...
...But we do an injustice to our work if we talk in these large macroLeft: Ted Kanner Right: AI Gillens economic terms...
...Haven't we reached a situation where our giving has become a kind of ongoing obligation— whether for a hundred dollars or for a hundred thousand—but where the emotional connections have atrophied, the fires died down, where ritual has taken the place of wonder...
...It has to be frustrating to people to invest the energies we do in order to raise these dollars, to make the sacrifices we make, and then to turn around and see how casually equivalent amounts are added or subtracted...
...If we build our campaigns around helping Israel, as we do, then we have to face the fact that Israel is in many ways its own worst enemy, that its image over the last year has been enormously damaging to the fund raising effort...
...we give money to a part of Israel, and the part that we give to is not Israel's exclusive responsibility...
...Yes, there are people who want it...
...And that maybe, just maybe, they will be soon...
...For example, if Jews are over-represented in the upper income levels, with maybe twice as many Jewish millionaires as a random distribution would produce, you can take the Census Bureau estimates, and see that there are 520,000 millionaires in the United States, and conclude that there are somewhere around 30,000 Jewish millionaires in this country...
...Maybe by broadening the base, we'll attract more energy, and therefore more dollars as well...
...Take a salaried person who sends his children to a day school or even an afternoon school, who belongs to a congregation and maybe a community center as well, who sends his children to a Jewish summer camp and who makes a decent gift to the campaigns...
...Here and there you find principled objections, but most of what you hear amounts to an alibi...
...It gives him a crack at meaning, at mattering...
...But there are others who are still looking for the dream, who come to Israel and haven't the slightest interest in seeing Israel as it is...
...BL: This really goes back to the long range plan Harold has been talking about...
...it has to do with our responsibility for certain programs within Israel...
...Harold Morgan, Campaign Director of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston...
...moment: As the new year begins, there seems to be a rather widespread apprehension regarding campaign prospects...
...Now I can give you another interesting statistic, that shows pretty clearly that we haven't begun to exhaust our potential: In total, we get 7,000 gifts of $10,000 or more in the annual campaign...
...That is what we should be showing to people...
...DS: There's been much negative talk about Renewal, because of the organizational problems the project has faced in its start-up phase...
...We have twelve givers of over $100,000, and we could have twenty...
...That's very important...
...DS: So far as the current difficulties are concerned, I think we all agree that the decision not to give precedes the reasons put forward for not giving...
...And we use the dreams to raise funds...
...The costs of absorbing the Russians make this a fairly urgent majter, but there is also the backlog of ongoing needs, especially in the area of Jewish education, which can't be set aside forever...
...Period...
...And that's fine...
Vol. 4 • November 1979 • No. 10
