The Fundermentalist

I know, I know, you only want to read about Agriprocessors and the election (or, as I call them, “meat and potato-heads”) but here’s what’s happening in the rest of the Jewish world:

• Rhoda Weisman, the head of the Professional Leaders Project, talks philanthropy with the L.A. Jewish Journal. She tells the paper why Michael Steinhardt trusts her with his money and says she has the “sexiest job.”
• The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix has more on Irv Shuman, the philanthropist who was murdered this week in his real estate office.
• Day school enrollment in Boston is on the rise, says the Boston Jewish Advocate.
• The Jewish Journal of Boston North touts Teachers to Israel, a Birthright Israel-type program for Jewish educators. Also, the paper notes that even small Jewish organizations are feeling the financial crunch, with the Jewish Federation of the North Shore having to make cutbacks. In laying off three part-time employees, the federation lopped 17 percent, or $75,000, off its payroll.
• The JNF in San Francisco pushes environmental issues at an eco-farm dinner, says J. The Jewish Weekly of Northern California.
• The St. Louis Jewish Light reports on a St. Louis man who got into the business of helping inner-city kids through his own experiences as a youth at a Reform synagogue.
• A Philadelphia synagogue is in danger of being closed because it has been deemed unsafe, says the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. Also, the Jewish federation in Philly is launching an emergency hunger drive.
• Christmas carols, Chanukah songs and Ramadan tunes are still not kosher in a New Jersey school district after a judge threw out a case charging that the policy was discriminatory, reports the New Jersey Jewish News.
• New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt weighs in on Marc Schneier’s push for an eruv in the uber-posh Hamptons.
• Americans who own homes they don’t inhabit in Jerusalem should rent out their Israeli places to students, says Bob Sklar, the editor of the Detroit Jewish News.
• Forget Sarah Palin. The Atlanta Jewish Federation has a new Sr. VP, says the Atlanta Jewish Times.

In striking a deal last week with Nefesh B’Nefesh and agreeing to partner on promoting aliyah in North America instead of continuing an often nasty custody battle over would-be immigrants, the Jewish Agency for Israel might have put out one fire with a rival only to start another in-house with its own board.

The agency had been the sole proprietor on entry to Israel since the Jewish state’s inception, but its marketing had fallen limp, and in recent years the group had lost significant ground to Nefesh. Nefesh, an American 501c3 founded in 2002, brought with it onto the aliyah scene a slick publicity plan and offered potential immigrants significant cash incentives to move to Israel — and stay there, which resulted in a 98 percent retention rate once new immigrants arrived.

As the agency scrambled to maintain its role as only aliyah child as Nefesh fought hard for legitimacy in the eyes of the motherland, the two often fought viciously –- especially over the last year. Much of that came through in the press as lay leaders from each organization levied potentially libelous claims against the other (at one point even dragging JTA into a potential lawsuit for printing them).

The environment was so poisoned that, to settle the claim, the two sides brought in serious third-party mediation.

John Ruskay, the executive VP and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, and Stephen Hoffman, the president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, sat in as representatives of the federation system that funds the agency.

The parties also brought in a heavy hitter, Kenneth Feinberg, to oversee the talks. Feinberg, a Washington lawyer who specializes in mediation, was appointed by John Ashcroft as the Special Master of the U.S. Government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund — and negotiated the settlements that 9/11 victims received.

Feinberg, working pro-bono in the Nefesh-JAFI peace talks, oversaw two days of negotiating sessions that ended last week with an agreement. Under the deal, the Nefesh will now take the lead in marketing aliyah to North America and the agency would provide support staff, some money, and would continue to be the organization that worked with the Israeli government to process new immigrants.

The agency took an unusual step in striking the deal.

Before negotiations started, Feinstein and the other mediators insisted that the parties had to agree that those at the table would be allowed to make a deal and stick by it, which meant that they needed full autonomy to act and would not have to get the deal ratified by their boards.

This was not an issue for Nefesh, whose representative was also its co-founder and largest donor, Tony Gelbart. But for the agency, which has a huge lay board and answers also to the federation system, doing so was more complicated.

The chairman of the agency’s executive board, Richie Pearlstone, and its top executive, Ze’ev Bielski, appointed three people to negotiate on behalf of the organization: the chairman of the budget and finance committee, Shoel Silver; the co-chair of the agency’s aliyah and klitah budget subcommittee, Michael Gelman, and the director general of the agency, Moshe Vigdor to negotiate. Neither Pearlstone nor Bielski were involved in the talks.

“One thing they insisted on was that there would be confidentiality, and those given mandate to negotiate had to be able to say, ‘This is an agreement,’ and not go back to their board and say we have an agreement, but it does not we have an agreement in principle, but it needs to be ratified,” Silver said. “People can have the concern. And if that is an issue, they can take it up with the executive. Or, they may be comfortable with the agreement once they hear what it is.”

Giving them the autonomy to work on their own might have been a necessary and even progressive step, but the agency apparently flubbed by not first getting approval from its lay leadership for the arrangement.

The agency was set to inform its executive committee of the details of the Nefesh deal in a meeting and conference call on Wednesday, but they will likely have some healing to do within its own walls.

“I think there are a lot of lay leaders who are upset about it only from the point of view that they don’t know what it is about,” said one high-up agency lay leader. “I think the process sucked.”

“Whenever lay leaders would ask about the negotiations, I was told I was not privy to that information,” said another top agency lay leader. “I am secretly hoping that I never find out what is and is not in the agreement because then I don’t have to worry about whether I agree.”

I know you’re caught up in the VP picks, presidential conventions and the looming start of the NFL season… but here’s what’s in the Jewish newspapers this week:

• Despite recent JCPA efforts, is the Jewish community really ready and willing to take on the poverty issue?, asks the New York Jewish Week.
• A Reconstructionist shul in Washington is seeking a $250,000 grant from the Covenant Foundation to start a congregation for the deaf. It would be one of the few such congregations that have ever operated, reports the Washington Jewish Week.
• The Orthodox Union joined a coalition of faith-based groups supporting California’s Proposition 8, which would overturn the state’s decision to allow gay marriages, reports the Forward.
• After the Solomon Schechter school in Cranford closed because of financial difficulty — the second New Jersey Schechter to do so in the past year — Schechter of West Orange is absorbing the majority of its faculty and student body.
• The ADL leans on quid pro quo lawyers for legal support, says the New Jersey Jewish Standard.
• In Cleveland, the Center for Social Justice assists financially strapped law students who wish to pursue careers in social justice, says the Cleveland Jewish News.
• Young charity givers were on display in Philadelphia, reports the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
• Former Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin, the first Jewish woman governor of a state, will give the keynote speech at next week’s opening of the Jewish Book & Culture Fair in Milwaukee, which is part of the Adelman Political Awareness Series of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Women’s Division, according to the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
• On the flip side, Jerry Springer will be the keynote speaker at the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival in November, the St. Louis Jewish Light reports. Springer is the child of Holocaust survivors who escaped from Nazi Germany in 1944.

Since the New York Times Magazine ran Natalie Portman’s mug on the cover of its money issue in March, which featured a story about celebrity influence on giving, it seems that the charitable world has gone a bit TMZ.

The phenomenon is legit enough that the Chronicle of Philanthropy held an interesting online panel discussion this week about celebrity involvement in charity.

That discussion turned me onto Looktothestars.com, a comprehensive Web site that provides daily updates about celebrities and their giving.

For the Jewish philanthropy-phile, it’s definitely worth a perusing.

The site has two pieces about Natalie Portman’s involvement with the micro-loan group FINCA, including a Q&A.

Did you know:

• Adam Sandler donated 400 Playstations to Israeli families that were victims of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.
• Goldie Hawn, Michael Douglas and Bill Clinton support the Jewish National Fund.
• And Don Cheadle, who is not Jewish, is a supporter of Jewish World Watch, an organization that “works to mobilize synagogues, their schools, their members and the community to combat genocide and other egregious violations of human rights around the world through education, advocacy, and refugee relief,” according to its Web site.

Jewish celebrities have historically been involved in high-profile philanthropy, from the Jew who runs the world’s most famous telethon, Jerry Lewis, to Paul Newman, who is now giving away to charity all of the assets from his Newman’s Own line of food products.

A bevy of Jewish celebs show up on the site’s database of stars who notably give to charity. The database includes a listing of each of their causes.

But are Jewish charities missing the star-studded cruise?

Looktothestars also has a searchable database of charities that have been able to sign on celebrity sponsors, and aside from the JNF, Jewish World Watch and several foundations started by Jewish celebrities, few overtly Jewish causes show up on the list.

I know that there are some Jewish charities that have been able to enlist Jewish b-list celebs, older celebs and entertainment industry execs, but there seems to be a specific dearth of young Jewish gliterati involved in the old-school Jewish charity world.

There have been attempts to court them.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Gen-D, a young leadership program, drew several celebs to a fund raiser in L.A. to help Cuban Jewry earlier this month. That event attracted Mischa Barton and Nikky Hilton (pictured above at the event).

And there have been strong whispers that the Joint and the UJA-Federation of New York have been courting Portman to help them with their non-sectarian causes in Africa.

For a society that is voraciously interested in the Hollywood elite, and that is trending towards emulating their behavioral patterns — good and bad — it is safe to say that celebrity involvement in a charity can help its fund-raising effort.

Maybe it’s not shocking that old-time organizations, like the Jewish federations, the Joint, the Jewish Agency and the ADL, are absent from Looktothestars. But not even the trendier stars of the J-philanthropy scene, such as Hazon and the American Jewish World Service, show up.

What gives? Or, more appropriately, who gives?

Giving by individuals who have more than $2 million invested in the stock market should remain strong and could increase in 2008, Crown Philanthropic Solutions told the Wall Street Journal blog The Wealth Report.

William Hewitt, the firm’s national marketing chief, said that giving by the mass affluent – those with $100,000 or more invested – is likely to be cut back. Giving by this group declined in the first quarter, according to the survey.

Yet the affluent, he says, are more affected by weak housing prices, falling stocks and rising prices. Companies also are planning to keep their giving flat this year. A recent survey of 77 businesses by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that 50 would keep their giving the same as last year, while 21 expected an increase, and six said their donations would drop.

The rich, on the other hand, are more protected than companies from economic downturn because their portfolios are more diverse, Hewitt said.

Nigel Savage, the founder and executive director of Hazon, is trying to create a shared work space for young Jewish non-profits.

The idea behind the space, which would be called “Makom Chadash,” Hebrew for “New Place,” is that these non-profits could cut overhead costs by moving in under one roof and sharing office infrastructure and support staff; they could also share expenses on fund raising and marketing staff.

“Imagine that there was one funder for all the young Jewish non-profits,” Savage told me earlier this month when we sat down at the CAJE conference. “That funder would say, ‘I think you guys are great, but why am I paying for 17 copiers? Why am I paying for 17 servers and 17 different pieces of accounting software? Not only do I require you to save on the cost side, I also want to see you guys leveraging the front side – cross-promoting, marketing together, staff training together and [working on] development together.’”

Savage’s Hazon currently sublets space from the American Jewish World Service in a building on W. 36 St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Manhattan. He is eying a floor in the same building in an area that has become a corridor for Jewish non-profits.

The floor has space for about 52 staff members and could house between five and 10 Jewish organizations, he said.

Makom Chadash is a play on Bikkurim, an incubator for startup Jewish non-profits, that essentially provided them with office space and professional support.

But Makom Chadash would be for non-profits that have made it past the start-up phase and are now established — those between 3- and 25-years-old with budgets between $200,000 and $10 million. Participating groups would have to show signs of good governance and acceptance by the organized Jewish community, Savage said.

Savage estimates that Makom Chadash would cost around $8 million over the next 10 years in build-out expenses and rent.

About $5 million of that would come in rent paid by the organizations that move in, leaving the rest, about $300,000 a year, to be raised in subsidies.

He is looking for six funders to invest $50,000 per year, each. The Chais Family Foundation has signed on as an initial investor, and Savage hopes that the UJA-Federation of New York will become a funder as well.

But Savage is under a bit of a time crunch and will have to come up with his six investors in the next two or three months in order to obtain a lease on the space, he said.

Aside from sharing expenses, Savage thinks that the space could also provide a forum for sharing ideas and thoughts and for working together.

“There are tremendous opportunities for synergy,” he said. “It will be a real indictment of the organized Jewish community if we are not able to make this happen.”

The Jewish community in Louisville, Ky., is struggling as population numbers decline and the Jewish community in Louisville becomes more dispersed, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports.

The Jewish population there dropped from 8,700 to 8,307 between 1991 and 2006, which has put pressure on the Jewish infrastructure in the area.

Louisville’s only non-Orthodox day school recently closed, as did its only kosher restaurant. The local JCC has about 8,000 members, but only 38 percent are Jewish, and it recently closed its kosher cafe because of lack of demand. Several synagogues are discussing mergers simply to stay afloat. And, the local federation’s annual campaign has remained stagnant over the past five years at about $2.8 million, the Courier-Journal reports.

The Fundermentalist’s take: At the same time that the Louisville paper is reporting this story, several large-city federations, including those in New York and Baltimore, are reporting that they saw record gains in their fund raising last year. But, in the middle of the country, the situation in Louisville is more the norm than an aberration.

Population shift is a serious concern for smaller federations in the Midwest, especially, as Jews move away from Jewish communities that were small to start off with.

Perhaps it is time for the federation system to start considering some sort of domestic profit-sharing plan in which large city federation success could be used to help ease small city federation distress.

The London Jewish Chronicle is reporting that Jewish charities are among the worst in Britain when it comes to being open and transparent.

An independent charity watchdog, Intelligent Giving, studied the reporting of 500 English charities and gave each a percentage score based on a number of criteria.

The 10 worst charities on the list were all Jewish, according to the Chronicle.

Adam Rothwell, director of IG, said: “Many of the Jewish charities have stayed at the bottom again this year, making them among the least transparent in the country. It is very disappointing.

“There are 10 Jewish charities scoring under 40 per cent, meaning they would make up the bottom 10 of all the 500 charities we have profiled this year.”

Some of those scoring the worst included JNF, the Jewish Leaning Exchange, and the Oxford Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies.

The worst performer was Cosmon (Belz), which works to advance Orthodox Judaism. It scored just 20 per cent, a 30 per cent drop from last year.

Mr Rothwell explained: “It doesn’t really take much effort to get over 60 per cent, so these charities are not taking transparency and openness very seriously.

“There’s such a dearth of information about them and they are so reticent that it makes it look like they are trying to hide something.”

Thanks to Dan at ejewishphilanthropy.com for pointing this one out.

I can’t wait until school starts. It was slim pickings in the Jewish news world this week.

• We are seeing the last of the landsmanschaften, the aid societies set up by Jews at the turn of last century to help those from their own countries of origin who immigrated to the U.S., reports the Forward.
• A congregation in New York is offering free religious school, reports the New York Jewish Week.
• The leader of CLAL, Irwin Kula, tells the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle that Jewish tribalism is dead — and its time to “take Jewish wisdom public.”
• Maryland’s Commission for Human Relations found probable cause that a condo association in which the majority of board members are black discriminated against Orthodox residents, over the use of a “Shabbos elevator.”
• The Boston Jewish Advocate looks at the Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Boston.
• Religious schools are on the rise in Arizona, says the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.

The New York federation is reaching out to those in the financial services industry who suddenly find themselves out of work, and is trying to help them find jobs.

A buddy of mine — who is still well-employed by a major bank — sent me this email from the UJA-NY announcing that the federation has opened a job bank of sorts.

In response to the downturn in New York’s job market, UJA-Federation of New York’s Wall Street and Financial Services Division has initiated Wall Street Job Link, a program run by F.E.G.S. Health and Human Services System to help people in our community directly affected by recent layoffs.

This online resource will enable job applicants to register their career profiles and resumes on an exclusive site geared toward Wall Street and financial-service professionals. Profiles and resumes will be available for viewing by prospective employers who are recruiting to fill open positions within their firms.

If you or someone you know is looking for a job and would like to participate in this program, please visit www.parnossahworkswallstreet.org.

F.E.G.S. Health and Human Services System, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, provides a host of employment services, programs, and resources. For more information, please visit www.fegs.org or contact the F.E.G.S. Resource & Referral Line at 1.212.524.1780.

Good move, says the Fundermentalist. The UJA-NY took in about $40 million from its Wall Street division last year. That is hard to do if your donors aren’t working….