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BBYO and Panim exploring merger, but is it a done deal?

By Jacob Berkman · June 15, 2009

The Washington Jewish Week has a story about a potential merger between the national youth group BBYO and Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership & Values, a Maryland-based young leadership training program.

By the end of the summer, reports the newspaper, BBYO will absorb most of Panim’s staff, who will then integrate the organization’s programming into BBYO.

While there has been a lot of talk about mergers recently, if they are going to happen, this will likely be how they work -- as acquisitions -- one large, more financially stable organization will take over a smaller less stable one.

Though the Washington paper reports this as a done deal, there has been some whispering that it is not quite set in stone.

“We are still very much working out the details about the full scale operation, and we hope to have a full scale sustainable model,” a BBYO spokesperson told The Fundermentalist.

Whether or not this deal goes through hinges on whether the two sides can line up funding to make it happen. Mergers may save money long term, but they certainly cost money in the short term.

“We are optimistic but still working out the details. We’re still trying to get the commitments from the philanthropists and still working out the details,” said the BBYO spokesperson.

I’ll be speaking with BBYO executive director Matt Grossman about some other topics and I’ll see what more I can find out about this.