Arts & Culture
Why Can’t Jewish Organizations Collaborate?
By Marty Linsky / November 10, 2008
Marty Linsky, co-author of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, is guest blogging on Jewcy this week with his co-authors Shifra Bronznick and Didi Goldenhar. The guidebook is the result of a partnership between two organizations: Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community and Cambridge Leadership Associates. Linsky is a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School and has been a journalist, lawyer, and politician.
Yesterday, Sunday, I was in Toronto working with a group of people, each of whom has just become or is about to become chair of the board of a Jewish communal agency.They were brought together for a year-long experience under the auspices of The Joshua Institue for Jewish Communal Leadership, a newly-created arm of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.Â
The presenting purpose was leadership development for those new board chairs; but the not so hidden agenda was to break down the walls that keep those organizations and the dozens of others that make up Toronto’s undeniably vibrant Jewish community from working together and instead often pits them against one another for attention, money, volunteers, professionals, and even clients and service recipients.Â
The situation in Toronto is not much different from what I have seen in other Jewish communities in North America and, to be fair, in many non-Jewish not-for-profit worlds as well. But the commitment to autonomy seems particuarly pronouced among Jewish organizations, right along there with the lip service paid to collaboration. The gap between the espounsed values and the current reality is not uncommon in Jewish life. When Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar and I were talking to people and doing research for Leveling the Playing Field, our new book on gender inequality in Jewish communal life, we found a similar pattern. Everyone is for it, but nothing much happens.Â
In Toronto yesterday, the CEO of the Federation told a wonderful story of a meeting of the most senior lay and professionals in the Jewish community to discuss the plans for a newly-acquired parcel of 60 acres of land. Those sitting around the table thought they were there to negotiate about how to carve it up, so that each agency would get its appropriate share. But it turns out that the plan was to share the land in common, a whole new way of doing business for those folks whose identities were wrapped up in their individual agencies. It was a long sturggle to make that happen, and it is not over yet as denominational and other differences are making truly shared resources difficult to achieve.
Why is this so difficult? Think of the analogy to a vegetable stew. To make stew, you have to cook the vegetables, the potatoes and lentils and onions, enough so that each takes on a little of the coloration and smell of the others. If you don’t do that, you might as well cook the vegetables in separate pots. But if you cook them too much, you get mush instead of a stew. The problem comes when the lentils have to go back to lentil-land. The first thing that will happen to them is that the other lentils will start sniffing around. "Yuck," they will say. "We sent you there to spread some lentil juice over those potatoes and carrots and onions, not to get any onion or potato juice on you! You’re not one of us any more."
Real collaboration is about loss, about giving up something important in the service of the whole. The work of collaboration is difficult because is not only requires the distribution of losses, but also collaboration among the collaborators in helping each other deliver their losses to their own people. Collaboration is particularly challenging in Jewish communal life because well-intentioned people with a history of suffering and loss go into that line of work on either a professional or a volunteer basis to save lives and provide benefits, not to deliver losses and take away what people value. But without the courage and skill to do just that, no real change can occur and the silos’ boundaries will continue to be relatively impermeable at the expense of the longer run interests of the community as a whole.Â
Marty Linsky, co-author of Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, is guest blogging on Jewcy this week with his co-authors Shifra Bronznick and Didi Goldenhar. Stay tuned.
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There is a basic educational ideas which says that teachers must identify and evaluate “readiness skills” which are needed in order for the student to acquire a new set of skills.
By analogy, we can ask the question, “What are the readiness skills needed in order for Jewish organizations to be able to successfully collaborate?”
Though I’m sure there are many more, I’d like to suggest that organizational transparency is an essential prerequisite for institutional collaboration. The degree to which an organization conducts its business in public and publishes its working documents on the Internet are two important signs of the existance of transparency in an organization.
I think the trend in Jewish institutional life toward reliance on mega-funders has set back collaboration significantly. Ironically, many of the mega-funders promote collaboration and sometimes make funding dependent on it.
But their very approach works against it. The reason for this is that the most important thing in working with mega-funders is access. And no exec of a Jewish org who has access to a mega-funder wants to share that access. The toxic part of “choseness” gets acted out in the choices that megafunders make about the projects they are interested in.
Mega-funders are also completely immune to calls for transparency. However, a mega-funder who was sensitive to this critique could do a lot by making his/her foundation more transparent.
I’ve recently written a blog post for Yavnet about my experience working on an open source software project that employs, by far, the highest level of collaboration that I’ve ever experieced. The article is: What Non-Profits Can Learn from an Open Source Software Project
Great topic!
The current print issue of Zeek (www.zeek.net/subscribe), just out this week, features a piece by Kol Tzedek, a group of four very mainstream Jewish organizations–a federation, a congregation, and two nonprofits–who came together to fight for same-sex marriage rights in California. The new generation of leaders in mainstream Jewish orgs have realized the value of working together for change, and we will see an increase in such initiatives over the coming year.
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Editor, Zeek Magazine
Maybe Jewish orgs don’t collaborate because they don’t have to? The community has never held organizations accountable to each other, only to their specific (and independent, sometimes parochial) missions.
The Jewish community has little if any information that’s housed in database form. For instance, how many day camp attendees also took Birthright trips? How many Birthright grads join synagogues and when? How many USY or NFTY kids end up on boards of Jewish institutions? This information may seem superfluous or anecdotal, but it could tell us much about trends in Jewish philanthropy and service.
I appreciate that younger Jews are collaborating, though it seems in their own, subset of the community. It’s not enough to have groups within the whole collaborating with each other – we need to find a way to include k’lal Yisrael in this conversation.
Perhaps, the global economic crisis will force Jewish leadership – men and women – Â to explore new organizational paradigms on a global scale. This thorny issue was the topic of debate at the 2ndmega-Limmud FSU Conference in Yalta, October 27-30, 2008, a gathering of 1,000Russian-speaking Jews from the 13 countries of the former Soviet Union.
"Why Major Philanthropists Give?" one of the 171sessions and panels with roughly 150 presenters, panelists discussed theirbelief in creating an enduring Jewish future through their gifts of Tzedakah. "Investing in the Jewish future," saidMatthew Bronfman, Chair, Limmud FSU International Steering Committee,"reflects my believe that we’re developing tomorrow’s leadership andbuilding strong Jewish communities, whether through Taglit-birthright israel,on our campus Hillels, or in many other ways."
One participant asked how the worldwide economic crisiswould impact giving? Philanthropists from Russian, Ukraine, Israel, and the United Statesagreed that it’s going to be a very difficult time for Jewish charities –everybody’s been affected. Ukrainian philanthropist, Vadim Rabinovich, HonoraryChair, Limmud FSU in Yalta, said, "From the top down, there will be lessgiving. And, from the bottom up,more people will need help. This crisis puts more pressure on local sources tofund programs. The question is,what kind of sacrifices are local organizations willing to make to keep theirdoors open?"
Picking up the thread of this serious discussion aboutsocial responsibility and the global economic crisis, panelists from the UnitedStates, Israel, the Ukraine and Russia, addressed the huge challenges involvedin working in the FSU today. Raw, honest, and controversial, representativesfrom major international Jewish agencies, including Keren Keyemet-Israel, theJewish Agency (JAFI), and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC),addressed this quagmire of growing proportions. With diminishing resources, all agreed that the focus forthese on-the-ground organizations is clearly welfare – food, fuel, and medicinefor the most needy.Â
Suggesting in another way of approaching the crisis, onepanelist proposed rethinking age-old work plans under different political andsecurity realities, country by country. Obviously sensitive to today’s extremeeconomic situation, panelists acknowledged the need to look beyond theirtraditional organizational lines, and, perhaps, regroup with coordinatedleadership to deliver essential humanitarian services more effectively.
There has scarcely been any real loss or suffering for American and Canadian Jews in living memory. Has anyone considered that we may now have evolved beyond the need for such a panopoly of Jewish fundraising organizations precisely because of our relative lack of loss and suffering during the past couple of generations?
Yeah, I know how kids today want a piece of the NPO steez, but the supply of job seekers has outstripped the demand, and for a good reason.
There is some noteworthy collaboration already going on, esp among younger Jewish groups. It doesn’t mean full integration (and truly, there are different styles and perspectives not to mention objectives within the Jewish world that I believe do require different agencies)– but more than is sometimes recognized.Â
There is the ICC (Israel on Campus Coalition), the Conversation (which just brings people together to talk, but even so…), Avodah and AJWS alumni cooperations. We alone (ACCESS@AJC) have collaborated with Judios Latinos, Kol Dor, Jewish Funds for Justice, DNAWORKS, AIPAC, Panim, Dor Chadash, Bronfman Israel Fellows, and others — and are now hosting a major conference with a slate of Jewish and African American partners on race and religion in a new America (nolaconference.blogspot.com)
Which of any of these groups should give up their mandate(s) entirely for another ?– THAT would truly be a more complicated picture and I’d be interested in seeing how that might be solved positively. Economic realities may of course push (negatively) in that direction in the coming months.
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