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Friday February 1, 2008

Give and take: UJC reinvents donor programs

by jacob berkman
jta

As part of a move to revamp its fundraising strategy, the United Jewish Communities has started a joint venture fund to raise significant dollars to help Israeli Arabs.

The organization, which serves as the umbrella of the North American federation system, is raising $750,000 from 15 private donors, foundations, federations and service organizations to start the UJC Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Coexistence.

The first of several similar venture funds the UJC plans to roll out in coming months, the project is part of a new fundraising model designed to attract new donors and revenue streams.

The model, which the UJC is calling “Collaborative Financial Resource Development,” is primarily focused on creating a new line of philanthropic enterprises and recruiting different funders to work on the projects.

Federations and the UJC would act as a convener and facilitator of those special projects, such as joint venture funds, that would not run through the federations’ general campaigns. They would give decision-making responsibilities to the donors.

“The primary purpose is to bring together people with different perspectives, such as private philanthropists and foundations, around an issue that needs to be elevated and highlighted in the Jewish community,” said Carol Smokler, the chair of the venture fund. “This is a new kind of venture. It is follow-your-dollar, hands-on involvement in an issue.”

The model is a central component to a strategic operations plan launched last year by the UJC to help boost the system’s financial intake.

The UJC wanted to re-examine the entire fundraising system and “all of our resources,” said Barry Swartz, the organization’s senior vice president of continental community development and capacity building.

“We are beginning to tackle issues that not everybody might want to be involved with,” Swartz said.

The Israeli Arab joint venture fund and the similar funds to be introduced are intended to engage large donors the UJC has not been able to tap.

Other future funds might tackle such topics as Jewish identity among Israelis, Darfur refugees and guest workers in Israel, women’s issues, programs for gifted students and programming designed to integrate the disabled into Jewish life, a UJC source said.

For Swartz, the Israeli Arab venture fund is the ideal place to start.

Some 52 percent of the Israeli Arab community lives in poverty, according to the UJC, and observers see unrest in that community as one of Israel’s greatest threats.

But the Israeli Arab issue is a hot-button topic within the Jewish philanthropic world. Many federations have shied away from it for fear of alienating donors to their annual campaigns. The S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation has been funding coexistence programs for years.

Some right-wing Jews vociferously objected after the UJC used some of the money it collected to help Israel rebuild after the Lebanon war in 2006 to help the Israeli Arab community.

For the new initiative, the UJC has garnered gifts of $50,000 each from 15 donors to start the fund. Some of the initial investors are fairly close with the system, including UJC Chairman Joseph Kanfer and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

But it has also drawn new faces to UJC, which is one of its primary goals.

The Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, the Rita and Harold Divine Foundation, the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and the Everett Foundation each have pledged $50,000 to the project, and none have been major collaborators with federations in the recent past, according to Swartz.

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