CYNTHIA MANN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK -- A partnership plan that would join the United Jewish Appeal with the Council of Jewish Federations gathered steam during the CJF's quarterly meeting this week in Chicago.
As evidence, the two bodies immediately will begin looking for office space to share. They will "merge back-office operations wherever possible" and "look at redeployment of personnel where duplication appears to exist," said Conrad Giles, the CJF's president-designate.
In a telephone interview from Chicago, Giles said the CJF's executive committee Tuesday unanimously approved a plan that outlines a joint board and executive committee for the two bodies, which would maintain separate chief executive officers.
The CJF is the umbrella organization for local federations, which together with the UJA run an annual joint campaign that raises about $720 million.
Each federation decides how much of its share to keep at home for local needs, and then funnels the rest to the UJA for distribution to Israel and elsewhere overseas.
The new partnership idea replaced an earlier plan to merge the two entities with the United Israel Appeal, which funnels campaign money to the Jewish Agency for Israel. The merger plan was rejected last spring, partly for being too radical and not reflecting broad enough consultation with the communities.
Then a national committee that has spent nearly three years studying the restructuring of the Jewish fund-raising establishment unveiled new proposals. These were aimed at increased efficiency and responsiveness to the Jewish community's changing needs.
The committee disbanded over the weekend in Chicago after recommending the new partnership plan. The plan conspicuously lacks details, the crafting of which are still up to the two entities.
The organizations' boards must give final approval. The new plan is expected ultimately to result in a full merger, but adopts a more gradual approach than the original proposal.
The new plan also reflects a sensitivity to some of the UJA's concerns with the earlier approach that its ability to advocate for overseas needs could not be assured and that federations' increasing emphasis on keeping the money at home would dominate.
The new plan offers a "comfort level" to the UJA that the defunct plan did not, said Joel Tauber, co-chairman of the restructuring committee and honorary national chairman of the UJA, whose board of trustees approved the partnership idea in Chicago.
Half of both the newly proposed joint board and executive committee would consist of federation representatives; the other half would be UJA-appointed representatives.
But nothing is hard and fast.
"If they don't like it," said Tauber, "UJA can call the partnership off at any time" and "stay in business" as is.
Under the old plan, some in the UJA had felt they were "giving up ownership" of the system because after four years, 50 percent of the governing board would be directly elected by the federations and the rest theoretically "could have ended up being federation people" as well, Tauber said.
But details of the new configuration and its workings have been deliberately left up in the air.
"The committee has now placed the ball in the courts of the two organizations," said Giles. "The plan will serve as a road map and will undoubtedly undergo modification."
The endeavor, according to Giles, will be guided by the bottom line that "to be maximally efficient, we can't afford two addresses in the national system."
The gradual approach to a unified system, he said, will allow for "a sense of trust to develop between all the parties."
But conflicts remain to be ironed out.
For one, there is disagreement over where a strategic plan for the system should fit into the partnership process. That was most evident in a quarterly meeting of big-city federation representatives, who triggered the restructuring initiative in the first place.
The day before the meeting of the CJF executive, the big-city group split in a 9-5 vote, with the majority choosing to form a partnership first and then to devise a strategic plan to inform and guide the new entity, according to officials involved.
The dissenters, including executives from Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta and Los Angeles, argued that serious self-study or a strategic plan should occur at the same time as the partnership is being forged.
For his part, Giles believes that "there is consensus on the need for a strategic plan, just a difference in timing."
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