ANDRES SPOKOINY
JCCV PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING
28 OCTOBER 2013
PHILANTHROPIC TRENDS AND STRATEGIES
WHAT JEWISH COMMUNAL ORGANISATIONS NEED TO KNOW
Transcript
- Video can be found on the JCCV website here
I’m going to talk about changes in the Jewish community that effect philanthropy, but we’re not going to
start with philanthropy, because Jewish philanthropy is a consequence of things that are happening in the
Jewish community. It is a mistake to address philanthropy separately from the context in which it evolves.
I’m going to start with three things; an unemployed philosopher, a game and a broken clock.
The biggest Jewish philosopher of all times is Maimonides and his main contribution was the integration
between Judaism and Greek philosophy, A Guide for the Perplexed, where he integrated two supposedly
contradictory ways of understanding the world and produced the best Jewish philosophy of all time.
But he would be unemployed today. Why? Because today, we don’t have to integrate. Today, you can live
with separate truths that are parallel and contradictory. Today we don’t see a contradiction for an Orthodox
Jew to drive to Shule for Sabbath Services. We live in an extremely fragmented world, in which we
hyphenate our identities, but we don’t integrate them.
That may sound philosophical, but it’s not. It has an impact in the way we relate to Jewish organisations. We
don’t have the same loyalty, the same belonging that we used to have in the past. We used to look for a
single narrative, or ideology that would integrate all of us and to which we would subscribe. Now we build
our identities in the same way as we watch TV. We change from one channel to the next, to the annoyance
of our spouses that are next to us and want to focus on one program.
We build our program by watching different bits and pieces of different programs. The same is true of our
identity, we choose from different elements of different ideologies with a direct impact on the way we relate
with Jewish organisations. Yet we are still based on the idea that you’ve got to have a single driver for
belonging and for identity.
The second issue I want to talk to you about is the game Wii. W-I-I represents what society is about. The two
i’s is the central element of our society today and the main organising threat of our community, the ‘i’ or
individual. It might sound obvious, but it’s not, it’s a major change in the way we see society. We are
moving more and more from a society of collectives, to a society of individuals, and that impacts not just in
the way we operate in the world. It impacts philanthropy very strongly, because philanthropy, especially in
the Jewish community, is mainly based on the idea of community, of collective action taken now. We are in
a world where the individual is the king. As John Rutter, the Head of the UJ Federation of New York tells me,
“We live in an orgy of individualism” and it is true, to a certain extent it is true. Now, what that also implies
is that the individual has an enormous power to do things that he could have never thought, that he could
have never dreamt in the past.
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The two sides of this rampant individualism is on the one hand, weakening of the collective. This affects us
all, we live in organisations that are based on the collective idea. On the other hand, the strengthening of
the individual and the empowerment of the individual is to create their own identity and to create their own
path. This generates an enormous creativity and an enormous dynaminism that we didn’t have in the past.
So the question is then, how to minimise the weakening of the collective, while at the same time, harnessing
the creativity and the dynamism of the individual. E.g. today a kid starts a revolution with a mobile and Face
Book and topples a dictatorship. Somebody starts a company in his own garage and it becomes the biggest
company in the world, so there is power. The question is asked in the Jewish community, how we capture
that power, how we capture that energy.
The third thing that I want to talk to you about is a broken clock. Jewish organisations are indistinct from
non-Jewish organisations but many were actually created following the organisational model of the
industrial revolution, copied from the model of the Prussian Army (Frederick II), who copied it from a clock.
He said “My army is going to work like a clock. Every piece will know what it has to do. Move in
synchronisation, in harmony. In my army, everybody’s going to have a single Commander; with a chain of
command, organised in units. The units are going to be organising the regiments and divisions and armies.”
The industrial organisations of the 20th Century replicated this model, and we in the Jewish community
replicated that model, from the top-down.
Now, the Prussian clock is broken, because organisations today,
successful organisations, are not organised as a top-down model
and that affects the way in which we see philanthropy.
Philanthropy was also seen through the parallel of the top-down
organisation. When I was at the Federation we would decide,
what was the theme of our annual campaign and raise money.
The money would come to a central part and we would allocate it based on the way we interpreted the need
of the general population. That doesn’t work anymore, because the model of the organisation today, is not
the clock, but the brain.
(Pictures by JCCV – Typical top-down organisations vs the brain)
In other words, interactive and superceding networks that connect in very different ways that are not topdown. leadership is distributed evenly across the network and where the strength is not in the unit, but in
the relations between the units. For e.g. memory, a lot of people study the brain to see where memory is
located, but it’s nowhere. Memory is not a function of the neurons themselves. It’s a function of the
synapses between neurons. So, in the same way, creativity in an organisation is not a function of this or that
unit coming up with an idea, it is a function of the relationship between the different elements. As in the
brain, the more relationships, the more synapses and the more connected the neurons are, the better your
brain is. Same happens with a Jewish organisation. The more connections there are within a single
organisation and other different organisations, the stronger you’re going to be and the more creative you’re
going to be.
An idea is a network. An idea is a group of neurons firing in different ways and creating newer and newer
pathways. It’s not one neuron that will come up with an idea. It’s the idea that is that connection. So
although that is neurology, it has very specific implications for the way we organise Jewish communities. Do
you have, for example, employees, or do you have connectors? Do you have fundraisers, or do you have
network weavers? That’s a critical distinction; it’s not just semantics.
All I have said is a truism about how the world has changed and that Jewish communities cannot continue to
operate if the world hasn’t changed. There is accelerated uncertainty and that makes even more necessary
the change in organisational paradigms, because our organisations, the same way many commercial
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organisations, are created based on the idea that there is a clear cause-effect relations between the things
we do and things that happen doesn’t exist anymore. We live in a world of chaotic causality, there is total
uncertainty. Every crisis is more unexpected than the previous one. If you think about the five most
important things that happen in the last 20 years; 911, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Argentina not winning the
World Cup. Those things were all unexpected; nobody had predicted them.
Every major crisis creates a sense of total uncertainty and our communities are built for certainty. We don’t
have systems that allow us to capture and deal effectively with uncertain, unpredictable actions. That is true
not just for us. It’s true for every major corporation, not-for-profits, churches, etcetera.
Individuals are hyper in power and connectedness and the weight shifts from the collective to the individual.
The other thing is that we live in a world where there’s no patience. E.g. How am I supposed to teach people
in a 140 characters of twitter?” It’s very hard. How will the educational process work when there’s no
patience, when a kid can go online and know more than his teacher in just an hour? So, the nature of how
process is happening is changing. That also sounds very, philosophical, but it’s not, because if your
organisation is very process heavy that will mean that people are not going to have patience for it.
Jewish organisations are built for a different paradigm, for a different time and the question you need to ask
yourself is, if the Jewish organisation didn’t exist, if you had to create them today without the weight of your
legacy, inertia from the past, how would you create that? What kind of organisational structure would you
have? Probably the answer is, “We will create them exactly the same way” but you have to ask yourself that
question, because we live in a different time than the one for which our organisations were created.
You have to ask yourself, how do you operate? How does your fundraising operate? Does it operate in a top
down way, in a structured way, or are you set up as a network that can capture different interactions and
different collections all the time. Companies that are successful today work like that. They are very flat and
they’re very inter-connected.
I did this for the Federation in the States, and it really applies for every major Jewish organisation. You move
from being top down, to being emergent. The strategy of the past was at the top, people define vision, set
the goals and they give everybody the task to do. Today, it’s the opposite. Vision emerges from the
interaction between the people. The task of leadership has changed dramatically. A leader today is not the
same idea of leader that we have, that strong commander of an army, the strong General. It’s actually
somebody that connects and somebody that facilitates processes that are happening at the grass roots level.
A leader today has to be a catalyst, has to be somebody that looks at what’s happening at the ground level
and manages to bring it to the next... to make it higher to the next level.
The other thing is this, we are used to very proprietary ways of seeing information and successful
organisations in the 21st Century have changed that. The success of open source software, for example,
means that you move the paradigm from owning to sharing; success of others is now yours if you share your
cards. The energy that exists in the free flow of good services and information is what makes companies
successful today.
Companies that restrict their flow of information, both internally and externally, suffer, become poorer with
time and Jewish organisations weaken. If you have a paradigm of proprietary information, of a closed door,
which you don’t share, you’ll own less and less, because sharing is the new owning; from organisations to
networks.
So, how do all these trends impact the way people manage, especially younger people? First it’s all about
the individual. The role that loyalty had in giving is replaced by impact. In the past, we would give because
this is what Jew’s do. We give to the collection, to the community and to the synagogue, because that’s how
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we express our loyalty to the Jewish community and the world we live in. It’s not like that anymore. For,
Millenium, Generation X and Y, the main driver of giving is impact. If you’re phrasing your fundraising pitch
in terms of loyalty, guilt, belonging, responsibility, it’s not enough. You have to say, what is the impact that
I’m going to have through my contribution? That’s in line with what’s happening in society. If somebody can
do something and immediately see the impact it has, because of the fast pace in which our world operates,
he will expect to see the same in terms of his own philanthropy.
It’s about value; it’s not about valuables. Meaning, giving money is important, but it is about engagement.
There were two main studies in the U.S about Jewish giving; Next Gen Donars and Committed to Give. The
main predictor of giving is engagement. They assessed wealth, age but no; the main predictor of giving is
engagement.
So, if you want to increase giving, you have to increase engagement. That was my fight at the Federation.
The Federation would tell me “We have to hire more campaigners, because we need to go and raise more
money.” I’d say “No, we need to hire more Jewish educators. We need to do more cultural activites, more
cinema festivals; anything that engages people because the only thing that is going to ultimately impact our
campaign is engagement.” Right, now, we also tend to make a box fit in a square, or the other way around.
In other words, we want young people that think and give differently to be giving through the same vehicles
that we used 20 or 30 years ago. The general undesignated gift is weakening and younger people are 20
times more likely to use new vehicles for giving; giving circles, network giving, crowd sourcing etc.
Not all is good news for us, because some of these vehicles are not necessarily good or useful for the Jewish
community. But, we cannot ignore them. We cannot pretend that the only way of giving today is the
traditional annual campaign of the traditional mailout, it doesn’t work like that. People use different
vehicles for giving and we need to know what they are.
Another battle that we shouldn’t be fighting, because it’s already lost, is that people are not and will not give
only Jewishly. Only four percent of donors in the States, give only Jewishly. So, there’s no point making
them feel guilty as it won’t work. What is going to work, is to show them that they can obtain the same
satisfaction, the same joy, the same rewarding experience giving Jewishly, than giving to the university, or to
the museum, or whatever it is that they give in their secular lives. Many people that give large sums to
secular causes do not do it for social acceptance; that is not the case anymore. But, many do not know that
they can serve the same goals through a Jewish vehicle.
If you take a case of the environment, for example, a lot of people give money to secular environmental
groups. If they have an outlet to do that Jewishly, they would. It’s not that they are against giving Jewishly;
they just don’t find the way.
Next Gen are not necessarily against traditional causes. They are not going to give totally differently than
their parents. They want to keep supporting the same organisations. What they do want is for organisations
to listen to them and reorganise themselves in a way can speak next gen language. But, they’re not against
Jewish orgs; it’s a misconception, that when you’re young you’ve got to break with the past. They just want
Jewish organisations to adapt.
So, I’m going to be an Eitzes giver for a minute, give unsolicited advice and then open it up for questions and
have more dialogue than lecture.
Firstly, because the world is uncertain and you don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not going to
work, you have to embrace risk, because in a world where you know for sure that A produces B, you don’t
take risks. But, in a world where you don’t really know what’s going to work, you have to take risks, you
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have to try. There’s no other way. The more you try, the more gates you open to Jewish engagement, the
more vibrant your community will be and the more money you’re going to raise.
Secondly, you have to be tolerant of failure. Jews are very reluctant to fail, we don’t want to fail and
organisations that succeed today, do it by failing a lot. So, the point really is, to fail cheap and to fail fast. In
other words, try a lot of things, but create a structure that allows you to benefit from that failure. Create a
system by which your recycle bin is going to be recycled and is never thrown away. Although we call it a
recycle bin, the reality is we don’t recycle, we just throw it away. Now, our failures can teach us a lot for the
future.
Because there’s no one future, the strategic value as we know it, is dead. Now, the trend is to have an
organisation that is flexible to adapt to different futures, because we don’t know what the future will bring.
If you’re in a leadership position you need to learn how to act, more as a convenor, as a facilitator and as a
broker of relationships between people because that’s what is going to talk to the younger people. One
thing I tell my staff at the Federation is, they used to be schmoozers, going to cocktails and schmoozing.
Basically, there still must be, be a connector and create vibrant networks of people at different levels. Your
best fundraiser is not the one that has the most faithful friends, but the most connections. It is about
creating, facilitating and transferring information, then designing your organisations to allow serendipity as
well. If you build Jewish organisations in silos, both internally and externally they’re not going to be
constructive and it’s going to create a gap between how young people see themselves and how they see
your organisation. Young people don’t have silos. They’re connected, they think and they operate in
networks. So, if the Jewish organisations don’t do that, there’s going to be a chasm between the two.
Building bridges is critical. The more bridges you build, the more connections, the stronger the network, and
the more people you’ll engage.
In the States, a hot topic is an inclusive and welcoming community. Because communities are more and
more diverse in terms of geology, social economics, sexual orientation, and level of practice. Everything is so
diverse. We are going to be more of a mosaic and patchwork of different minorities and different groups.
Not being inclusive, at least in the States, is a major driver of community disengagement, people that don’t
feel included, just drop out.
The national average in the U.S of children of mixed marriages that grow up Jewishly is 34%. Now,
communities that have these divides are deliberate strategic in being welcoming, inclusive and accepting of
mixed marriages and doing programs for children of mixed marriages. These communities have doubled the
number of children that grow up Jewishly. In Boston, for example, the figures are 62% that grow up Jewishly
from mixed marriages, so inclusiveness pays. There are ideological issues, I’m not minimising them, but
every community’s different, and I’m saying, finding ways within your ideological limits to be inclusive is very
important and you must think in terms of values. In other words, what is the value that your organisation
gives to society? You must tell the donor, not why I want you for, rather “How can I be a tool for you to
produce the value you want to produce in the community?” Again, it sounds semantics, but it’s not.
In the past, the donor was a tool of the organisation. In today’s world, the donor sees the organisation as
their tool. Now, so you have to say “What’s your vision? What’s the change you want to produce in the
world? What are the problems in the community that you want to take care of and I can be a vehicle to do
that?”
Questions commence;
Question 1:
We’ve had a lot of dicussions over recent years about engaging younger people. Leadership has thought
“Start by going back to Primary School, engaging there and in 30 years we’ll have older people who are
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young people who are engaged” and that, sort of, loses the generation two in the middle. I’m wondering
what the experience has been over in the U.S and elsewhere?
Speaker:
Well, every organisation will tell you that their age is a critical age and the truth is that research is
contradictory. I mean, people say “Yeah, day schools are the main driver of Jewish identity” and that’s true,
but then birthright comes along and it becomes a major driver of Jewish identity, at least in the U.S. So, it
becomes a right of passage for, like another Bar Mitzvah. So, every age is critical and again, one of the main
differences between today’s world and the past is that it’s not either or. You don’t need to think in terms of,
are we investing in schools, instead of investing in young adults. Schools are critical, because they create a
basic core of Jewish identity, but young adults are critical; they deal with a time in life where people make
their life decisions; who are they going to marry, what kind of children they want to have, how they’re going
to educate them, who are they going to date?
So, every age is different. You cannot offer a single solution... there’s no silver bullet. Research is showing
something that we were not taking very seriously, which is early childhood factoring in Jewish identity. In
the Lamm library here, is a program designed for young families. Well, research is proving that it totally
involves the families and basic memories that form identity. The main question is, if there is only one
message that you take from today, it’s do not think in terms of either or. Do not think that Jewish
community, or Jewish philanthropy is a zero sum game. There is energy for everything if you know where to
find it and how to get it, there is money for everything too. The question is how to go... how to go about
approaching it?
Question 2:
I was involved about 30 years ago of setting up a little group across the Jewish community in London, to
meet together over Christmas to celebrate Jewish education, learning and it’s grown into a phenomenon
called Limmud. The community, in its different denominations, can be seen to be working together and
respecting each other.
Speaker:
Yes, Limmud is an excellent example, because it is grassroots, and emerging. Nobody said “We’re going to
plan this massive LimmudFest.” It just happened. People were smart, letting it grow and intervening when
it needed a push. So, people that collaborate and network will reward those that collaborate and network
and will punish those that don’t. If I know that my donation is going towards building duplication, or by
helping an organisation defend turf, I’m not going to be inclined to give. If I know that my donation creates
impact and that the organisation of funding is collaborating with others, I’d be much, much more inclined to
give.
When I was in Canada, we did a study on motivation of young Jews and why they were not involved with the
Federation. One of the main drivers for the disengagement was, too much politics, too much bickering, too
many intrigues, too many turf wars. “Just get your act together and you do good things. They actually called
the Federation the Snake Pit. If we give that image to young people, they’re going to be totally turned off.
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