From: sg@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (stephan.gross)
Subject: Jewish Charities, Round II
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 14:28:32 GMT


I want to thank Rob Brickman for his intelligent, reasoned response.  His
comments are too lengthy to reproduce in full here.  However, I do have a few
comments to make.

>Steve seems to view the administration of large "not-for-profit"
>organizations as requiring skills somehow different from the skills needed
>to run traditional profit-directed enterprises.  Having served on a volunteer
>basis with large charities, and in my professional career as a financial
>executive, I can tell you that any differences are immaterial.  It could even
>be argued that in a funded agency, in an era of diminished revenues, payrolls
>held steady by unions, government cutbacks etc. the "not-for-profit"
>administrator is forced to be even more resourceful than his or her counterpart
>in "industry".  Given the similar skill set, I would be interested to know how
>the Jewish community could expect to entice managers of the calibre required
>without paying them accordingly.  It is not uncommon for executives at medium
>and large corporations to be paid $200,000 per year.
 
  Two things: 1) "Because they make an obscene amount of money, therefore we
should make an obscene amount of money."  Sorry, I'm not buying.  What other
people do should never be a standard for Jews.
  I think Jews and the rest of the American public in general have lost sight
of what is reasonable.  I would guess that a salary of $200,000 puts one in
the 99th percentile of wage earners in the USA.  I would bet that almost every
reader of this net would be delighted to earn half of that; indeed, it would
probably be a substantial increase.  I see no shame in a Jew heading a Jewish
charity saying, "I think $100,000 is a fair salary for what I'm doing."
     And some people do exactly this.  What I didn't quote from the article
was that fact that the president of Easter Seals makes $144,000 and the
president of CARE makes $137,000.  You may recall that the article stated
that the heads of Jewish organizations were, on average, making much more
than their non-Jewish counterparts.
         2) What bothers me (and I think many others as well) is not so
much the high salaries but the question of how and how well the money is used.
Looking at these salaries, it's hard not to feel that one's charity is
being wasted or misspent.  Study after study shows that people are willing
to give more taxes or charity *if they really believe their money will help*.
   What also bothers me is the fact that these organizations eventually
tend to have their own social and political agenda as well.  For example,
(and I don't know if it's still true) the UJA would not spend UJA monies 
outside of Israel's "Green Line."  Also, they were funding Arabs in Israel.
Now, far be it from me to deny charity to poor people, whoever they are;
but when I give money to specific cause, say Jews in Israel, I want my
money to go to Jews in Israel.  And some I plain disagree with; for example,
I think the ADL has outlived its usefulness.  By and large, antisemitism
is not a problem for Jews in the United States.

>Now, what can Steve (or others who have legitimate concerns about how our
>Jewish communal institutions function) do to *help*?  I believe that we all

  This is what I like: useful, practical advice.  If people don't like the
system, they cannot complain unless they do something about it.

>1)*Do not* hold back your contribution from the local or regional general
>community fundraising effort (eg. United Jewish Appeal, United Israel Appeal,
>the Federation or whatever it is called in your area).  Holding back your
>contribution helps no-one, leads to absolutely no change whatsoever in the
>behaviour of the agency (except to deprive those most in need from receiving
>what is needed), and communicates nothing except your commitment to exclude
>yourself from the mainstream.  You can do more for your community by including
>yourself than excluding yourself.

  As I stated above, I respectfully disagree.  I think, for example, the
American Jewish Congress should dry up and go away.  The best way to
accomplish that is to not give it money.

>2) Do one or all of the following:
>
> -Telephone the Chairperson of the UJA (or similar) fundraising effort and
>outline for him or her your concerns in clear terms.  Try not to make
>generalizations you cannot support with some facts.  If you *need* facts,
>ask the Chairperson to provide them.  (If they want you to contribute, let
>me assure you, they will get you the facts).  Listen to his or her

  Rob, I tried this once.  I called the UJA office in NY in a vain attempt
to get a financial statement of any kind.  I spent a half hour being
shuttled from office to office, only to wind up back where I started from.

> -Consider how to get involved; how to *become* one of the ones who makes the
 
> -Volunteer.  The more work that is done by volunteers (especially skilled,
>motivated volunteers), the less demand there is on the extremely limited
>resources of the organization.  This is notably so in the areas of
 
 I think these are both great ideas.  Plus, I have another.  My shul (as
does many I know) has a Rabbi's fund, which is usually at the Rabbi's 
discretion.  I know for a fact that in my shul, this money is used to
buy groceries and anonymously leave them at people's doorways at 5:00 in
the morning; pay mortgages; support women whose husbands leave them.  And
the overhead is zero dollars.

>I apologise for the length of this posting, but this is an area of intense
>concern to me.  I hate to see Jews being disenfranchised from their community.
>I hate seeing the community be unresponsive to concerns.  I hate seeing
>unsubstantiated generalizations about funding, administration and other issues

  I applaud your obviously heartfelt comments, but it tellingly seems to me
that you left out one line:  "I hate to see charities become large, wasteful,
arrogant, self-serving bureaucratic organizations that only promote their
own agenda."

-- 

                      Steve Gross    (...att!hogpa!sg or sg@HOGPA.ATT.COM)


Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.arabic,talk.politics.mideast