From: "rob brickman" <rob.brickman@canrem.com>
Subject: jewish charities
Reply-To: "rob brickman" <rob.brickman@canrem.com>
Organization: Canada Remote Systems
Distribution: soc
Date: 30 Dec 92 09:37:40 EST

Please note: Original posting was botched; I was given instructions
on the Usenet gateway which were obviously misguided. My apologies to
anyone who has read this already.

SG>  Newsgroup: soc.culture.jewish
SG> Message-ID: <1992Dec29.151641.7225@cbnewsh.cb.att.com>
SG>    Subject: Jewish Charities
Steve Gross writes:
SG>Are other people bothered by the high salaries and waste of these charities?
SG>I have tried to avoid giving to them; usually, I put all my Jewish charity-
SG>money in State of Israel bonds.  Does anyone have any other charity recommen-
SG>dations?

As someone who has been involved as a senior volunteer in policy setting and
the planning of leadership development programs for the Jewish Community here
in Toronto it bothered me a great deal to read Steve's posting on several
counts.

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.

Traditionally, non-profit agencies, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have lagged
far behind general industry in structuring remunerative packages for their
senior managers which adequately reflected the level of responsibility and
skill set.  In recent discussions with two large charities here, I have
confirmed that over the past 4-6 years a revolution of sorts has taken place
on this score; non-profit agencies have come to the realization that you get
what you pay for.

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
have a vested interest in seeing that there is no dimunition in services to
the elderly, handicapped, new immigrants, cultural programs etc. in our
communities.  As someone who first got involved in the community because I
was similarly concerned about allocations of funds, let me suggest the
following:

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.

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
explanations back to you and think about how *you* would handle some of the
funding decisions if you had the opportunity.  Follow up your call with a
letter reiterating your concerns if they have not been addressed fully.

 -Consider how to get involved; how to *become* one of the ones who makes the
decisions on funding rather than simply critiquing from the outside. (One of
the other trends in recent Jewish communal life is the democratization of
the leadership structure;  my volunteer history is proof positive that this
is the case.  The age of the "macher's club" leadership model, at least at the
community level is fast disappearing.  The ones with the power are those who
can translate professional skills from the real world to their volunteer lives)

 -Investigate leadership development programs in the Jewish community.
A relatively new way for funded agencies to obtain fully trained, motivated
volunteers at Board level, these programs usually involve volunteers in
community orientation, Board development models etc.  If anyone is interested
I would be pleased to outline an award-winning model run by the Human Resources
Department of the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto with which I'm involved.

 -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
administration and programming.  Think about it....if you spend an hour doing
something which used to be done by a program director, you've probably saved
the organization over $25.

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
when the facts are easily obtained.  And most of all, I hate looking into the
eyes of my clients at one of the agencies I work with and having to explain to
them that the developmentally handicapped cannot get funding for Jewish

(Continued in the next message)
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