A New Era for Jewish Philanthropy

‘Super Bowl’ of conferences to mark first meeting of newly merged group

Charles R. Bronfman, the 68-year-old Canadian billionaire and philanthropist, is midway through a tour of North America,

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crisscrossing from Vancouver to Pittsburgh to Houston to meet with young Jewish leaders.

So far, he and his wife, Andrea, have traveled to eight cities, and they plan to visit at least eight more. Over a simple box lunch, they typically make brief remarks and then open the floor for a frank discussion about the tough issues facing Jewish philanthropy — such as what kind of financial assistance Israel needs now that it has become an established nation, how to involve more women in the male-dominated field of Jewish fund raising, and how to attract young people to Jewish charitable causes.

This week, Mr. Bronfman — who himself gave away $33-million last year, much of it to Jewish causes — will meet with young leaders again, this time in Atlanta. But this gathering will take place as part of a pivotal event in modern Jewish philanthropy. Mr. Bronfman is going to Atlanta to preside over the first-ever meeting of United Jewish Communities — the organization formed by the merger of three major North American Jewish charitable organizations.

The new organization brings together the Council of Jewish Federations, which represents 189 local Jewish federations that raised more than $1.9-billion last year; the United Jewish Appeal, which helps the federations raise the money that goes overseas; and the United Israel Appeal, which monitors how the funds are used there.

The meeting in Atlanta, referred to by organizers as the Super Bowl of Jewish conferences, marks the official beginning of Mr. Bronfman’s two-year term as chairman. But over the past nine months he has been touring local communities and undertaking numerous other efforts to make sure that he fully understands the challenges that face the new organization. Since he was appointed in February, Mr. Bronfman admits, his job as leader has not been a cakewalk.

“It has been very, very difficult,” he says bluntly in an interview at the Manhattan office of Seagram’s, the company that his father founded and that he now co-chairs with his brother, Edgar.

The merger took six years to complete — including a year to create its complex governance structure and win the approval of several hundred people representing the three groups. One reason it took so long was that the merger raised deeply emotional issues for many Jewish leaders — both the paid staff members who work for Jewish charities and the volunteers who raise and distribute funds.

Long accustomed to being fund-raising powerhouses, traditional Jewish groups have been facing competition from newer groups as well as from secular organizations.

That competition has sprung up at a time when the World War II-era Jews who loyally sustained the traditional groups are growing old, and when many donors are questioning whether it is better to give through a centralized, collective organization or directly to a particular charity.

Perhaps more important, memories of the Holocaust are receding and Jews around the world face fewer threats to their survival and freedom.

“This is the first time in several thousand years that Jewish society has untold affluence and power and freedom,” Mr. Bronfman observes. “And the Jewish people have not dealt too well with freedom. We are used to huddling against the common enemy.”

Nevertheless, he remains optimistic that Jewish fund raising can thrive even at a time when Jews do not face adversity.

“We have a new and wonderful situation,” he says. The question today, he adds, is whether American Jews can unite around a new set of goals for improving Jewish society and strengthening Jewish identity, “or are we going to get caught up [in the squabbles] and clobber ourselves?”

Charles Bronfman, Jewish leaders say, is one of very few people who possess the business expertise, philanthropic credibility, and leadership skills needed to insure that Jews of differing generations and viewpoints can work together. And though his wife does not hold an official position, she has been an added bonus to United Jewish Communities, regularly suggesting new ideas and pushing for change.

“When you form a new organization, you want it to have as much clout as possible, and there is no one bigger in Jewish life than Charles and Andrea Bronfman,” says Yosef I. Abramowitz, the founder of Jewish Family and Life, in Needham, Mass., a publisher of numerous on-line Jewish magazines and books on Jewish life.

“They are putting their money where their values are,” he says. “And they are generous enough and wealthy enough not to be beholden to the old way of doing things.”

The old ways got their start a century ago, when the first Jewish fund-raising federations were formed by German Jews who had emigrated to America. Designed to help subsequent waves of Jews from other countries adjust to the United States, the federations raised money primarily for local causes and supported an emerging crop of Jewish charities that provided everything from food and clothing to medical care and social services.

The Council of Jewish Federations was established in 1932 as a national trade association for the federations. The council was not a fund-raising organization itself, but instead provided professional resources and support to the federations.

The United Jewish Appeal was formed in 1939 — largely in response to Nazi atrocities. Its money went to aid Jews trying to escape from the Holocaust and to support the creation of what would eventually become the state of Israel. The organization raised money in campaigns conducted by the federations, and then sent it to the United Israel Appeal, which monitored how the funds were used by the Jewish Agency for Israel, an institution run by the Israeli government. The U.J.A. also channeled funds to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which helped Jews in need in other countries around the world.

Through the creation of United Jewish Communities, the three organizations hope to reduce overlap — especially among paid staff members performing similar functions at each group — and to develop innovative approaches to getting donors involved in Jewish philanthropy.

To do that, observers say, United Jewish Communities will need to fashion itself into a strong centralized organization that can win donors’ trust. The organization must do so at a time when the pool of Jewish donors is becoming more fragmented and decentralized.

One reason for the division is the split over giving to Israel. Some Jews look at Israel’s success and say they feel that their money is no longer needed in the amounts it once was, or that it should be used for other things besides basic services that the government can provide. Others question Israel’s politics, especially its treatment of Palestinians, and are less willing to see their money go to projects in Israel unless they are able to specify how the money will be used.

Still others have been bothered by the exclusive role of the Jewish Agency in overseeing the distribution of money raised by Jewish federations for Israeli projects. The agency has been criticized as inefficient and characterized as a pawn of politicians who garner American donations for their pet projects.

As a result, some federations reduced the amount they sent overseas, or established their own offices or programs to oversee the distribution of funds in Israel — a system that meant that both the federations and the United Jewish Appeal were doing similar jobs.

“The general sense was that in some areas they were duplicative, and in other areas they were falling through the cracks,” says Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, in San Francisco.

The declining trust that prompted federations to cut their overseas allocations or start their own programs in Israel was also what prompted some individual donors to establish their own foundations and take greater control over how their money is spent.

In response to donors’ efforts to get more control, federations began to create donor-advised funds, endowments, and other “supporting organizations,” or new non-profit entities that were completely independent but still affiliated with the federations.

Gifts to those groups constitute a growing proportion of contributions to the federations, and now amount to more than half of all funds raised. The change in percentage has not been due to lower campaign totals — the annual campaign has held steady around the $800-million mark over the past decade — but to soaring interest in the new funds, which have jumped from raising $300-million a year in the late 1980s to more than $1-billion in 1997.

Some point to the funds as a sign of a breakdown in trust — that donors don’t feel comfortable simply turning over their dollars to the regular annual campaign. Don Kent, vice-president for development and marketing of United Jewish Communities, suggests that the tremendous growth in the donor-advised funds and endowments is healthy, both because they have expanded the number of people involved in decisions about where the money goes and because the total amount raised has grown significantly.

Mr. Bronfman was chosen to lead the new organization in part because he is seen as an outsider in Jewish philanthropy.

Although Mr. Bronfman once served as president of the Montreal Jewish Federation, “he wasn’t seen as entrenched leadership,” says Evan Mendelson, executive director of the Jewish Funders Network, a national association of Jewish grant makers. What’s more, Mr. Bronfman has the respect of those who abandoned the federation system in favor of their own foundations because he himself is an independent grant maker. His foundations have a strong reputation for supporting efforts to strengthen American and Canadian Jewish organizations, as well as to build relationships with Israel and its people.

To demonstrate how much he didn’t want to be perceived as a supporter of the old ways, Mr. Bronfman said soon after he was appointed chairman of the United Jewish Communities in February that he wanted the day-to-day operations of the organization to be supervised by a chief executive who was not an insider — meaning not a leader from a Jewish federation or the United Jewish Appeal.

But the search committee, of which Mr. Bronfman was an ex-officio member, gave up on that idea and settled upon a person whom some observers might consider to be the ultimate insider: Stephen D. Solender, head of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York since 1986.

At first, says Mr. Bronfman, “I was one of the ones screaming, ‘Outsider, outsider.’” But he says he changed his mind after getting to know Mr. Solender.

Mr. Bronfman says he gradually came to realize that what the new organization needed most was “a steady hand at the helm, someone with the patience of Job who can get everyone around the table and bring things to resolution.”

Mr. Solender, he says, is up to that task.

“A lot of people know how to get out of trouble,” Mr. Bronfman says. “Steve knows how to not get in trouble in the first place.”

Others, however, say that Mr. Bronfman faced intense pressure from federation leaders to select someone from within their own ranks. They say the decision reflects how difficult it is even for an influential and independent-minded leader like Mr. Bronfman to take charge of a large bureaucratic system trapped in its own internal politics and resistant to change.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bronfman did not completely lose the battle to bring in an outsider — and he also met his objective of appointing a woman to a high-level job.

He and the other search-committee members came up with a three-person leadership team that brought in two individuals from outside the system. They appointed David Altshuler — another finalist for the president’s post — to serve as the director of a new fund-raising and grant-making arm that will focus on attracting “mega-donors” and young philanthropists.

Mr. Altshuler is the founding director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in New York.

Rounding out the team is Louise Stoll, a former corporate communications officer and Treasury Department official, appointed to serve as the group’s new chief operating officer.

Some insiders worry, however, that the arrangement has the potential for conflict, with three individuals who once vied for the top slot trying to lead the organization together, each with different — and possibly competing — agendas.

In particular, they say it’s not clear exactly what mission the grant-making arm will have, and whether it will steal some thunder from efforts to unite Jewish fund raising in the wake of the merger.

Mr. Bronfman says he understands the confusion over the role of the new organization. But he says his primary concern was to make sure United Jewish Communities didn’t lose an opportunity to hire Mr. Altshuler and Ms. Stoll to play key roles in the new organization. Observers say that the three agreed to the leadership stucture and have a collegial relationship that will help them overcome any problems.

Aside from the paid leadership, the organization’s governance system also has the potential to cause power struggles and other complications, observers say. The organization is run by a 550-member delegate assembly that approves the annual budget and selects 120 trustees to oversee the organization. An executive committee that comprises 25 of those trustees is involved in day-to-day decision making.

Now that the new leadership has been appointed, Mr. Bronfman’s next challenge will be to work with Mr. Solender and the other professional and volunteer leaders to help chart a course for United Jewish Communities.

Mr. Solender says Mr. Bronfman’s commitment to his job as United Jewish Communities top volunteer leader was part of what inspired him to accept the position of chief executive — a job he says he originally didn’t want.

“This is a man who has already achieved so much, and he could have rested on his laurels,” says Mr. Solender. “It is is a tribute to the future of the Jewish community that he stepped up to the plate at this point. Other philanthropists might have stepped forward, but others are not ready to make the personal investment that he is. He has the imagination to really see what can be accomplished over the next couple of years.”