Funds That Give to Jewish Causes Often Work in Isolation, Report Says

Foundations that specialize in giving to Jewish causes often operate in isolation from each other and therefore miss opportunities to share information and work together on common interests, says a new report financed by a group of those funds. What’s more, Jewish foundations do not have sufficient professional staff members or operations in place to review their grants and evaluate their effectiveness, the report said.

The Institute for Jewish and Community Research, located in San Francisco, said in its report that numerous Jewish foundations were independently collecting and analyzing information about the same issues, often unaware that they were exploring the same topics.

“There is a breakdown in the system — a disconnect — between the desire to improve and change the quality of Jewish life and the realization of that goal,” the report asserted. “The switching stations for ideas, purposes, and programs and the money to support them do not exist in most local communities and at the national level.”

The report comes as the number of Jewish foundations and the size of their assets are growing. The Foundation Center estimates that some 3,900 foundations now focus on Jewish causes, compared to 3,502 in 1996. While asset figures are hard to come by, the report says the 20 largest Jewish foundations made $220-million in grants in 1994, and by the end of this year, that figure is expected to total $300-million.

The report identified three areas it said needed improvement:

* Collection and dissemination of information. Many Jewish philanthropists, while “eager to contribute to Jewish causes,” say they lack the information necessary to make good decisions about what to support. Few Jewish foundations conduct formal program evaluations, so many lack a good understanding of whether their previous grants made a difference, the report said.

* Lack of grant-making networks. The report noted that no national organization exists to link Jewish foundations with local Jewish federations and other Jewish philanthropic organizations. Other national groups — such as the Council on Foundations, the Jewish Funders Network, and the Council of Jewish Federations — are “rarely viewed as useful to donors and foundation professionals,” the report said, adding that the “disarray” that has resulted from the pending merger of United Jewish Appeal, the Council of Jewish Federations, and United Israel Appeal has prevented those organizations from providing leadership and guidance on grant making.

* Insufficient staff. The report said that current foundation staff members need more training and that, over all, Jewish foundations are too thinly staffed. Only 44 of the 176 foundations surveyed currently employ professional staff members.

“Because there are so few professionals involved in the Jewish philanthropic world, many must work in isolation and have few opportunities to network with other philanthropy professionals,” the report said.

In preparing the study, researchers assembled six focus groups consisting of foundation representatives and individual philanthropists in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They also conducted in-person interviews with foundation donors, trustees, individual philanthropists, executives of local Jewish federations, and staff members of national philanthropic groups.

The institute also mailed surveys to 3,502 foundations identified by the Foundation Center as making grants to Jewish causes.

Only 5 per cent — or 176 recipients — returned the survey. As a result, the authors caution, the survey data should not be interpreted as statistically representative, but could be viewed as trend data.

The researchers also found it difficult to recruit participants for the focus groups. While in San Francisco, where the institute is based, 18 invitations yielded 10 participants, in Chicago it took 72 invitations — including multiple follow-up faxes and telephone calls — to generate six participants.

Researchers interpreted the low response rate as an indication of the “individualistic and private” nature of Jewish philanthropists.

“It is clear that new strategies will need to be developed for those who 1) abhor meetings, 2) resist mail or telephone contact, 3) have little time or inclination to read newsletters, and 4) trust only a few associates,” they wrote.

Greater interaction and communication among foundations, federations, and other Jewish philanthropic groups could help break down some of that individualism, said Gary Tobin, one of the report’s authors.

In an effort to encourage that kind of interaction, the businessman Charles Bronfman, one of North America’s most prominent Jewish philanthropists, has called for the creation of a new center that would serve as a clearinghouse for information on Jewish philanthropy and would unite the nation’s sprawling array of Jewish federations, foundations, and individual donors.

Mr. Bronfman, whose own foundation helped underwrite the report, made the announcement last month at the Jewish Funders Network’s annual meeting in Chicago. He offered no specific blueprint for how to structure the proposed group, but encouraged people involved in organized Jewish philanthropy to devise a plan.

Copies of the report, “Jewish Foundations: A Needs Assessment Study,” are available from the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, 140 Balboa Street, San Francisco 94118; (415) 386-2604; e-mail gatobin@jewishresearch.org. The institute has not yet determined the price for the report, but it is accepting orders for copies.