Miami Group Hopes Steadfast Community Support Through Lean Times Motivates Jewish Donors

When the Miami real-estate market plunged in 2008, Jacob Solomon reached into the Greater Miami Jewish Federation Foundation’s endowment to keep programs the group supports afloat.

Mr. Solomon has not let up since then, even as the economy and the group’s finances have been improving.

Tapping savings to keep grant money flowing was a “teachable moment” Mr. Solomon says. He hopes that now, in better economic times, donors will remember the federation’s steadfast commitment to Miami programs that help the poor and support Israel.

“We’ve been going to the community aggressively,” he says, “Politely, but aggressively.”

This year the group introduced a program called “100% Community,” which has as its goal “nothing less ambitious than to get every Jew in the community to make a donation of any amount,” says Mr. Solomon.

A big part of the 100% Community effort is to engage Latin American Jews who have emigrated to Miami in sizable numbers in recent years. Often, Mr. Solomon says, Jews from Venezuela or Argentina are closely connected to their local Jewish organizations but don’t have any experience with the federation. To reach them, the federation will start working with a day school, a community center, and a synagogue in North Dade County, in a neighborhood with a large concentration of Latin American Jews.

The federation and the three groups will coordinate fundraising plans beginning this fall, culminating in the group’s annual “Super Good Deeds Day” next March. The idea, Mr. Solomon says, is for each participating organization to customize a giving program. The federation will provide speakers and work with the groups to create fundraising events and classes about the history of Jewish giving.

This year, the federation once again dipped into its foundation money, using $200,000 to support local programs. But with its annual campaign bringing in $18.7-million so far this year, a 5.8-percent increase over the same period in 2013, Mr. Solomon hopes it will be the last time. The group is inching toward the $23.2-million it raised in 2008.

“We’re close to where we were before the recession,” he says.