Jewish Funders Network chief to step down

The president of the Jewish Funders Network will step down at the end of 2010, according to a letter sent by the organization’s chairman to members.

Mark Charendoff has led JFN, an organization for those who give $25,000 or more per year to Jewish charities, for nine years.

“Always a proponent of change, Mark wants to take some time off to consider his next career move,” Murray Galinson wrote in the letter sent before Rosh Hashanah.

The letter was acquired by JTA’s former director of digital media, Daniel Sieradski, which he published via Twitter.

According to the letter, the JFN’s vice chair, Steve Geringer, will lead a search committee to find Charendoff’s replacement.

The announcement came the day after Charendoff wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Jewish Week saying that he felt no CEO of a Jewish organization should stay in office for longer than 10 years.

“Too many agencies are becoming extensions of the CEO—their personality, their ideas, their friends in the lay leadership and like-minded professionals in senior positions,” he wrote. “Yes, there are exceptions, but if government has taught us anything, it’s that we should not legislate for the exception to the rule.

“How long is too long at the top? I’m not dogmatic, but eight to 10 years feels like it’s enough.”

Charendoff adds, “We should feel a pressure to achieve our agenda, to affect change.”