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JCC Mission

Forster\'s Rules for Meeting a Fundraising Challenge are important to review now, as the institution that once symbolized a thriving American Jewish community struggles for breath.
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December 20, 2001

Halfway through my conversation this week about the Jewish Community Centers (JCC) crisis with super-fundraiser Emanuel Forster, we learned that both of us are members of the Santa Monica Family YMCA.

For two Jewish activists to seek recreation at a YMCA goes a long way toward illustrating the challenge facing the JCC board, which is considering closing five of seven JCCs. Last weekend, in conversations around town, I heard it argued repeatedly that there just aren’t good reasons for Jews to play basketball (or swim) alone.

It’s the mission, not the money, that’s the issue in the JCC crisis. Mission is something money can’t buy. Just because I don’t belong to, say, Bay Cities JCC, doesn’t mean it can’t thrive — if someone can explain in compelling terms why it should.

That’s why I called Forster in the first place. Over many decades, he’s helped organizations, including the University of Judaism (UJ), many synagogues and social service agencies build self-confidence against presumed pessimism. In organizational life, the desire to grow seems to outwit the means even to survive.

Forster’s Rules for Meeting a Fundraising Challenge are important to review now, as the institution that once symbolized a thriving American Jewish community struggles for breath.

Rule No. 1: Redefine the Mission

Do the centers still serve needs that are not being met elsewhere? Everyone awaits the answer — both users and the wider community alike. Many of us are still bewildered: Why is membership down in communities with Jewish populations? Are there unmet needs that await articulation?

The biggest givers to the City of Hope are not necessarily the ones who get medical treatment at what has become a nationally esteemed cancer research center, but people who simply have a profound sense that the world needs a cure for cancer.

The JCCs, too, can potentially tap into the good will of both users and those who appreciate what centers do — once the mission is set.

Rule No. 2: Find the Leader

Once we know why we should support the JCCs, a leader can emerge, one who can create a core group of volunteers and donors, including those who may not themselves use the centers, who can get behind the newly articulated goals.

Community leader Bruce Corwin’s personal commitment to Temple Emanuel saved the Beverly Hills synagogue from a merger with the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

The Federation could create a separate campaign specifically to fund the JCCs. But there must be a leader, one who knows the assets of the organization’s past, and who imaginatively sees its future. Will that leader step forward?

Rule No. 3. Build a Community, Not a
Building

In creating a mission statement by which to sell a project to donors, never argue from self-interest.

When the UJ wanted to build dorms, Rabbi Max Vorspan was asked to consider why anyone should want to contribute to the construction of student rooms. His answer: “We want to create a community of scholars.” And that’s what worked.

The 100-year-old Santa Monica Family YMCA, where I work out, is completing its $9 million, 45,000-square-foot remodel and expansion in January.

“They never said, ‘We need a new facility because the old one is run-down,'” Forster said. “They said that a good Y improves the quality of life in the community.”

What is it that we, the larger Jewish community, can say about the centers? Have synagogues taken over their work? If not, why? Do the centers speak for and to secular Jews? If so, how?

Years ago, the Westside JCC won a reprieve when Shalhevet day school backed out of a proposed sale due to community protest, but it was only short-lived. The problems of JCCs can be faced, most effectively, by redefining the mission, finding the leader, and asserting why JCCs are too important to all of us to let die.

It’s not too late to get the mission straight. But how?

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