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Rebranding Leonid Nevzlin

By Ami Eden · November 20, 2009

From Gal Beckerman at the Forward:

In his lively introduction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the recent General Assembly in Washington, Leonid Nevzlin reminded the audience just how unexpected and unusual a role this was for him.“There was a time not so long ago when I couldn’t even imagine standing here in this place, in this country, only blocks from the decision-making capital of the world, with this responsibility,” Nevzlin said, describing his life as a businessman and apathetic Jew in Moscow before he made aliyah in 2003 and became a heavyweight among Jewish philanthropists.

His prominent speech -- which earned him a standing ovation by the collected leadership of the American Jewish federation world -- was the privilege given to him as international chairman of the yearly gathering and its major sponsor. And though the exact figure has not been disclosed, organizers of the G.A. have told the Forward that his money played a significant part in making the three-day event happen. Nevzlin’s charity, NADAV, was also conspicuous as one of the main organizers of the conference’s many forums and workshops.

The speech represented a crowning moment of what has been a complete rebranding effort by Nevzlin, 50, erasing his past as a Russian oligarch who just narrowly escaped jail, convicted in absentia last year in a Moscow courtroom to life in prison for ordering the murder of five people. ...

Israel, which has refused repeated attempts to extradite him to Russia, has helped greatly in this transformation. He has become an important philanthropist there, using his charity to fund projects that promote “Jewish peoplehood” and to gain influence and respectability in the process. This past September, he made a donation of $6 million to establish the Museum of the Jewish People, a new iteration of Beit Hatfutsot, Tel Aviv’s Diaspora Museum.

Now, with a very visible onstage handshake with the Israeli prime minister and a visit with President Obama at the White House as one of 50 invited guests during the G.A., Nevzlin is effectively positioning himself to become a philanthropic force in the United States, as well.

According to Dede Feinberg, co-chair of this year’s G.A. and former president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, Nevzlin’s problems with the Russian authorities were not an issue in granting him the chairmanship. “I did not know about it. And it was only after the G.A. that I asked,” Feinberg said. “And I learned that he was completely exonerated by courts in Israel. I said, okay, good enough for me.” Feinberg was referring to Israeli courts’ refusal to extradite Nevzlin.

Read the full article.

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JPost: Israeli govern to give Jewish Agency cash for budget, and JAFI to hold meetings in St. Pete

By Jacob Berkman · November 18, 2009

The Jerusalem Post has two interesting reports this morning about the Jewish Agency for Israel.

First, it seems that the government of Israel is now considering making its first contribution to the agency’s core budget -- traditionally the responsibility of the Jewish federation system -- to help close a budget gap in part opened up by the federations’ own funding issues.

From the JPost:

Now, The Jerusalem Post has learned, the government is developing a practical plan for covering any budget shortage caused by a years-long decline in donations and the global financial slowdown.

According to a government source, the Finance Ministry is preparing to contribute up to $12 million toward the shortfall. While Finance Ministry officials oppose the plan, the order to make the funds available came from the Prime Minister's Office, the source said.

According to the JPost, the agency is considering holding one of its three board of governors meetings this year outside of Israel -- in St. Petersburg, Russia:

According to an agency source, there are two goals to the move. The first is to bring the board members into the field, where they can observe first-hand the agency's projects.

"The idea is to show them the activities where they are happening, rather than settling for slide presentations and 'academic' discussions carried in Jerusalem hotel rooms," said the source, a high-ranking official in the organization.

The second goal is to introduce the agency to the Jewish communities, "to show them the relevance of the organization" - and, most important of all, to bring local Jewish activists into the fold as donors to the agency.

"Clearly there is the feeling that unimpeded interaction and direct contact between the local community leaders and the Jewish Agency leaders can expand the circle of donors," the official said.

These are certainly interesting developments, though perhaps not earth shattering just yet.

For one, it does not appear that the government money is a done deal. Yet.

The Jewish Agency’s chairman, Natan Sharansky, apparently first dropped hints about this on one of his fund-raising visits in the United States last week, but my guess is that it will take a little while to come together.

But if it does, one could wonder if it would open up the possibility for shifting even more of the Jewish Agency’s budget to the Israeli government -- particularly those of its operations that are more “quasi-governmental.”

The St. Petersburg move is also interesting. First, let it be understood that holding a Jewish Agency board meeting outside of Israel is not unprecedented. According to the agency’s bylaws, it actually has to hold at least one meeting per year in the Diaspora -- a bylaw that it has chosen to ignore for some years now.

The choice of St. Petersburg is telling.

Beyond taking board members to an area of the world where the agency does a lot of work, Sharansky has not made any secret about his desire to woo Russian mega-donors. Taking the meeting to St. Petersburg certainly brings the buffet to the philanthropic diner.

According to one Jewish Agency board member, American board members would fly to Israel and then the agency would charter a plane to Russia.

But isn’t St. Petersburg one of the most expensive cities in the world?

Which brings us to my favorite part of the St. Pete story:

The plan is still in development. The agency's budget crunch means that the added travel expenses would have to be covered by the inviting community.

"The agency won't spend any money beyond the usual budget of the Board of Governors meetings [in Israel]," the official promised.

For more on this, sign up for the Fundermentalist newsletter. 

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Sharansky unplugged: Jewish Agency chairman sits down with The Fundermentalist

By Jacob Berkman · November 17, 2009

While the system as a whole may be looking to Jerry Silverman for answers, some folks at the Jewish Agency for Israel have been treating their new chairman, Natan Sharansky, as something closer to a messiah than a CEO.

I caught up with Sharansky for a sit down in his suite about an hour after the GA officially ended -- in something of a down moment as he continues on his multi-city tour of North America trying to drum up support for the Jewish Agency.

I admit. It was easy to be cynical this past summer when Prime Minister Netanyahu basically pushed through Sharansky's nomination -- at the exact moment the agency was trying to assure donors in the United States that it would no longer be subject to the Israeli political spoils system. And it was even easier to be skeptical as Jewish Agency insiders played up the idea that Sharansky could almost single-handedly improve the organization's image with funders.

It can be a powerful experience sitting face to face with Sharansky, however, as it sinks in that this is a man who helped free a people, and for whatever reason he has decided to stake his name and reputation to the Jewish Agency.

Talking to federation folks at the GA, there seemed to be a general sentiment going around that Sharansky is the right person for the job. "Only 10 years too late," one person told me.

He certainly is familiar with the Jewish Agency's historical bureaucratic baggage.

"When I came to Israel, I became the first chairman of the Soviet Jewry Zionist forum to mobilize forces for bringing and integrating Soviet Jews. And it was antiestablishment at the time. The chairman of Jewish Agency, Simcha Dinitz, told me, 'You don't know how to work in a free society. If you want to criticize us, you will not go to jail but you will not get a dollar for absorption. If you want to help immigrants, cooperate with us, work through us and we will give you a budget,'" Sharansky told me. "We went our own way."

Sharansky is also a guy who as a Cabinet minister 12 years ago was sent to Moscow to make peace between the Jewish Agency and its sibling rival, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Sharansky says he wanted to run the Jewish Agency now because it is the one organization he believes has the potential to bring Israel and the Diaspora together.

"Here is the one organization in the world, where every day there is dialogue between the Jewish communities and the State of Israel, and not only dialogue but projects and finances and so on. For strategic thinking, planning, promoting, cooperation between the Jewish communities and the state of Israel, it is 'the' organization," he said. "That is why I wanted it."

Was it really Sharansky's idealism that led him to this job? It's possible. After all, as a Friend of Bibi, he certainly could have landed plenty of other jobs.

In his interview with JTA, Sharansky talked candidly about the agency's problems and his willingness to use his own name and reputation to help turn things around.

Already he seems to be making some headway.

Perhaps no two American philanthropists have fought harder against the Jewish Agency in recent years than Charles Bronfman and Bobby Goldberg. Publicly and privately, they have waged a mini war trying to get the organization to reform and become more transparent.

Yet here's what Sharansky had to say: "If there is some personal distrust, it has to be overcome," Sharansky told me. "The first day I am the Jewish Agency chair, I started talking with all of these people. These people also started coming to the Jewish Agency. A few days after I was elected, Charles Bronfman came to the Jewish Agency to congratulate me. Many people came over to see because they couldn't believe their eyes that Charles Bronfman was in the building of the Jewish Agency," he said. "Bobby Goldberg also came."

Here is the whole interview, in which we talk about why he wanted this job, the new priorities of the Jewish Agency, how he feels about capitalizing on the Sharansky name brand to fund raise for the Agency, and whether or not he can tap Sergey Brin for funding:

Read More >>>

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JDC: No deal on allocations split

By Jacob Berkman · November 13, 2009

Judging from the positive feelings at the GA, local federations are happy with Jerry Silverman, the new CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America. But it looks like the peace and euphoria lasted all of 48 hours, as the long-running tensions between the federation system's two overseas organizations have resurfaced.

For the past 18 months, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Israel have been trying to hammer out an agreement on how to split the $160 million - $200 million per year that the federations allocate to both organizations’ core budgets. After doing away with a complicated allocations process known as ONAD, the two sides had basically agreed to go back to a split that gave 75 percent of the money to the Jewish Agency and 25 percent to JDC.

But the deal wasn't closed, and negotiations have dragged on for more than a year and a half. Two prior times during the talks -- which have been brokered by Kathy Manning, who took over as the chairwoman of the Jewish Federations of North America this week -- the two sides seemed closed to an agreement. Each time, however, JDC backed out at the last minute for different reasons. 

This time, JDC seems to be saying point blank that it needs more money and that its mission of feeding the poor and elderly in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe needs to take precedence right now over that of the Jewish Agency.

According to sources, the two sides had reached an agreement to extend the 75-25 split several weeks ago, but Thursday, JDC’s chairman, Irv Smokler, sent out an e-mail to his board saying that there is no deal: “The current split of 75 percent for JAFI and 25 percent for JDC came into being in 1952 when Israel was ready to accept large numbers of immigrants and JDC had declining welfare roles in Europe as a result of the closing of the DP camps. The world has changed significantly and the funding formula must reflect this new reality,” he wrote.

We'll keep you posted.

Here is the rest of Smokler’s letterRead More >>>

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Ari “Hero” Teman: The news, the video

By Ami Eden · November 13, 2009

The JTA news report:

NEW YORK (JTA) -- After weeks of deliberation and the tally of more than 600,000 online votes, the Jewish Federations of North America has named its first Jewish Community Hero -- Ari Teman, the founder of JCorps.

A panel of judges from outside the federation system chose Teman, 27, for the $25,000 Jewish Community Heroes prize after whittling down a list of more than 400 nominees.

The Jewish Federations announced the choice Tuesday at the closing plenary session of its General Assembly conference in Washingon. The contest was part of the federation system's new multimillion-dollar marketing and rebranding strategy to broaden its base of support.

Teman's organization sets up young Jews with volunteer opportunities in nine cities over three continents -- all while working on virtually no budget.

Teman, a standup comedian by day, runs JCorps as a volunteer on a budget that is probably less than the award he will take home. Yet the organization has enlisted some 10,000 volunteers for local community service projects in the United States, Canada and Israel.

"This will enable us to take in a lot more volunteers rapidly without having to worry, 'Do we have to slow it down because we can't afford to bring more people in?' ” Teman told JTA.

Teman said he started the organization in 2007 on something of a late-night whim about how he could meet more Jewish people.

The money will help the program expand and perhaps allow Teman to hire his first professional staff member.

"The first year we started with $300,” he said. “We like to say that if we had no money we could still keep running, which is great, because it means the money we put in is for growth."

The exclusive video interview:

The press conference:

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Food for thought from Bill Gates

By Jacob Berkman · November 12, 2009

Manhattan's 92nd Street Y really has a phenomenal philanthropy thing going with its Business of Giving lecture series, led by the Economist's Matthew Bishop.

Bishop, who recently wrote "Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World," has interviewed some of the country's top givers, both Jewish and non Jewish, including Bill Clinton and Eli Broad.

On Wednesday, the Y featured the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, who over the past year has essentially pulled himself away from the business side of Microsoft to work full time at the $30 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

No, Gates is not involved in Jewish philanthropy. But listening to how he conducts his own giving is certainly valuable.

When he and his wife decided that they were going to start what has become the world's largest private foundation, they looked for the area of greatest need for which a solution would have the greatest effect.

The Gateses settled on disease in Africa -- primarily, malaria -- and to a smaller degree education here in the United States.

Bishop asked Gates several interesting questions, and almost all of Gates' answers provided interesting food for thought for the Judeo-centeric philanthropist.

He pressed Gates on whether success was harder in the philanthropic world, given that there is no Larry Ellison or Steven Jobs to competitively push him forward in the race to cure malaria (especially given that the world's second-wealthiest man, Warren Buffet, has already decided to give all of his philanthropic dollars to the Gates Foundation and eschewed starting his own).

In response, Gates said that in this case the enemy is not another person; it's malaria. And the goal is clear: to wipe it out.

What does this have to do with Jewish philanthropy? It used to be that the Jewish community's main philanthropic goal was caring for the poor and the founding, settling and protection of the nascent State of Israel. These days, however, plenty of Jewish philanthropic dollars go to identity-building projects -- Birthright, day schools, camps, Jewish service, learning.

So what is the enemy in the battle for Jewish identity? If it's apathy, can Jewish organizations and programming really make a dent? How will we know when victory is achieved?

Bishop also asked Gates about the role he could play in pushing governments to act.

In the long run, Gates said, his goal is to have the countries in which he is trying to eradicate infectious and curable diseases become self sustaining. So he, the philanthropist, pays for development of vaccines, cures and education methods, then ultimately the government should step in.

Does this model of philanthropy-government partnership have something to offer the Jewish community? Yes, there are plenty of Jewish organizations that receive government funding for feeding the poor, helping the homeless and the jobless here and abroad. But by and large the challenges in terms of Jewish identity-building are not ones in which federal, state and local governments have played a role.

Gates stressed the importance of optimism, saying it is the optimistic -- as well as persistent and wealthy -- individual philanthropist who can play the role of the catalyst. Such a person, he said, would likely emerge from a wider wave of optimism.

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Check out the Forward’s special section on giving…

By Jacob Berkman · November 12, 2009

The Forward published its annual section on giving this week, and while the philanthropy world might not be quite are wealthy as it used to be, this section is certainly rich. (Wacka Wacka.)

Anyway, the section features:

• Thoughts on how to do more with less by the Sam Bronfman Foundation’s Dana Raucher.
• Thoughts on the future of federations by Jerry Silverman.
• And an appeal to nonprofits to appeal to the grassroots by Jo Ellen Green Kaiser.

The piece closest to my heart, however, is a review of “The Art of Giving” by Charles Bronfman and Jeff Solomon, written by some shady cartoon character named The Fundermentalist.

As I have intimated here and in the newsletter, I found Bronfman and Solomon's book quite helpful and a pretty good read.

But it was also very subtly provocative:

In the end, the art of philanthropy comes down to business science, the authors say. A philanthropist must choose a population to help and a field within that population, and then figure out a modality to serve that population.

And clearly, the federation system is not among Bronfman and Solomon’s favorite purveyors of good.

Both men are steeped in the federation system: Solomon spent years as chief operating officer of UJA-Federation of New York before taking over Bronfman’s foundation, and Bronfman, who got his philanthropic start with the Jewish federation in Montreal, served as the first chairman of United Jewish Communities when it was formed as a merger of three umbrella groups for federation campaigns.

Yet, mention of the federation system is nearly absent from the book — and in my conversations with Solomon since getting my hands on “The Art of Giving,” it is clear that this was not a mistake.

Clearly the authors feel that the federation system is part of the old charitable system and that its role and income are suffering because they cannot yet fulfill the needs of the new philanthropist. While the old federation system in large part wallows in its old boys’ club, it has not yet found a way to work with the modern age’s social entrepreneurs — something Solomon says he and Bronfman will talk about at length as they tour the country with the book.

Even when Bronfman describes his greatest philanthropic success, the founding of Taglit-Birthright Israel — the organization that has sent nearly 150,000 Jews between the ages of 18 and 26 on free 10-day trips to Israel — he does not mention by name the federation system or the Jewish Agency for Israel, two of the primary partners in the endeavor.

While Birthright is the case study that Bronfman and Solomon use throughout the book as an example of what to do in philanthropy, the closest they come to using the federation as such is the suggestion that perhaps a philanthropist should go to a local United Way or federation office to see what programs it supports as an example of what the philanthropist might want to fund on their own.

But check out the rest of the piece and the rest of the Forward's section.

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JTA’s GA panel gets spicy

By Ami Eden · November 12, 2009

And you thought Bibi's or Rahm Emanuel's appearances were the main events at the GA.

You should have attended Tuesday morning's JTA-organized panel session at the GA titled "Pro-Israel Lobby and the Media."

Our own Ron Kampeas moderated, with Joe Klein of Time, Jamie Kirchik of The New Republic, Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now, and Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi of The Israel Project serving as panelists.

Things were tense between Klein and Kirchik throughout most of the discussion -- and then exploded afterwards.

One of the blogs at The Washingtion Post has the story:

Now that's  a panel discussion! A debate between Time's Joe Klein and New Republic's Jamie Kirchick spilled off the dais Tuesday into a hallway confrontation where Klein called the younger pundit a "dishonest [expletive]" and "[expletiving] propagandist."

Klein told us Wednesday that he's not sure he uttered the "propagandist" bit -- reported by a few witnesses -- but stands by the "dishonest" part.

"Absolutely. He's a [expletive]," said Klein, 62. "He's 25 years old, and he's one of those people who has opinions but no facts or experience."

Things started tense at the early a.m. "Pro-Israel Lobby and the Media" workshop at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly. The two had clashed before: In an April blog post, Klein called Kirchick's critique of President Obama's diplomacy "overwhelmingly limited"; in a May op-ed, Kirchick called Klein a "juvenile bully" for his criticism of neocons.

Read the full story.

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More from the GA: Council on Foundation’s Gunderson is bullish on philanthropy

By Jacob Berkman · November 11, 2009

One of the hidden gems of this year’s GA proved to be a nighttime cocktail hour with the Council on Foundation’s president Steve Gunderson, in which Gunderson, who served for 16 years as a Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, said unequivocally that we are about to enter a golden age of philanthropy.

Gunderson iterated a notion that I keep hearing in the nonprofit sector – that there is a difference between old school charity, which is essentially a gift made out of some sense of responsibility, and philanthropy, which he defines as a strategic investment in social change.

And as more philanthropists come to realize this, the sector will be quite well positioned to become a more important player as we try to figure out global and local problems – despite that foundations lost an estimated $200 billion over the past year and a half.

The country is facing huge social needs, and the government now is looking to the private philanthropy world – and to the hundreds of billions of dollars stored in foundations – as a primary way to help out the American people. And to do so, it is looking for the private philanthropy world to not only give money but to help the government guide its own giving.

In the past six months, Gunderson said that he has been to the White House for more meetings than he had been in all his years as a Congressman.

And why? Because philanthropists can help the government with the four C’s as he called them: They can connect foundations with government agencies, they can communicate needs, they can help with capacity building and they can create convene-ings.

“The most important resource that philanthropy brings is the ability to convene, it is not really the money, it is the ability to convene,” he said.

So what’s next for philanthropy, according to Gunderson?

• First, he said, the philanthropy will come to the self-realization that it is not about donor service, it is about change. “Philanthropy is in the change business. It is in the solutions business,” he said.
• There will be a dramatic growth in global philanthropy, “because you can’t have a global economy without global philanthropy.”
• Philanthropy will become more diverse, and will serve a much more diverse population locally. Philanthropists will be pushed to serve the country’s most underserved and needy groups, he said.
• A new, swift–acting  philanthropic model will emerge, because foundations are viewed as old and slow.
• There will be greater public-philanthropic partnership. “The government will look to us for help in connecting the dots in a way that we have not seen in the past.”

In all, Gunderson said that the next 2-4 years will be incredibly significant because the Bush tax cuts will expire, the government will pass permanent inheritance laws and the market will likely bounce back. “I have a sense of optimism, hope and possibility,” he said.

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Rahm Emanuel: The GA video

By Ami Eden · November 11, 2009

Click here to watch the video of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel addressing the General Assembly of Jewish Federations of North America.

To understand what it all means, read Uri Heilman's report (with reporting from Ron Kampeas and Eric Fingerhut):

When the White House chief of staff took to the podium at the federations’ General Assembly to call for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without preconditions, he sounded almost exactly like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day earlier.

"All issues should be resolved through negotiations," Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday to delegates at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual meeting. "No one should allow the issue of settlements to distract from the overarching goal of lasting peace."

Read the full report.

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