Why Jewish Funders Are Looking Toward Jewish Community Centers to Meet Today’s Challenges
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The Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C. Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In March, the Anti-Defamation League reported that 2022 saw a record-breaking 3,697 antisemitic incidents in the United States. Even more shocking was the fact that antisemitic incidents in the United States were up 36% from 2021.
While rising antisemitism is ringing alarm bells for Jewish communal leaders and funders, it is not their only concern. They are also worried about declining support for Israel and decreasing rates of synagogue affiliation. Some, too, fear that record-high levels of intermarriage with non-Jews in non-Orthodox communities will threaten Jewish continuity.
Now, some Jewish leaders and funders are looking toward an often overlooked place — Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) — to provide solutions for the challenges facing North America’s Jewish community.
According to Marshall Levin, the new chief philanthropy officer of the JCC Association of North America (JCCA), JCCs have historically been significantly undervalued as well as underfunded. But Levin believes the Jewish community has reached an inflection point and views JCCs as the Jewish institutions best suited to reduce antisemitism and engage Jews of all demographics.
The JCC movement dates back to 1854, when the Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association opened in Baltimore, Maryland. The institution was created to help Jewish immigrants adjust to life in their new country and to provide a place for Jews to gather and celebrate. Nowadays, JCCs provide opportunities for sports and recreation, arts and cultural events, Jewish and Israel-related programming, early childhood education and camps.
“JCCA [the umbrella organization for North America’s 170-plus Jewish Community Centers and camps] is the largest platform for Jewish life in the U.S. and Canada,” Levin said. “The JCC movement in North America touches 1.5 million people a week. And of those, 1 million are self-identified Jews and half a million 500,000 are non-Jews. And all of them come to this place called the Jewish Community Center, which is a Jewish space and culturally Jewish.”
Levin, who worked for decades in both nonprofit and for-profit roles — most recently as chief executive officer of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science — feels so confident about the power of JCCs that he came out of retirement to serve in his new role.
“I believe that the best antidote to fighting any prejudice, but especially antisemitism, is human contact,” he told me. “I believe that people who come in contact with their Jewish Community Center have a positive experience with Jews.”
What’s more, Levin said, JCCs are the leading employers of Jewish communal workers in North America, the largest provider of early childhood education and Jewish summer camp experiences, and the home of the Jewish Welfare Board Chaplains Council, which represents all Jewish military personnel and their families. JCCA also encompasses the JCC Association for Israel Engagement. Every four years, JCCs send around 1,000 teens from all over the world to Israel where they participate in the JCC Maccabi Games — Olympic-style sporting events complemented by Israel tours and other cultural events. Another 2,000 teens participate in Maccabi Games in cities around North America every year.
Levin feels that Jewish experiences are what many of today’s Jews are seeking, and “JCCs are experts in Jewish experience,” he said. “I believe that we need now to raise awareness, raise the profile of the JCC movement and what it represents. We need to change the conversation.”
Low-barrier entry points
That’s a belief shared by Sandy Cardin, senior consultant of philanthropy and impact for Cresset, a boutique family office and private wealth management firm, and former president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. Cardin sits on the board of the JCCA and he’s a big believer in the importance of JCCs.
“JCCs play a critical role in nurturing and supporting and advocating for Jewish life and the Jewish communities they serve, and they also play a very significant role in terms of bridging between the Jewish community and the broader communities in which they work,” Cardin said. “They’re open to people of other faiths and therefore they’re ahead of the curve as [opposed to] some other Jewish communities.”
Cardin is heartened to see that “national, continental and international funders” are becoming more interested in the JCC movement and recognizing its positive impact on Jewish life. In the past, he said, JCCs did not always receive the respect they deserved because they were not focused on religious or educational goals. Yet that is precisely why JCCs provide what philanthropist and longtime JCCA board member Lisa Brill calls “low-barrier” entry points for today’s Jewish families.
“The JCC to me is a gateway,” said Brill, wife of Home Depot co-founder Ron Brill. “It’s for all denominations. Anybody should be at home at your JCC.” Brill said that at one time, Jewish organizations were more siloed in their efforts to engage Jewish community members. Today, she said, “JCCs have really become the heart of a collaborative community.”
Brill, who has long served on the board of her hometown JCC in Atlanta, has seen firsthand the changes that have taken place in that regard. “[In] Atlanta, in particular, it’s so much more collaborative now,” she said. “It’s not a threat for synagogues or the American Jewish Committee or somebody else to hold programs at JCCs and vice versa. I think what funders are seeing is the value of a centralized place that works as a funnel into all different parts of the community. I think we funnel into synagogues, day schools, and a lot of times, to other organizations and agencies in the community because we host and we host gladly. And people come there gladly. It’s so different today and it’s really exciting.”
Brill also applauded the way JCC professionals from communities all over North America work collaboratively, sharing programs and learning from each other.
Big things in store
With all that in mind, what might the future hold for JCC fundraising? Though Levin said it’s too early to talk about funding goals — he’s been on the job less than four months — he intends “to create a number of multi-year game-changer initiatives that will produce major measurable outcomes.” He said, “Each of these game-changers will require multimillion dollars of philanthropic support, which we will raise over the next two years.”
And while he admitted that raising large sums of money is essential if JCCs are to thrive, Levin contended that he’s not just interested in “raising money to raise money.”
“My measure of our success is not a campaign by which we’re going to say, ‘Boy, we raised this much money in this year.’ That’s not what this is,” Levin said. “We’re going to have real programs that have costs. Those costs are going to be clear and non-inflated, and we’re going to have full partnership with the funders and tell them with full reports and transparency. ”
At this point, Levin isn’t naming names in terms of major funding partners. Yet he asserted that “everyone” in the Jewish world will be involved. In the past, notable JCCA funders have included the Mandel Foundation, the Joseph & Arlene Taub Foundation, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and the Billi and Bernie Marcus Foundation.
“We [JCCA] need to be leading in the thinking and then bringing together consortium fundraising,” Levin said. He pointed to his experience at the Weitzman Institute as an example.
“When I was raising millions of dollars for cancer research, everybody understood that no one funder, even a mega-foundation, would have enough to cure cancer. Every [funder] needed to know that they weren’t alone. It’s about leveraged impact and that’s the thrust here, as well. We want to invite major foundations, new funders, individuals, families to be part of this greater impact.”
