Bert Bilsky looks back on achievements, people at JCF | Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Bert Bilsky looks back on achievements, people at JCF

          When Bert L. Bilsky became the executive director of the Jewish Community Foundation 33 years ago, he did something many office workers do — put framed pictures on his desk.

          But one of them was not a picture of his family. It was a financial statement showing the status of the JCF: The number of funds — “about 35,” Bilsky said in a recent interview — and the dollar amount of assets it then had, about $1.8 million.

          As Bilsky prepares to retire completely, effective June 20, from his work at the JCF — he stopped being executive director two years ago and has been senior legacy advisor since then — the JCF now has more than 700 funds and assets of about $115 million.

          “I feel so fortunate to have a measure, a benchmark of where things were when I started and where they are now,” he said in a May 20 interview in his office. “It’s a great way to look back on a career.”

          And the JCF, the endowment development program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, consistently ranks among “the very top one, two or three per capita” of similar foundations in the country, Bilsky said.

          But the numerical achievement of the JCF is far from the whole story. Behind these numbers are “a lot of wonderful people” who “did a lot of wonderful things,” Bilsky said.

          “I have been so blessed to have had relationships that went far beyond just the charitable dynamics and the technical issues we were solving,” Bilsky said. “I got to be friends with these people. I got to see how in almost every case [the donors felt] they got more out of their gift than what they were giving.”

          “What we’ve been able to do for so many people,” he continued, “was to give them a sense that their time on earth has meaning beyond the accumulation of wealth and the support of their families and loved ones. This is a sort of immortality.”

          And the proceeds from the funds have built and strengthened the community in numerous ways — from guaranteeing annual contributions to the MJF’s annual campaigns to providing scholarships to supporting specific institutions to contributing to the general community.

          “Over my career, I was involved with so many amazing acts of charity,” involving not only “large sums of money” but instances of “sacrificial giving,” including “the giving of entire estates,” he said. “It was so rewarding to be able to collaborate with [the donors] and their advisors.”

 
From Chicago

          Bilsky, 65, had a record of Jewish community work even before he became JCF director.

          A Chicago native, he grew up in the West Rogers Park area; and as a teen became the regional president of the Chicago area AZA, which at that time was the boys’ section of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. (Since 2002, BBYO is no longer affiliated with B’nai B’rith, but is an independent organization.)

          That connection stood him in good stead later. After majoring in philosophy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., he had wanted to go to law school, but couldn’t then afford it.

          So he went to the Washington B’nai B’rith office looking for a job. He learned there was an opening for a BBYO program director in Milwaukee, which appealed to him as being close to Chicago.

          He arrived in 1970 and worked for BBYO here for about seven years, rising to regional director. He also earned a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and met and married Milwaukeean Marlene Orenstein.

          But BBYO work proved difficult for a family man, as it involved many nights and weekends. So Bilsky returned to his earlier plan of going to law school — “It seemed like the right thing for a nice Jewish boy to do” — graduating from Marquette University in 1979.

          But it turned out he hated law school and law practice. Fortunately, he was working for Alan Marcuvitz, who was “very active in the Jewish community.”

          And Marcuvitz knew that the Milwaukee Jewish Federation was “looking to professionalize” its Jewish Community Foundation, which had been founded in 1973.

          Bilsky was hired in 1980 and loved it ever since. Not that he hasn’t had possible opportunities for other jobs. When MJF executive director Robert Aronson went to Detroit, Bilsky was considered to replace him; but after giving it “a lot of thought,” he said no.

          “I decided I wasn’t really cut out for that kind of exposure and responsibility, to be out and about in the community,” he said. “I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of person, and I always have been.”

          And when Aronson offered him a job in Detroit, Bilsky turned that down as well because of desire to stay close to his wife’s family and make sure their two sons “had their grandparents in their lives.”

          Both sons are now married and living in Chicago, and Bilsky said he is “very proud” that both sons met their wives at the Steve and Shari Sadek Family Camp Interlaken of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.

          Bilsky said he doesn’t have many spare time interests. He does love classical music, a taste he acquired from his parents and music appreciation classes in college, and is a subscriber to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

          Bilsky may be retiring from the JCF, but he is not going to stop working. He is one of three trustees of the Anon Charitable Trust, which supports a wide range of organizations, and will be working on that from an office at home, he said.

          He spends four months a year in Palm Desert, Calif., to get away from Wisconsin winters. But he said he definitely will not be leaving Milwaukee completely.