The 2008-09 fiscal year will be a time of transition for the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
That will be the last time that the MJF will be allocating funds to local agencies according to the process that has been in place for “at least 10 years,” according to MJF Planning Director Sheryl Primakow.
From this point on, the MJF and its constituent agencies will employ a new model that will involve fixed allocations for a period of three years, instead of every year; and review of agencies every three years, instead of every year.
“The advantages [of the change] are that our agencies know what to expect and how to plan their budgets accordingly,” Primakow said. “It’s an important vote of confidence in the agencies. It builds a stronger partnership between the federation and its constituent agencies.”
Moreover, this new procedure will enable federation volunteers and staff “to spend more time with the agencies during the year in which they are being reviewed,” said Mitch Moser, co-chair of the MJF’s Agency Relations Committee.
“The concept is that we’re trying to create the most beneficial, effective and efficient system for reviewing agencies and making allocations,” Moser said. “All the changes are made with the agencies’ best interests in mind.”
The procedure also involves providing funding for a whole agency, instead of programs within an agency, as had been done in the past.
“That makes more sense and is more advantageous for the agency,” said Primakow. “They can apply [the funds] to their budgets as needed.”
Added Marlene Lauwasser, co-chair with Moser of the Agency Relations Committee, the new procedures help “provide as much stability as possible in the annual federation allocation to agencies.”
Strategic goal
Primakow said that examining the planning and allocations process has been “a strategic goal” for the MJF for the past two years.
She said many people in the community had been feeling that the process in place “needed improvement. It required a lot of time and commitment from the agencies and from the volunteers that served on the [agency review] panels, with little or no change each year.”
Moreover, Primakow said that “the most exciting” aspect of these changes is “the opportunity it presents for the federation to be proactive. We have been reactive in the past; we addressed issues as they came to us.
“What we want this process to do is to look at present and future community needs,” she said. To that end, the MJF will establish “up to three” planning commissions.
Commission members will be “a cross-section of the community” and each commission will examine “an area that has been identified as needing community support,” said Primakow.
“We’re hoping the planning commissions will generate specific programs and projects to address unmet needs in the community and to interest donors for support,” she said.
Before creating these changes, MJF officials and lay leaders spent about a year looking at what other federations across the country are doing, said Primakow.
They also worked with Judy Horowitz, a director in the consulting department of the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of 155 Jewish federations and 400 independent Jewish communities throughout North America.
“It’s a step forward for the federation to play a role of convener for planning,” Horowitz said in a telephone interview Monday. “That’s the type of leadership that federations can and should be providing to their communities.”
The new procedures were approved by the board of directors last November and implemented for the 2008-09 allocations, which were approved by the board on June 24.
“I think it’s an excellent move and that a spectacular group of people have worked a long time to put together a well-thought-out program that will allow our community to be proactive in meeting the Jewish needs of our community into the future,” said Bruce Arbit, MJF president.
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