The Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Reimagining process is currently being led by a Transition Team, which launched two workgroups in November.
Drawing from input from Jewish community members at the Community Summit held last June and the Strategic Action Session in August, the Vision workgroup is working on the creation of a new Vision Statement for the MJF, a document that will describe what the community wants to look like five to ten years in the future.
The Vision workgroup has decided on several requirements for the Vision Statement:
• It should have a built-in assessment component and should be used by various governing entities for evaluation and decision-making.
The Vision workgroup analyzed dream statements generated at the summit, the SAS, at a recent board of directors’ meeting, and by the workgroup itself.
An analysis of the statements made clear that a few themes were woven throughout, showing an encouraging continuity between the thinking and wishes of the many people involved in the process.
The following statements were created to express the three main recurring themes that the workgroup found:
• A warm, welcoming, inclusive community that engages and is ever-changing.
• Continuity and sustainability of Jewish values through tikkun olam (repair of the world) and lifelong Jewish learning.
• Resource and financial security in order to meet the community’s needs now and in the future.
These statements will be used as the main body of the new Vision Statement. The working group intends to have its final version finished and ready for review by January.
The Structure workgroup has the task of designing an organizational staffing structure for the MJF that will best serve to see the three statements above come into reality.
The Structure workgroup has begun each meeting by reviewing and discussing the latest progress of the Vision team to be sure the two groups are working in tandem.
Often when a building is re-modeled, embedded but pressing issues are revealed when the workers begin to peek within its walls. Similarly, the Structure team has uncovered many important issues that need to be dealt with while proceeding with its work. As they would in a building re-model, dealing with these issues has prolonged the process in ways unanticipated.
The questions that the Structure workgroup are grappling with include: How do we facilitate greater amount of staff time for relationship-building? How do we make outreach a higher priority?
What should our relationship be with our partnering agencies? What should we expect staff to do? What should we expect volunteers to do?
The Structure workgroup is using organizational charts from five other Jewish federations that have recently re-structured as references, and intends to have a proposal ready for review in January.
The Structure workgroup has also discussed the MJF’s current model of fund development and future revisions. As the most significant service the MJF provides to the community, this is a crucial piece of the puzzle.
Some of the work of this issue will be continued with the launch of a Fund development workgroup in January. A Communication workgroup is now being formed and will meet in January.
The final Transition workgroup will launch in the New Year and evaluate the MJF’s model for governance and leadership.
For more details about the Reimagining process, visit the newly updated web page. Click on “MJF Reimagining” on the home page at www.milwaukeejewish.org.
Jen Vettrus is the transition coordinator at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
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