Federation does ‘housecleaning’

Supports cutting exec. committee, shrinking board, focusing on young leaders

By Jonathan Rubin

jrubin@jfri.org

PROVIDENCE — At a meeting on Nov. 27, the board of the state’s largest Jewish fundraiser supported the concept of a sweeping reformation of the Jewish Federation.

Some of the changes that would be enacted by next spring include reducing the board of directors from an “unwieldy” 180 to about 40, eliminating the executive committee, which was referred to as “redundant,” and putting the endowment and campaign teams into a single department.

 “Non-profits, in general, have been the last to take an introspective look at where they are and where they should be,” said Bob Starr, who chaired the Governance Task Force. He added that Federation’s decision-making process is “based upon a model that is 60 years old.”

The members of the Federation board were enthusiastic about the general idea of streamlining and consolidating, although opinions on how to accomplish this varied widely.

The proposed plan strives to honor devoted, long-standing leaders, simultaneously seeking to institute a new, more agile decision-making approach.  Concerns were noted that “the board rubber-stamps decisions made by the executive committee,” and in response, the plan recommends the committee’s elimination in favor of a smaller, more powerful board.

Starr, a former campaign chair, said two components of the new plan can serve as models for change throughout the Jewish community: The first is a standing and active leadership development committee, something that has been “dormant” for a very long time.

“The Women’s Alliance has done an adequate job [with leadership development] over the past decade, while the Federation overall, as far as I’m concerned, hasn’t done anything,” said Starr. “We need new blood, because we’re doing the same old thing and it’s really getting tired.”

The second component was to hold regular evaluation and “continual reassessment,” for both the board and their chief staffer, the executive vice president.

“This process will not allow us to stay stagnant,” Starr said.

Community Body

Under the new plan, the board would be informed by a community body of up to 190 members, which would evenly represent every synagogue and agency and include many community leaders. This Community Leadership Council (CLC) would meet at intervals to “discuss major issues that impact the entire community and help formulate the JFRI agenda.”

Gloria Feibish, former president of the Bureau of Jewish Education, joined a few others in expressing concerns about this creation, stating that it may be “unusually large and difficult to manage.”

Issues over how the Jewish Voice & Herald would fit into the new structure were left unresolved until a later meeting.

The plan’s creators said the work was only a “framework” and that the many groups involved would craft their new individual plans for themselves. The board approved the general direction of the process and will review it again next March. The final version, including rewritten bylaws, is planned for the annual meeting in mid-2007.