Introducing the Reengineering Revolution to the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater

Introducing the Reengineering Revolution to the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Inc.:

A Plan for Action

Prepared for Jerry Mechling, Director of the Kennedy School's Program on Strategic Computing and Telecommunications in the Public Sector, Harvard University, by Alan Leifer. January 18, 2000.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Organizational Context 4

Values: What Do We Care About? 5

An Organizational Analysis 9

The Change Audit 12

The Scope of Change 14

A Down and Out Beginning 15

Planning for Technology Changes 17

The Newest Stakeholder: The CJP Computer Group 18

The Options: Community Campaign or Reengineering 19

A Plan for Action 20

Appendix 24

List of Sources 26

Introduction

Over the past decade, vast changes have taken place in the economics of using information technology to support work processes. The rise of the World Wide Web and ubiquitous office worker access to personal computers has created the opportunity to use low cost networks and databases to develop entirely new work processes and organizational structures. In the past 10 years these trends have led to an organizational change movement called reengineering. While thousands of reengineering efforts have been reported in the for-profit sector and the commercial nonprofit sector (especially hospitals, see Ho), there are few reports of successful reengineering in the philanthropic nonprofit sector.

As Michael Hammer (1995) points out, “Noncommercial entities that opt to reengineer face some special challenges. They include identifying the mission and customers, finding ways to measure performance, and coping with resisters who, from idealism or cynicism, ground their opposition in the “higher” purpose of the mission-driven organization.” Nonetheless, the potential quantum improvements in outcomes by radical redesign of work processes enabled by low cost technology demand that those of us who care about the philanthropic sector’s role in creating social goods investigate the use of reengineering in some of its organizations.

This paper investigates the possible role of reengineering at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Inc (CJP). I investigate CJP’s mission, the value it creates, and the organization of its central work effort, the annual campaign. I review the literature on critical success factors for reengineering and evaluate the organization’s capacity for, as well as commitment to, change. I explore action steps to get CJP ready for a reengineering design stage and propose an evolutionary reengineering implementation plan. I propose an audit of CJP’s information technology infrastructure to determine its reach and range. Finally, I investigate some of the developments at CJP’s newest community of stakeholders, the CJP Computer Group, and test them against the assumptions underlying the proposed $300 million 5-year Community Campaign and develop some recommendations for further study.

Organizational Context

The Jewish federation movement, started by CJP 104 years ago, is the North American Jewish community’s central organization for fundraising, community planning, and allocating funds to Jewish and secular causes worldwide. When it first began in the 1890’s, it was the community’s response to the great 40-year wave of Jewish refugees that was coming from Eastern Europe, the primary home of Jewish life in the Diaspora for a thousand years. Most Jewish families have a parent or grandparent that fled Europe in that wave. Almost all Jewish families have a relative that had to struggle out of poverty in the midst of anti-Semitism to build a new life in a new land. CJP’s role in this history is described in the 1998 report of the Strategic Planning Committee:

For a century … CJP served the community by providing a common vision, a sense of unity, the strength to confront real emergencies and, most importantly, by mobilizing the talents and resources of the community to facilitate the development of new services to meet the changing needs and aspirations of the Jewish people.

For the first half of that century, CJP focused on the all-consuming task of meeting the basic needs of our people and helping first and second generation immigrants successfully integrate into American society. During the second half, while committing to meet basic local needs, CJP directed its energies to the critical mission of rescuing Jews throughout the world and the miraculous adventure of establishing the State of Israel.

Historically, CJP limited its role to nonreligious activities. Poverty relief, elder care, job training, family counseling, and refugee resettlement were the largest parts of the mission. The institutions of Jewish life – the Temple, the Jewish Community Center, and the Hebrew school – were funded and governed at the neighborhood level by their members.

CJP is the Boston affiliate of the United Jewish Communities of North America (UJC). UJC is an umbrella organization of the 189 local Jewish federations on the continent. CJP is part of the “Big Six”, the six governing members of the movement. UJC is the 5th largest philanthropy in North America, receiving $800 million in donations annually. The organization has been phenomenally successful at its historic mission. As a fundraising organization, UJC raises 5 times as much per capita as other federated philanthropies (those that raise funds that are later disbursed to a wide range of organizations) such as United Way. As a social justice advocate of the Jewish people, it has been successful in its fights for refugee relief, religious freedom and the strengthening of the State of Israel.

Values: What Do We Care About?

Mark Moore (1998) highlights that nonprofit organizations define the value they produce in terms of achieving the mission of the organization rather than in their financial performance. While the defining source of revenue is charitable contributions, the measure of performance is degree of mission attainment. He recognizes that the money nonprofits raise is linked to the mission they espouse, but it cannot be the measure of mission attainment.

Two seminal events confronted the federation system in the early 1990’s. The fall of communism in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) emancipated the 3 million Jews and their descendants who, having survived the Nazi onslaught during World War II, were locked behind the Iron Curtain for more than 40 years. Despite the absence of all Jewish communal and religious life for two generations, nearly 1 million FSU Jews decided that they were going to rebuild new lives in Israel and the West and rejoin the world Jewish community. The rescue and revitalization of this community became the highest priority of CJP and the federation system and over a billion dollars in charitable funds were raised (over and above the “regular” campaigns) to support this massive endeavor. The system had once again proved it could lead in a time of crisis and historic opportunity.

The second event was the publication of the National Jewish Population Survey of 1990. It was the first comprehensive survey of the American Jewish community since 1970. Commissioned by the UJC, and authoritative in its methods, it investigated the effects of the American trends of suburbanization, secularization and mobility on Jewish communities and Jewish affiliation. It was widely sensed that the generation of Jews that was born in the 1950’s and 1960’s had broken out of the tight bonds of neighborhood, family, religion, and business that characterized their parent’s lives. America’s doors had opened more widely to the participation of Jews, and as a result, college graduates sought out careers in a wider array of fields than ever before, moving away from their families and the neighborhood enclaves of Jewish life to pursue them. The 1990 Population Survey would provide the comprehensive information necessary for communal leaders to prepare plans for the upcoming decade.

The results were startling. Only 2 of 100 Americans identified themselves as Jewish. Excluding 6 cities (New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia) the ratio fell to 1 in 100. The survey documented that interfaith marriage rates hit 52% and, depending on level of participation in Jewish life of the couple, between 30% and 80% of children growing up in such households were not being raised to be Jewish. At 15 million, Jews were already one of the smallest religious and ethnic groups on the planet. At 6 million, the now dwindling North American Jewish community was the largest community of Jews in the world. The newly released evidence of geographic dispersion and declining affiliation made it easy for demographers to extrapolate the demise of modern American Judaism over the next three generations.

While CJP proved it could it mobilize the resources needed to respond to the FSU refugee crisis of the early 1990’s, the continuity crisis, as it was called, was a more difficult challenge for the federation movement. For centuries, Jewish continuity had been taken for granted. Families, friendships, and neighborhoods had been the guarantors of continuity. The neighborhood synagogue, Hebrew school and community center were the institutional instruments of communal participation and they were independent of the mission of CJP. If they were not working well, a new mode of operation would need to be developed.

CJP convened a two-year visioning exercise among 300 leaders of the Boston Jewish community and its institutions to investigate what role CJP should play for the Jewish community of the 21st century. Facilitated by respected leaders of business and academia, including Henry Rosovsky, former Dean of Harvard College, the effort culminated in a new strategic direction and mission statement for CJP. This model for change, it was hoped, would be adopted by UJC as well. Published in the Report of the CJP Strategic Planning Committee of January 1998, the elements of the new mission were stated as follows:

The signs of disengagement tell us we can no longer take the existence of our community for granted. If we are to maintain ourselves as a people – a people who can translate and transmit the culture, learning and values of Judaism to succeeding generations, a people able to meet our traditional responsibilities to those in need here and overseas – we must build and revitalize the connections between us.

The time has come to redefine our historic mission. Building, strengthening and maintaining an open, engaged, vibrant Boston Jewish community must become our central and overarching priority and purpose. In our parents’ and grandparents’ time community was a given. Today we cannot assume its existence. We must build it.

CJP developed programs and activities that could attract the personal involvement of 25 – 55 year olds and their children who affiliate with the Jewish community (including non-Jewish family members). Combined under the motto “Jewish Renaissance”, these were programs that could be offered citywide (see Appendix for examples). CJP embraced the neighborhood synagogue and the Jewish day school as the best sites to implement these non-worship activities in the education, social service volunteerism, and the culture arenas. CJP committed itself to subsidizing a new cadre of professional educators, family specialists and community organizers to work on the staff of 40 local synagogues to implement these programs.

Massive resources would be required to successfully implement this mission, including $100 million in bricks and mortar to expand existing educational and community centers and to build new ones closer to the dispersed suburban populations. By year 5, grants would need to increase $7 million annually after inflation (a 40% real increase above the 1998 base) to achieve Phase I.

Annual campaigns in recent years have been flat after inflation, even in good economies. It was unclear where the resources would come from. Mission success would require two important ingredients. First, money would have to be raised to support the new programs. Second, a meaningful portion of the 230,000 Jews in Boston needed to be encouraged to build personal connections to other Jews through their participation in these new programs. Neither element alone would be sufficient for success.

An Organizational Analysis

CJP’s organizational structure is designed to reinforce its position as the central fundraising and planning entity of its community. It depends on face to face interactions with hundreds of volunteers to get its messages and plans across. The fundraising and policy-making functions are separately organized. On the policy side, the institution is governed by an executive committee of over 40 volunteers that reports to a Board of Directors of over 100 volunteers including the lay chairs of its ten constituent agencies. These service delivery agencies of the organization now receive 15-90% of their budgets through the CJP allocation process. The organization has 11 standing committees on which over 150 non-board member volunteers sit. Board and committee meetings generally last from 2 to 4 hours and include the participation of dozens of volunteer and representatives from CJP’s 9-member top management team. The policy side of CJP sets strategy, allocates the $25 million in annual unrestricted resources, oversees $200 million in CJP assets, evaluates grant proposals, and appoints its own leadership.

On the fundraising side, CJP uses 55 professionals to help organize the fundraising effort of 1000 volunteer “campaigners”. 85% of the $30 million budget comes from the annual fundraising exercise called the “annual campaign”; the rest is provided from United Way and the CJP endowment. CJP maintains a mailing list of 40,000 prospects (out of the 75,000 Jewish families and singles that live in the Boston area) and receive gifts from 18,000 donors. Most donations are expected to be solicited by volunteers either in person or on the telephone from people they know. Fundraising costs are nearly $5 million (13% of monies raised) and the process of having contributors soliciting other contributors has the side benefit of building connections between members of the Jewish community, publicizing the mission of the community, and educating contributors about the Jewish nonprofits operating in the region and their role in achieving the goals of the community.