JFN2013

Pre-registration required.

This seminar fosters support, learning, and networking among members of family foundations who navigate multiple roles in the foundation: those who serve in a key leadership or grantmaking role in their foundation, and/or family board members who hold a paid position as staff of the foundation. In a confidential, safe environment for sharing, this session will strengthen ties among this group and provide tools for navigating the unique challenges of family foundation leaders. Participants will engage in interactive sessions to uncover and address family relationship communication challenges, learn healthy communication techniques, address family dynamics and conflict related to generational transitions, and hear case studies from foundation CEOs.

The nature of organizational life is in flux and the professional leadership corps of baby boomers is on the brink of retirement. A number of foundations in the Jewish and general community are working to stay ahead of that curve. This panel looks at questions including: who will be the professional leadership of the future? How will they be different from the current generation?  What critical skills will be needed to lead the nonprofits of the future? How can we support leadership development now for organizations we haven’t yet envisioned? Where will we find our new talent pool—inside existing organizations, or among people who are currently elsewhere?

While much of the current conversation in philanthropy is on strategic grantmaking, there is a growing movement of grantmakers who believe that responding to what communities say they need and strengthening organizations' capacity can achieve important, measurable, long-term results. Two very different foundations discuss their approaches to responsive grantmaking. Learn how to use these techniques to build capacity and sustainability of grantees through the use of core operating support funding, restricted capacity-building grants, and collaboration, as well as how to build trust with grantees, create reciprocal learning between foundations and grantees, and how to evaluate and measure the results.

As Israel faces the growing threats of a nuclear Iran and a hostile Arab Spring, it must navigate around the global perceptions of these issues. This panel reviews present challenges with a focus on three different approaches going on outside the U.S. for advocating for Israel: changing Europe's political culture, finding new allies in other regions, and grassroots efforts at changing public opinion.

Some of the Jewish community’s most successful and beloved projects of recent years are offered free of charge to the end user. Large numbers of people take advantage of these programs, and research shows they offer a path to engagement in communal life. Nonetheless, there are challenging questions about the long-term consequences of "free". Today’s panel tackles these questions with a funders' perspective: who decides what is offered free, and are we comfortable with that? Is it good business or is it harming the Jewish nonprofit economy and ecosystem? Do we have appropriate follow-up mechanisms in place to move users from passive receivers to active searchers? Are we creating demand or reducing perceived value?

While there are many ways to work to repair the world, when faced with world of grave poverty, hunger, and disease, many of us pursue work in international development. International grantmaking is like other grant making—only harder—and as funders, though we’re led by our hearts, our minds demand that good works be well conceived, effectively implemented and make an impact. In this workshop, three leaders in this field discuss the difficult questions they face, share how their organizations approach the specific challenges of international work, and reflect on what makes it uniquely “Jewish.”