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June 4, 2004/Sivan 15 5764, Vol. 56, No. 37
Local organizations funded
Federation announces annual distributions to constituent agencies
BETH OLSON
Staff Writer
The board of directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix has approved a recommendation from the Allocation Process Review Committee, as well as allocations to the federation's constituent agencies for the upcoming year.
The Allocation Process Review Committee, chaired by Shelley Cohn, was created last year in response to concerns with the process of how federation dollars are allocated to its 11 constituent agencies. The approved allocation model includes increased communication between the federation and its agencies, as well as a process by which the agencies will identify how their services reflect Jewish values.
"We'll be developing a memo of understanding with each agency that outlines our responsibility and their responsibility," explains Fred Zeidman, assistant executive director of the federation. "We think that the process will then become much more accountable and enable us to show the community where the dollars go and what programs and services they support."
In addition, a Jewish Community Development Initiative has been established to identify community priorities to assist in the future allocation of dollars.
"We've identified things with each agency to see us through the coming year while we update our strategic plan, while we complete this planning initiative. Once that's completed, the priorities that come out of (the planning initiative) will further direct how the dollars are distributed the year after that," explains Zeidman.
The Jewish Community Development Initiative will include representation from all geographic areas of the Valley, a variety of age brackets, as well as the agencies, rabbinate and various other Jewish organizations.
The constituent agencies of federation are Bureau of Jewish Education, Council for Jews With Special Needs, Hillel Jewish Student Center, Jewish Family and Children's Service, Tri-City Jewish Community Center, Greater Phoenix Va'ad Hakashruth, Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, Kivel Campus of Care, The King David School, Pardes Jewish Day School and Phoenix Hebrew Academy.
The allocations to the agencies for the year Aug. 1, 2004, through July 31, 2005, were unchanged for eight of the 11 agencies (see chart on Page 7), although the agencies will be required to uphold higher standards of accountability.
"One of the things we are doing is asking for specific things on a regular basis from the agencies, including strategic thinking and a plan for how they relate their programs to Jewish values," said Cohn. "What we did in the (Allocation Process Review) Committee was look at how the organizations ... are all very different in not only their structure and in the services they provide to the Jewish community, (but) their capacity to raise money from the public at large versus those that are able to only raise money from the Jewish community. We wanted to be sensitive in the allocations from federation to those individual specific needs and differences."
Three organizations were given increased allocations for the upcoming year - Pardes, CJSN and Hillel.
Pardes and CJSN are the two newest agencies, and Zeidman said the federation's annual campaign has been "flat" since they both became agencies so there haven't been additional dollars to allocate to the two organizations.
Cohn said the allocation committee felt that the allocations to Pardes, CJSN and Hillel weren't in line with similar organizations.
Jill Kessler, head of school at Pardes, was a member of the allocation committee. She said that despite the increase there is a disparity between what Pardes receives and the allocations to the other day schools that are federation agencies, but she also understands the complexity of the process and the challenge of allocating limited dollars.
The additional $20,000 will directly benefit the school's students, she said.
"The increase in allocation goes directly to our operating budget so that will definitely help offset many of our school expenses and essentially that money goes directly back to students, which is the exciting part," Kessler said.
The total money allocated to the constituent agencies is $1,452,369, an increase of $27,379 from the previous year.
The federation's 2003 campaign generated $4,958,179. On April 19, the board approved federation's budget of $1,615,986. Additional funds from the campaign benefit national and overseas organizations.
Contact the writer at beth_olson@jewishaz.com.
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