The 6 Pillars That Will Drive Our Work

In my last “Long” View, I shared what brought me to this type of work and why I’m so passionate about it. This time I want to lay out my plan for where I’d like to take our Federation and community.

I come to this role with not only deep commitment to Jewish life and to Youngstown but also deep experience. I have been a supervisor for more than 22 years and have been in nonprofit leadership for more than 21 of those. In addition, I was chosen for the Mandel Institute Center for Nonprofit Leadership’s Executive Leadership Program. Only 20 leaders of Federations, JCCs, JCRCs, and Hillels across all of North America are chosen from over 100 invited applicants every two years to take part in this intensive 18-month program that takes place in Boston and Israel.

From my first interview to join Federation back in 2018, it was shared with me that Andy Lipkin would be retiring sometime in the next decade and whoever the hiring committee chose for the Financial Resource Development Director would be one of the people they would look at when it came to pick the next CEO. That was all I needed to hear, and I set about on a self-imposed six-year job interview, learning every aspect of the Federation and our community to make myself the strongest candidate. Even when offers came from other organizations locally and nationally, I was dead set on taking on this role. I felt it in every cell of my body — I wasn’t put on this earth to just lead “an” organization, to lead “any” Federation; I was meant to lead Jewish Youngstown.

We live on the land that’s been in my husband’s family since before the Civil War. Our ties are deep. My home is here, and we have no plans of moving. This job is very personal to me. I am building a Jewish community for my children, Madeline and Henry; one that they can be engaged in and proud of, and one that I hope they choose to return to after college. I balance my desire for my kids to build a “family cul-de-sac” on our land with my obligations to those who built Jewish Youngstown, those who are here now, those who are yet to come, and our commitment to the Valley community in general.

My least favorite interview question: What is your five-year plan? Thinking that way has never made any sense to me. If you even look at the last seven years that I’ve been at Federation, who could’ve predicted we’d face COVID, the war in Ukraine, and the 10/7 attacks and ongoing war? These are all things that pulled much of our focus and resources. If we had made concrete plans, they would’ve been blown out of the water multiple times. So, instead of sharing with you my five-year plan, I’d like to share with you the pillars that we will focus on and that will drive our work during my time in this role.

PILLAR #1

We need to involve our younger families and attract new Jewish families. We’ve been working toward that second part in several ways. I sit on the Chamber’s population committee, the Thomases Family Endowment has supported this work, and Melissa Bateman is active in many committees and grassroots organizations who are working on this from different angles.  

We have to remember that these young families see involvement a bit differently. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, there is declining membership and affiliation in the “mainstream” Jewish world among this group, with only 33 percent being members of temples. Instead, they’re looking to grow their own personal spirituality and meaning and focusing more on the cultural aspects of being Jewish. Twenty seven percent of Jews surveyed defined themselves as “Jews of no religion,” meaning they didn’t consider this a religion, but more of a culture.  

In addition, many young families, including mine, are in interfaith families. In fact, 61 percent of marriages within the Jewish community between 2010–2020 were interfaith! We need to start seeing these couples as an asset, not a liability. Especially because 70 percent of those couples are raising their children within the Jewish faith! And the rate at which those kids are living Jewish lives as adults is also increasing. When asked why, the most popular answer is their Jewish education and involvement as a child. Even though we have fewer Jewish children in our community than we did a few decades ago, we have to be a part of their upbringing so they don’t feel “left behind” just because they live in a small community.

We can’t lose our focus on this work. Frankly, that’s a dangerous choice. According to a recent study by Tufts University, the Jewish students taking part in the protests on college campuses are often from small communities and other marginalized demographics. It is our responsibility to make them less susceptible to propaganda by educating and preparing them. But we need to do this with the knowledge that only 33 percent of those ages 18–29 say caring about Israel is essential to being Jewish.

PILLAR #2

Our community is too small for silos. The Federation needs to truly be the convener of the entire Youngstown area Jewish community. We have brought back the Rabbis and Presidents meeting but have expanded it to include our Federation agencies, B’Nai B’Rith, ZOA, and YSU. This group will work together toward all our goals, whether that be program or space oriented and use a collaborative approach to get us toward a stronger future. I feel like Youngstown gets down on itself sometimes, like we’re the only community that is dealing with shrinking involvement and numbers, but collaborative campuses and other innovative ideas are happening all over North America, even in Boston, which is the fourth largest Jewish community in the country!

PILLAR #3

The management team have to work collaboratively. We must define goals for the Federation and our community. We’ve been in a reactive mode for a while — that needs to be turned into a proactive one where we focus on our short and long term master priorities so we’re not swayed by opportunities and squeaky wheels that don’t fit into our goals. And these goals must be based on human values. We have to remember we’re not an island here. We have many national affiliations where we can find data, support, and trends.

PILLAR #4

We are not just a community center, a school, a nursing home, an assisted living, a social service agency…we are a JEWISH community center, school, nursing home, assisted living, and social service agency. We must serve our Jewish community first, using our Jewish staff as promoters of Jewish Joy and helping to provide Jewish programs for staff during the work day at each of our agencies.

PILLAR #5

We must act with fiscal responsibility and rightsize our work. This is a two-pronged approach: act like a true nonprofit and function like a business.  

Prong 1: We can no longer sit back and rely on our Foundation and Annual Campaign. While the campaign has stayed pretty consistent in the last eight campaigns, between a low of $1,183,676 and a high of $1,302,571, the number of donors is sliding. In 2017 we had 430 donors, and today we’re down to 355. It’s just mathematics — as our population dwindles, so will our campaign. Even if we see population growth, philanthropy is changing. In 1973 Jewish Federations of North America had 1,000,000 donors; by 2015 that had dropped to 400,000!

Prong 2: We need to work on increasing our revenue streams. But we must make sure those streams flow within our mission. If a program is losing money or breaking even, we should only continue it if it truly serves our mission. If it doesn’t, we need to cut it and reallocate our limited resources elsewhere.  

Given these two prongs, we must start to make our budgets based on earned revenue and realistic private/ state/federal grant award predictions. Our boards and committees and donors need to understand what that amount “buys” us and what would go missing if the allocations to the agencies from the Annual Campaign are cut. Federations were created as an efficiency. What else can we centralize to make us more efficient?

PILLAR #6

Lastly, we can only accomplish this by having the right staff in place and making sure they stick around. We must continue our orientation past the start of employment and share our organization’s goals with our staff so they can clearly see their role in our success. With more than 350 full-time equivalents on our team, personnel is our biggest cost. While we want to remain competitive, we must continue to research parallel roles when it comes to salaries and benefits.

There’s no way around the fact that it will be a bumpy road ahead and tough, sometimes unpopular, decisions will need to be made. I look forward to setting the direction of our Federation in partnership with our Federation board. I promise to lead with positivity, leaving the baggage and gossip at the door. I have put together office “commandments” so our management team can model professional integrity to the rest of our team. On that note, I am working hard on being more visible around our entire campus, listening to our staff, seeing our operation in real time while also growing our presence within the general community so that we can be seen as the community leader and asset that we are.  

Speaking of our team — they are incredibly talented and were picked in the interview process for a reason. Many are leaders and experts in their fields. I trust our agency heads and want to ensure their strengths are used to propel us forward. My role is to share power with my team and then make sure that the decisions we make are stuck to. As I wrote about above, the last few years have been incredibly tough on all of us…COVID, Ukraine, 10/7…so many on our team are burnt out, and it is my job to protect them. If you look at a scale of one to 10, most of us have been operating on an 11 since at least 2020. This is not sustainable. I want to bring the “temperature” of our workplace and board meetings down to a four, so that we have the reserves of energy to face the 11s when they return — because we know they will. As much as I love my job, I find myself searching for boundaries and struggling to model the work/life balance I want for our team and for myself.  

In my first year I am working toward seven priorities:

1. Develop management relationships with my direct reports.

2. Continue onboarding of new Financial Resource Development Director.

3. Working on the Akiva Expansion Project and Capital Campaign.

4. Exploring the expansion of our JMeals/Food Service Department.

5. Continuing to work on the profitability of the Federation and its agencies by cutting costs and increasing revenue.

6. Improving relationships with the entire Jewish community.

7. Trying to get to a point where our Federation/Agency Staff and Boards live at a four not an 11.

My maiden name is Chait. I always explained it to people as Chai, life, with a T stuck to the end of it. And that’s what I’m here to do…breathe new life into Jewish Youngstown. There is a cyclical nature to Judaism… lows and highs. How can you help us create our new “Chai”?