February 2010, A Web of Interconnection

Judaism. While Gen Xers are very charitable in terms of volunteering, they don’t give as many dollars proportionally as other generations.

Bruder: Tzedakah collectives are in again, and no one is acknowledging the federation system as the original Jewish tzedakah collective. Everyone gives into a pool and then decisions are made about how to aggregate the funds and redistribute them. Also, a lot of our programs are built on the shoulders of the human service agency infrastructure that has been around for so long and is much less sexy than it used to be. The start-ups feel fresh and engaging, but we can’t lose sight of where these programs — like anti-poverty work — came from.

Horwitz: In order to effectively grow an organization, the leadership needs to build a story that is larger than the particular product or organization. We are all competing in the attention economy — trying to get people’s attention, to tell our story, to connect potential contributors to our mission. While we must talk about values and mission, we must also demonstrate competencies in the business end — in market and sales. Social enterprise is a wonderful model to break the “for-profit” stigma, and we expect some of our groups to become for-profit if they think they can maintain the loyalty to their social mission.

There is a very tight connection between volunteering hours and volunteering currency. Charge people hours, charge people connections, charge people ideas, charge people dollars. People should be investing, but it can be an investment of hours or money.

Lepson: If someone receives something for free, it generally doesn’t have the same value. When we’re invested in a project — with either volunteer hours or money — we assign, subconsciously or consciously, a higher value to it. Younger people generally invest first with their time and energy, and once they feel connected, they will put money behind the project.

Berrin: How will DIY groups provide meaningful experiences that are enriching and not superficial?

Kaunfer: We can only provide those types
of experiences by training a generation of Jews
to become confident and knowledgeable in
their heritage, and equipping them with the
community organizing and pedagogical skills
to engage their peers. Otherwise, a lot of DIY
groups will produce mediocre programming
that will not solve the core issues of engage-
ment and meaning for which the Jewish
community is thirsting.

SHMA.COM

Discussion

Bringing together a myriad of voices and experiences provides Sh’ma readers with an opportunity in a few very full pages to explore a topic of Jewish interest from a variety of perspectives. To facilitate a fuller discussion of these ideas, we offer the following questions: