from The Jerusalem Post:

Ethiopian Jewry gets its first Haggada

The historic saga of Ethiopian Jewry, with its unique traditions and customs, will be incorporated into the mainstream Pessah story for the first time in a new Haggada written by Ethiopian-Jewish history expert Rabbi Menachem Waldman.

Set to reach bookstores this weekend, the 195-page Haggada features prayers and commentaries on the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt translated from Amharic into Hebrew, as well as an account of how Ethiopia’s Beta Israel community escaped to Israel first via Sudan in Operation Moses in 1984-85 and later during Operation Solomon in 1991.

The book also includes extensive photographs and detailed explanations of Ethiopian Jewish traditions and customs connected with Pessah.

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from Haaretz:

Alan Hoffman: Immigration in the future will be out of ‘choice’

The Jewish Agency’s recently publicized shift in priorities – putting Jewish identity building ahead of immigration to Israel – does not mean the agency is abandoning its traditional role, according to incoming director-general Alan Hoffmann. While slowly revising its agenda toward a stronger focus on educational programs and initiatives connecting world Jewry with Israel, the organization’s final goal ultimately remains to promote aliyah, he asserted.

“Even with the new paradigm, the Jewish Agency is creating aliyah,” Hoffmann, 64, said Monday in his first newspaper interview since taking over the position last week. “The aliyah of the future is aliyah of choice from the West. But aliyah of choice will only come about if you cultivate the tree. The question of picking the fruit from the tree is only the very last stage in the process,” added Hoffmann, who until last week headed the agency’s education department, explaining that the promotion of Jewish identity is likely to inspire immigration to Israel.

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Non-Zero Sum: Helping Others And Ourselves

by Rabbi Jill Jacobs

Should Jews first take care of our own, or first serve the needs of society as a whole?

In the course of a meandering and much-discussed article in the latest issue of Commentary magazine, historian Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary castigates the Jewish social justice world for prioritizing support for non-Jews over the internal concerns of the Jewish community. Into this latter category, he collapses social services for low-income Jews, day school scholarships and the affordability of institutions ranging from synagogues to Jewish community centers. With Jewish groups slashing their budgets, day school students transferring to public schools and Holocaust survivors struggling to make ends meet, he complains, how can Jewish social justice leaders possibly encourage Jews to put more money and volunteer energy into serving non-Jewish communities?

“[J]ust at a time when Jewish communal institutions are failing to attend to the needs of Jews at home and abroad, the hot trend in Jewish philanthropic and organizational circles, incredibly, is to channel ever more of their resources to nonsectarian causes,” he fumes. (The emphasis is Wertheimer’s.)

With this argument, Wertheimer falls into the trap, common on both the left and the right, of assuming a zero-sum game in which Jewish needs and the needs of everyone else stand in stark opposition, competing for scarce resources in a cutthroat world. Those on the right often argue that “social justice” Jews care little about the interests of their own people and seek only to transfer Jewish money to non-Jews. Those on the left tar their opponents as selfish paranoiacs and point to the relatively high socioeconomic level of the American Jewish community as evidence that Jewish money is best directed outside its confines.

To paraphrase Tevye: “You’re wrong, and you’re also wrong.”

Instead of pushing us only inward or outward, the current economic crisis should force us to recognize that the fortunes of American Jews are intimately tied to the fortunes of all Americans, and even to the world as a whole. It is true, as Wertheimer points out, that too many Jews who are elderly, immigrants or minimum-wage workers barely scrape by. As a community we must not ignore their existence or their needs. But their pain should also prompt us to ask broader questions: Why do so many elderly people live in poverty? Why do immigrants struggle so hard to survive? Why can’t minimum-wage workers support their families on their earnings?

The Jewish federation world has long understood that it is neither practical nor politically advisable to serve Jews alone. Supported agencies, such as Jewish Family and Children’s Services, therefore accept clients of all religions and ethnicities, including Jews, while local and national bodies advocate for government funding for social services across the board. Despite this broad-based approach, many Jews continue to think of these organizations as only assisting Jews (in large part because, in order to appeal to donors, these agencies sometimes only stress their work with Jewish beneficiaries in their promotional and fundraising materials).

Meanwhile, Jewish organizations with a more explicit focus on the world as a whole also view service to the Jewish community as an essential part of their mission. Many Jewish social justice groups do integrate Jewish education and identity formation into their programming. They do so out of a recognition of the inherent value of Judaism and the Jewish community. Moreover, Jewish groups that specifically advocate for health care, job creation and raising the minimum wage understand that policy change in these areas will benefit Jews as well as non-Jews. For some Jewish families, a new job, higher wages or a lower health care bill might even free up money for synagogue dues or day school tuition. And those of us who do not receive Medicaid, attend public schools or live in subsidized housing still benefit from having neighbors and co-workers who are healthy, well-educated and safe.

American Jews do not live in a vacuum. Addressing the financial pressures of the Jewish community will require attention to the larger economic and social policies that hurt low-income and middle-class families. We should be honest that we want to address these issues in part because of our concern for the well-being of our own community. We should also take seriously the obligation to create a better world for everyone. And we should recognize that these two goals can best be achieved together.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the author of “There Shall be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition” (Jewish Lights 2009) and the rabbi-in-residence at Jewish Funds for Justice. She is currently on sabbatical as a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute.

This opinion piece originally appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward; reprinted with permission.

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by Stephen H. Hoffman

I can’t remember any time in reading about Jewish history that we weren’t worried about our future and our survival – our physical survival in Israel and our spiritual survival outside of Israel. Worry seems to be in the Jewish genome. Now the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) has written a report titled “2030: Alternative Futures for the Jewish People.” Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, there’s plenty to worry about.

The study provides an overview of factors that have affected the rise, thriving and decline of civilizations over the millennia. Among them are religion and identity; education, science and technology; language; creative leadership and political elites; war; internal dissent and national and health disasters. There are many lessons here for Cleveland and America, let alone the Jewish people.

The study posits two axes of factors that could affect the Jewish future – internal and external. The external forces are somewhat obvious: distribution of power (think: China); proliferation of weapons of mass killing; energy; global economy. The internal forces include Jewish demography, identity, hard and soft power, Israel-Diaspora relations, economics and leadership.

Using these factors, the report lays out four scenarios for a future, characterized as Jewish life thriving, drifting, defending or a nightmare. The nightmare is a doomsday picture resulting from external attacks that succeed. The defending sketch portrays an Israel that builds higher walls in an increasingly hostile world, aliyah from the West accelerated due to unrelenting anti-Semitism, and Diaspora Jewish communities clearly recognizing the threats and therefore investing in themselves. In some ways, this option is a welcome one because it sees us acting forcefully to preserve ourselves.

But at the moment, I think our real challenge is working our way through the thriving vs. drifting scenarios. Thriving is the one we seek – all good things. Drifting is the one we fear – slow declines in numbers, education, increased apathy for Jewish identity.

A few key observations on this stand out from the more than 100 pages of the report:

First, we are capable of affecting our futures. We are not merely subject to the great external forces. Those will affect us, certainly; they can hurt us or help us. But if we are organized and committed to thriving, we can overcome almost anything that comes at us.

Second, our most important decision is that our Jewish identities matter and are worth acting on with our time and resources. We need to decide that our Jewish identities bring powerful meaning to our lives in this era of free choices, that they matter to our neighbors and our world as a way to improve our collective quality of life.

Third, in an age that values individualism, we must swim upstream to preserve and promote the collective action that is required to achieve a thriving Jewish future. Hillel’s words reach us across the centuries: If I am not for myself, who will be for me, but if I am only for myself, what am I?

Fourth, it’s all about who! Leadership matters. We must attract high-quality volunteers, professional staff, rabbis, teachers and academicians to our enterprise. Talented volunteer leaders who care must be willing to step up and take the big responsibilities in the community locally, nationally and internationally. For our professional cadre, we must create the environments and compensation ranges that allow them to work for us vs. the private sectors.

Belief, determination, collective action and leadership can halt the drift and move us toward a thriving future.

As for Cleveland, a microcosm of the Jewish world, we too are poised between drifting and thriving futures. Clearly the external economic environment is of great concern. Many Jewish business and civic leaders are working to improve the external pictures at government levels, the universities, the foundations, and with nonprofits at the neighborhood level. At the Federation, we are attempting to intervene as well through the Immigrant Welcome Center concept to promote population growth.

Internally we are blessed with outstanding rabbinic leadership, many excellent professional and educational leaders, and volunteers who are the envy of the Jewish world. We are paying attention to the development and involvement of young leaders. Our fundraising is in the front ranks (visit JewishCleveland.org to learn more about the current Campaign for Jewish Needs) – but not enough yet to push us securely into the thriving scenario. The resources are in this town, though. It’s still a matter of determination to stop the drift. And we are determined.

We’re taking action with PresenTense, providing fellowship opportunities to engage young Jewish social entrepreneurs to help strengthen identity connections. We have overhauled our resource development program to give people more ways to make a difference with their contributions, and we are preparing to make a heavier investment in our ties to Israel by focusing on Israel’s assets to enhance Jewish identity.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Johann said that “Since the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from prophets and given to fools and children.” No one – prophet, fool or child – could accurately have predicted two years ago where we are today. And this report, too, stops short of prophecy and talks about alternatives.

We have the capacity to thrive. We have thrived in Cleveland, and we know what it takes to continue to thrive. As Jewish communities go, we are doing many of the suggestions put forward by JPPPI. But what ultimately plays out in Cleveland is a simple question, one that must be answered by each of us: “What can I do to achieve a thriving Jewish future?” The future is ours. If we’re successful in Cleveland, we can point the way, as we have so often done in the past, for communities across the globe.

Stephen H. Hoffman is president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and was a participant in the JPPPI brainstorming process that created the report.

This opinion piece originally appeared in Cleveland Jewish News; reprinted with permission.

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1st Community Collaboration Forum Draws 140 Rabbis, Staff, Leaders, Community Members

A crowd of more than 140 professional and lay leaders representing St. Louis Jewish agencies, congregations, schools and organizations recently attended “Community Forum on Collaboration”, hosted by Jewish Federation of St. Louis. The purpose was to generate discussions about new opportunities for Jewish entities to work together and create partnerships that build trust and add value for everyone in order to insure a thriving Jewish community.

The keynote speaker was Rabbi Hayim Herring, a Ph. D. in organization and management. He began his address with a video depicting the way in which the world is changing exponentially – with technology as the driver. He said we are living in “the age of the Four A’s: anything, anyone, anytime and anywhere” and said because of this, “we’re on the threshold of a new era that will affect the quality of our thinking about the possibilities of Jewish life today.”

On one hand, our critical need for change reflects the impact of the economic crisis, he said. But on a more fundamental level, we may be able to do more good, more efficiently, through collaborations to advance our organizational missions. “Our leaders and our institutions and organizations must adapt in this environment of the 4As in order to thrive. To do so, organizations must focus on what they do best and collaborate with others for the rest.” First, he said, we should form strategic alliances and he posited a continuum from pooling resources, sharing or joint programming to collaborations, networking, mergers and even reinventions.

Along those lines, Rabbi Herring explained the importance of collaboration versus efficiency to add value. “It’s about downsizing our infrastructure and upsizing our thinking. Not everything,” he stressed, “is about money, however. It’s about how can we use funds better? Collaboration really means creating something better together than an organization can do on its own that over time can provide value. The winners,” he said, “will be those who get out ahead and start distributing information, create more opportunities for leaders to learn about one another, are transparent, use independent facilitation, continue conversations and move toward action.”

To reach this point, the Rabbi said, will require a huge cultural change and a move away from being competitive. “There must be respect. We cannot impose our solutions on the stakeholders and we must sit at the table as equals. We can’t be so fearful that we fail to see solutions. Communities with these desires are those with the best chance of thriving,” he added.

Two speakers from the Cincinnati Jewish Federation, Bob Brandt, vice president, and Sharon Stern, COO, then gave the audience a snapshot of the opportunities, challenges and advantages of successful community collaborations.

Michael Staenberg, chairman of the Jewish Community Center, spoke next about one very successful collaboration in our St. Louis community – the pooling of insurance for Jewish community groups. “This,” he said, “has resulted in cost savings, access to broader choices in benefits programs, more effective administration of plans, higher-quality benefits and no individual rating of employees.” It’s been a win-win for everyone, he added.

Participants broke into discussion groups to brainstorm ideas for new collaborative ideas. Groups included: Congregations, Jewish Learning, Informal Jewish Learning, Social Justice and Community Relations.

Jewish Federation hopes to offer follow up sessions featuring expert speakers. “Our goal is to stimulate formation of local working groups interested in moving forward to explore and create possibilities,” said Barry Rosenberg, Jewish Federation executive vice president.

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From Emma Lazarus’ poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty, to the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, to Barbra Streisand’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – Jewish women’s history is written on the streets of North America. Just in time for Women’s History Month, the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) has created On the Map, a new way to collect and explore Jewish women’s history using the powerful combination of crowdsourcing and Google Maps.

There is a human impulse to connect with history in a physical way, one that compels us to build monuments that mark the place of historically significant stories. Traditionally, these have been the stories of “great men.” Many important stories – women’s stories – go unheralded. The Jewish Women’s Archive wants to know, “Where are the landmarks that tell the stories of Jewish women?” Beginning this month, JWA invites everyone to share a landmark and help put Jewish women “On the Map.”

Crowdsourcing our history

A user-generated map hosted on jwa.org, On the Map will showcase significant places in Jewish women’s history, including sites both marked and unmarked, familiar and obscure. Users can put their own stamp on history by clicking on a location and adding a photo and their description of the new landmark. Through this crowdsourcing initiative, we become our own historians, mapping history as we discover and create it. The Jewish Women’s Archive, the world’s leading source on Jewish women in North America, is excited to add this innovative tool to its growing collection of resources on Jewish women.

History you can use

JWA’s map is more than just a record. With On the Map, users can plan walking tours of new cities or discover sites in their own neighborhood. On the Map will allow researchers to locate and share important sites, help teachers plan real or virtual field trips, and empower those using it to play a role in mapping our common heritage.

About: The mission of the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) is to uncover, chronicle, and transmit to a broad public the rich history of North American Jewish women. A national non-profit organization founded in 1995 and headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts, JWA creates and disseminates educational materials, conducts original research, hosts public programs, and maintains an innovative website. Through web exhibits, online collection projects, and oral histories, JWA shares the stories, struggles, and achievements of North American Jewish women spanning many generations. In 2007, JWA produced the film Making Trouble, a prize-winning documentary about three generations of Jewish women in comedy.

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by Katya Andresen

Dear Nonprofit Marketing Friends,

The biggest thing that needs to change this year is how we think about our donors. We are in the midst of an enormous generational shift that has major implications for our work. The Greatest Generation of older, civic-minded Americans who wrote checks out of a sense of duty and expected little more than a tax receipt in return is passing the torch to a far more demanding series of predecessors.

Boomers expect a sense of impact, and younger donors expect engagement and involvement. They are anything but passive. Think of it this way. Just as in marketing we have left the broadcast era where consumers passively take in promotional messages, we have left the low-expectation donor era.

That means it’s not enough to declare a need and send a thank-you. Today’s supporters increasingly expect engagement that makes them feel seen, heard and involved. They are not walking wallets or ATM machines. They are partners who expect a relationship with the organizations they support. They want to be talked to as individuals, thanked and updated.

This is especially true online. With most of what we do online – Facebook, Foursquare, gaming, etc. – being highly personal and extremely interactive, we have to provide a more intimate and involved experience for our supporters with our technological tools. Otherwise, you will alienate nearly everyone.

That means we have to completely reorganize not only our approach but also how our organizations are structured. We need to tear down the walls of our organizations’ technology, marketing, fundraising and communications departments and rebuild the organization of our people in a way that creates a completely supporter-centric experience. A supporter is a real person, not a volunteer vs. an online donor vs. an offline donor, and she expects to be treated as such.

If a complete reorganization is impossible, then at least consider how to reorganize your fundraising efforts with a focus on what a prospective supporter or donor experiences at each touch point with your organization. If you aren’t sure, role play. Have a Be Your Donor Day. Go to your website. As the donor, ask yourself: Is it apparent what your organization does? Do you see something that forges an emotional connection? Are there tools to share what you are seeing via social networks, right on the home page? Are the voices of donors and supporters clear in the content? Does the website feel like a community or a brochure?

Keep going. Donate online and offline. How and when are you thanked? What happens after that? Call your 800 number. Sign up for e-News. Tweet your support. What happens?

Be critical – because your donors will be.

Katya Andresen is COO at Network for Good and a regular blogger on non-profit marketing.

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Rarely a day passes without hearing from one of my friends in the Jewish world about a new project in which they have become engaged or an organization for which they are fundraising. The conversation that ensues is often one about shared interests and common concerns. Sometimes the conversations result in my renewed optimism and other times they cause me to have sobering realizations; but never have they made me sick to my stomach.

Until last week.

An unexpected call from a former colleague who left Atlanta to move to Asheville, North Carolina started out with the usual pleasantries – work, family, memories of old times. But quickly the conversation turned to the matter that was obviously on my friend’s mind – the state of affairs of the nascent community Jewish Day School in Asheville where his children attend and of which he is president. His story started out inspiring enough, nineteen families had come together in 2006 to create a fully integrated core/Jewish curriculum day school for their twenty-one children, with plans to increase the school size by the incremental addition of students and grades. In the middle of North Carolina, where so much of the Jewish community had migrated away from to lager population centers like Charlotte and Atlanta, the small but resilient Jewish community of Asheville was not going to yield to demography. Grounded in a community with religious diversity and a small but strong JCC, the school would be an extension of the Jewish community’s efforts to create a rich Jewish experience for their children. At least that was the intention.

Now, like every school (and other community organization) in the country that is facing the hardships of the Great Recession, the Maccabi Academy of Asheville is in financial crisis. Its $40,0000 deficit is too big, its community is too small; it is literally on the edge of going from a school that could be much more to a school that might be nothing more than a memory. It made growth decisions that anticipated financial security and now must revisit those decisions with deep cost-cutting measures. It must ask more from each family, and has already received more than most families can afford. Looking beyond its small community it has reached out to friends throughout the Southeast that might have connections to Asheville or North Carolina in the hope they might find an angel or an unexpected benefactor from afar. But one decision my friend, his board, and his fellow parents are loathe to consider, but nonetheless must – without the needed funds, will it be possible to continue this Jewish day school experience for those nineteen families?

As a Jewish people we say that education is one of the most important elements of sustaining ourselves. As a North American community we insist that day school education is one of the most critical means to provide our children an immersive educational and communal experience (often at the expense of investing too little in congregational education). We encourage families to send their children to day schools; we cajole parents to give more of their resources to make those schools strong. We know that education is expensive and we say to one another that we face an affordability crisis that threatens our ability to provide the education we know is needed. Yet say every child matters, so we mustn’t fail in providing that education, no matter the cost. We say all of these things.

There are nineteen Jewish children in Asheville, North Carolina, far from the Jewish centers of life in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta. These children are getting a daily dose of Jewish education, culture and language, and they are sharing experiences that will help cement their identities for years to come. They may go elsewhere in life, far from Asheville – perhaps even to our own communities. We know this.

So with all we know, let me ask this – will we, the Jewish people, let this school fail?

And if we do, what does it mean about what we say?

Seth A. Cohen, Esq. is an Atlanta-based attorney, activist and author on topics of Jewish communal life and innovation. Seth is an alumnus of the Wexner Heritage Program, Vice Chair and past Allocations Chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, member of the board of Joshua Venture Group and First Vice President of Jewish Family & Career Services in Atlanta. Seth regularly shares his thoughts on where we are going as a Jewish community on his blog, Boundless Drama of Creation, and is a regular contributor to eJewish Philanthropy. Seth can be contacted directly at seth.cohen [at] agg.com.

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If you are not familiar with our Resource Library, have a look. We developed this section as a way to assist you in connecting with others, reaching a greater audience and keeping current on the newest tends. We also encourage you to check back often as new links are added on a regular basis.

Here are the most recent:

Building a Facebook Fanpage – Part 1 – The Background Info

This is Part I of my guide to creating a Facebook fanpage for nonprofits. We’re going to use a fan page that I recently set up as an example of how to set up a page. So stage one – Register and make it clear what you are about…

How do I get my Nonprofit’s Facebook fans to donate?

Getting an army of Facebook fans for your nonprofit is not an easy feat. It takes lots of planning, hard work, and time. But just because you have a lot of Facebook fans doesn’t mean that you’re any closer to meeting your fundraising goals. Especially if you’re unknowingly creating barrier.

Google AdWords for charities: learning’s

Here are some things you should consider:

• Understand why you’re using it. In other words, what are your objectives? If you’re thinking of it as a means to drive loads of traffic which in turn will generate a significant number of donations, you’ll quickly be disappointed.

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On January 13, I wrote about a client from New York who was very involved in rights and entitlements, and I discussed how he had formed a partnership with a major hospital in Israel to develop a service to inform patients and their families about all their rights and their entitlements to services through the government, health maintenance organizations, and other providers. Based on this article a frequent reader to eJewishPhilanthropy.com made a connection between two Israeli hi-tech business people-philanthropists who were involved in setting up a comprehensive website focused on rights and entitlements and me. Following an initial phone conversation I met with them and then my client spoke with them.

These conversations opened the door to possible collaboration and joining of efforts. My client decided that exploring the furthering of the relationship with these two Israeli philanthropists was worth a trip to Israel. Following my discussions with him, we agreed to arrange for an initial meeting with the four of us so my client could understand the details of the website based information system and the plans to set up the access to the website in the near future. We had agreed that the next step would be to arrange for the proposed system to be presented to professional social workers who were involved in the delivery of services to clients.

Since the focus was on my client’s interest in strengthening the local municipal social services department’s ability to provide more comprehensive and detailed information to their clients. The two Israelis were invited to present their system to the senior managers of a major city’s department of social service and to explore the possibility of testing the system out with the department’s staff. The success of the meeting was beyond any of our expectations.

The department’s professional staff members were in awe of the of a web based information system that contained not only details of the rights and entitlements in tens of subject areas, but also provided access to phone numbers, addresses (e-mail and regular), appropriate forms to request services and payments, and sample letters (templates) for communicating with various offices. There was an immediate request to explore a working relationship whereby the social workers would assist in uploading accurate up-to-date information on to the system, and in turn, the program would be utilized by the entire department for a pilot test. The organizing principle of the system is based on those who have access also being the source of detailed information and the users’ ability to continually update the information.

Although my client did not speak Hebrew he had no problem understanding the affinity the Israeli social entrepreneurs and the social workers felt for each other as former described the details of the system and the latter heard how to access valuable pieces of information that would improve the quality of their clients’ lives. A decision was made to immediately begin working in two areas. The first focused on the rights and entitlements of single parents and one of the Israeli philanthropists would be the point person and follow up with the social worker responsible for this client population. Once there was success with one group then there would be an effort to deal with issues, services, and entitlements for the elderly living with the boundaries of the municipality.

The openness and the willingness of three parties to work together signaled a new partnership involving public social services, and philanthropists from Israel and from the United States. The joining of people with different and shared priorities demonstrates that more can be accomplished by working together and linking people with a variety of interests. The professional staff members of local departments of social service are generally overworked and understaffed. They are interested in providing services effectively and efficiently in as short a time as possible. My client has been devoted to having a positive impact on the accessibility of information and services and the Israeli philanthropists want to change the way people not only find out the information they need but also have the ability to build the system that works best for them for now and for the future.

The development of the three cornered partnership of Israeli and Diaspora philanthropists with a department of social service system also sets a new standard for the way Israeli public services are prepared to interact with, cooperate with, coordinate with entities outside their system. This working relationship requires not only openness but also flexibility and a desire to use all available resources to enhance the delivery of service to those in need. Perhaps this will be a model in Israeli society that links the voluntary sector and the public sector in a new way.

The direct link between the philanthropists, on one hand, and the voluntary sector and public service, on the other hand has the potential to reframe how we see innovation in this sphere. It is possible for people to work directly with each other, and it may not be necessary to use intermediary organizations that sometimes have their proprietary interests that complicate the ability to achieve the change my client and his Israeli colleagues want to achieve.

Stephen G. Donshik, D.S.W., is a lecturer at Hebrew University’s International Leadership and Philanthropy Program and has a consulting firm focused on strengthening non-profit organizations and their leadership for tomorrow. Stephen is a regular contributor to eJewish Philanthropy.

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