Richard A. Marker

This is a story about the shapes that define the philanthropy community table.

The 2 sided table.  The first communal table at which I sat had 2 sides. It had space for those who needed money and those who had it.  The side of the table representing or facilitating or planning or convening or coordinating those who had was typically the Federation system.   For many years my primary concern was the other side: to advocate for enhanced support for undercapitalized, underfunded, and under-recognized institutions and priorities.

The early 90’s were the heady days for those of us in the Jewish educational/identity world.  For lots of us, we got our start in the late 60’s, but our message was only fully recognized in the early 90’s. The endorsement of the indispensability of Jewish education and Hillel and other “continuity” programs led to increases in funding and a new focus.  The much ballyhooed, sobering 1990 Jewish population study was one impetus, but it was also a confluence of other factors as well: optimism about Israel, a booming economy, the end of the cold war and its focus on Soviet Jewry, perceived diminution of anti-Semitism, generational changes, etc.  all allowed issues of Jewish future to take center stage. Over time, the federation system gradually changed from being the central convener to a more, shall we say, monopolistic or controlling system. It was federation dollars and those affluent philanthropists whom they brought to the table which made it possible for programs committed to Jewish identity and education to move from institutional poverty to bourgeois credibility.

The 3 sided table:  In the 90’s the table developed a different shape.  By this time, I was exclusively on the side of the funders.  I discovered that there are funders who didn’t have any interest in seeing the federation system serve as a conduit or vetting agency for their philanthropic dollars.  They viewed the “consensus” and “deliberative” process valued by the federation system to be incrementalism.  If it was true that the community was fast eroding, a marginal re-adjustment of funding priorities would not solve the problem.  The very word “continuity” as used by the federations became a symbol of a system which didn’t deliver the goods.  These funders began to sit at the table, on their own, next to the federations and across from the grantees, and directed their own funds, directly, to the causes and institutions they felt reflected their own priorities.

The 1 sided table.  This 3 sided approach was of limited satisfaction to independent funders. By the mid-90’s, philanthropists began to bring a new, fertile and challenging approach to their funding of Jewish “futures”.  Free standing partnerships, collaborations, and venture philanthropy projects emerged in rapid succession.  With some degree of lip service to the federation role, mega and not so mega funders began to do their own things.  Some of their projects are well known: Israel Birthright, PEJE, Foundation for Jewish Camping, the Israel Project, The Curriculum Initiative, The Joshua Venture, DeLeT, to mention just a very few.  While each of these efforts, many of which I had the privilege of being involved with in their early days, has had its own history, strengths and weaknesses, goals and challenges, destiny and destination, all of them have been characterized by several factors which challenged communal norms: 

1. they were well funded enough to make noise;
2. they had enough “clout” for that noise to be listened to;
3. they were about impacting masses of people –
4. in record time
5. they were self funded by philanthropists and governed by boards comprised of the funders or their staff representatives.

Through partnerships, collaborations, and venture philanthropy projects, philanthropists have attempted to reinvent the very structure of the Jewish world. Nothing less than a radical transformation would stand a chance with the millions of Jews who found that the Jewish enterprise had become soporific, self absorbed, irrelevant, and alienating.  As the newly coronated world philosopher Bono recently put it, “It has to feel like history; incrementalism puts the audience in a snooze.”  He might well have been sitting at one sided table with these philanthropists.

The outside of the table: Recently, I have been a part of the world not typically at the table.  I have been teaching philanthropists and foundation professionals from all facets of American life, and advising families and foundations outside the Jewish world.  I have gained a new perspective on these developments within.  After all, the Jewish community did not invent philanthropy.  We did not invent partnerships, venture projects, or the goal of using funds to change communal behaviors.  There are lessons to be learned on how to do it right. 

What have I have learned from the world beyond our many sided tables? I have learned that venture projects without “exit strategies” from the beginning often doom well meaning and promising projects; that disaster funding [perhaps a metaphor for the perceived state of the Jewish world] without plans for long term systemic change is self indulgent and often disappointing; that there are fads in philanthropy, and “new” is often exciting, but the new may or may not be better than that which was tested over time; that partnerships can allow a creative leveraging of limited resources, but they can also be safe, prestigious ways of avoiding the hard questions of risk; that the community may be better off with a room full of various shaped tables than aspire to only one shape or size. 

I have also learned that real change comes from learning, and learning comes from humility, an all too elusive commodity. “Making a difference” implies meaningful change – and change carries with it the risk of failure.  Only those funders willing to risk – whether in types of funding or in scope of grantees – and to learn from those risks, will precipitate the transformational, adaptable, agile, vibrant and robust 21st Century Jewish community that they hope will define their legacies.

Richard A. Marker currently is Senior Fellow at NYU’s Center for Philanthropy and a philanthropy advisor to families and foundations throughout the United States; he has been on one side or the other of  all of these tables for 38 years.