Federations to launch new process to aid global needs

Rachel Pomerance and Jacob Berkman

The United Jewish Communities, the coordinating body for the North American Jewish federation system, is scrapping the process it has been using for several years to determine its funding of overseas programs.

The Overseas Needs Assessment and Distribution Committee, known as ONAD is being supplanted with an agreement between UJC’s two main overseas partners, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which funds Israeli immigration and absorption as well as Zionist programs worldwide, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which provides relief and welfare programs for Jews abroad.

In the past, each local federation was expected to give a predetermined percentage of the money that it raised through its local campaign to ONAD, which would then divvy up that money to UJC’s overseas partners. Under that agreement, JAFI and JDC split that money at roughly a 75 to ‘5 clip, and JDC then allocated a percentage of its money to ORT, according to Eva Lynn Gans of Teaneck, who sat on the UJC’s ONAD board for the past three years.

But that process became cumbersome, said Gans, because under the old arrangement, federations were expected to increase the dollars they gave if their campaigns increased, which many federations failed to do. This limited the pool of money and left JAFI and JDC fighting for dollars, while ONAD tried to figure out an appropriate formula.

"The federations weren’t getting the message that they had to increase funding," Gans, a past president of the precursor to the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey, told The Jewish Standard. "The whole purpose of ONAD was to get the message out to increase overseas funding, and it wasn’t happening. You found yourself in a situation where we were spending our time in this situation where JAFI and JDC were basically bouncing off each other for limited dollars. It wasn’t workable."

UJA-NNJ executive Vice President Howard Charish said that his federation always met its obligation.

The agencies, with approval for direct negotiations by UJC’s board, agreed on March 13 to continue the longtime 75 to ‘5 split in core overseas funding that favors the Jewish Agency. At present, the Jewish Agency receives about $138 million from the federation system and the JDC receives $46 million, $3 million of which it dispenses to World ORT, a global vocational training program.

An additional 10 percent of overseas funds comes from gifts by individual federations to the agencies of their choice.

As part of the agreement, the federation system will advance $18 million to the JDC from its special campaign, Operation Promise, to aid needy elderly in the former Soviet Union. Operation Promise, which has raised $50 million in pledges, aims to raise $160 million over three years for Ethiopian immigration and absorption in Israel, and to help revitalize and aid the Jewish community in the former Soviet Union.

The two-year agreement between JDC and the Jewish Agency will come before the UJC board for approval in June and would begin July 1.

The new agreement, essentially a return to pre-ONAD days, is hailed by many for returning order to what had become a messy process.

But the decision raises a serious question.

ONAD was created for a reason — to help boost overseas funds. Since local federations do not always comply with UJC recommendations, to what extent will the new process urge increased funding overseas?

ONAD was born along with the UJC — the 1999 merger of the Council of Jewish Federations, the United Jewish Appeal, and the United Israel Appeal. The streamlined system was created, in part, to reverse a trend of declining federation dollars overseas in favor of local projects. ONAD, a committee representing a cross-section of federation leadership, was meant to engage people in overseas projects, inspiring the system to boost overseas giving.

Under ONAD, dollars allocated for overseas fell at a less drastic rate, but the funding never substantially increased.

At the same time, the process pitted the Jewish Agency against the JDC, creating a climate of competition, with each group pleading for money to respond to basic human needs. The Jewish Agency, for example, lobbied for lifting up poor Ethiopian immigrants in Israel, and the JDC detailed the needs of hungry Holocaust survivors in the former Soviet Union.

Many complained the exercise was a political logjam: When ONAD members discussed altering the 75-‘5 split, Israeli heavyweights, including Ariel Sharon, petitioned ONAD members to make Jewish Agency funding a priority. When the last round of negotiations ended in December ‘004, the committee’s two-year plan recommended that the arrangement continue.

But all the politicking and recommendations belied a much more serious issue in the federation system, insiders say — the noncompliance of individual federations to meet these recommendations. That in turn intensified the fighting between the UJC’s overseas partners, who fear a dwindling pool of funds.

JDC’s executive vice president, Steven Schwager, warned that the new agreement is contingent on maintaining current levels of overseas funding.

But federation dollars largely stay local. According to an October ‘005 UJC report of the ONAD review process, while the federations’ combined annual campaign, which tops $800 million, increased by 4 percent since ‘000, dollars for overseas have dropped by more than 4.5 percent since ‘001.

According to Richard Wexler of Chicago, a UJC board member and head of the Jewish Agency’s North American Council, the first year of ONAD saw excellent compliance, but then federations slipped back into a pre-ONAD practice, making decisions independent of the ONAD request.

Furthermore, the ONAD process eroded trust in UJC’s overseas partners by forcing the two agencies into competition, he said.

In his weekly letter to federations earlier this month, Howard Rieger, UJC’s president and CEO, stressed the need to boost funding overseas, but did not detail modes of advocacy.

"Core needs must be sustained and the only way to do so is for them to keep pace with the growth of annual campaigns," he wrote. "Many communities act upon that principle, but some have either chosen not to, or found it difficult to meet this commitment. We must work with every federation to do everything in our power to shore up that aspect of our operations."

In fact, some say ONAD may have helped pave the way.

It spawned the growth of Israel and overseas committees at federations that were engaged in a healthy debate about allocations, said Steven Klinghoffer of Whippany-based United Jewish Federation of Metro- West, the most recent ONAD chairman.

But even Klinghoffer suggested that the exercise failed, citing issues of federation compliance and the formation of Operation Promise.

"One could argue that the Operation Promise campaign would not have been necessary if we had been able to reprioritize" funding, addressing those needs through the general campaign, he said. At least now, he said, "the good part is that there’s shalom bayit,” or peace in the house.

And for now local federations are waiting to hear from the UJC exactly how the ONAD disbanding will affect them, said UJA-NNJ’s Charish.

The problem, though, said Gans, is that the solution may turn out to be a non-solution.

"The ONAD board had very good geographical representation," she said of the board, which had between 60 and 70 lay representatives from federations across the country. "It’s very hard to be enthusiastic about the end of a process. And I don’t think that people don’t care that ONAD is gone. I just think that people were worn down by the process."

JTA/Jewish Standard

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