Mega Jewish Nonprofits in the Digital Sphere
>>Ezra S. Shanken
Mon Mar 8, 2010
Mega Jewish Nonprofits in the Digital Sphere
Jews often seem to be looking for ways to connect with each other. Online communities and platforms make that easier than before. If Jewish organizations can effectively spread their messages, they have the opportunities to attract people who feel excluded from communities, or who are unaware of existing organizations' efforts.
The State of Israel and the Role of the Nonprofit
>>Aliza Solomon
Thu Jan 21, 2010
The State of Israel and the Role of the Nonprofit
Additionally, regardless of whether the government bears the ultimate responsibility for feeding the poor, the fact is that it is not doing enough. In this situation, are you honestly ready to abandon these people to lives filled with shame, hunger, and unfulfilled dreams when you have the means and opportunities to help?
Should such holy endeavors even be tainted by such worldly considerations as money, especially on our holiest days of the year, when our thoughts and actions are to be concentrated on repentance? Isn’t having a public auction pandering to the worst motivations for giving tzedakah, rather than the highest, which Maimonides defined as being anonymous? On the other hand, because people on the high holidays are more prepared to try to make atonement for their sins, maybe it is in itself a mitzvah to create a situation that encourages and enables them to give more generously (and feel more generous), and thus to lessen the weight of their sins in their own eyes, and perhaps, in God’s eyes too.
Whether working to generate an ethic of civic obligation in Israel or to develop scalable environmental initiatives, social entrepreneurs can help organizations and communities transform themselves for the sake of their local environment and the world.
Barack Obama’s political campaign in the United States showed the world the power of online community organizing and its potential for empowering the broad mass of individuals to participate in communal decision-making. In mobilizing community members to act in the interest of change for the better, social entrepreneurs can develop and utilize communications technologies to do for the Jewish People what Obama did for the American People.
After Bernard Madoff and the economic recession, as the damage to the nonprofit world was revealed with cutbacks and the closure of social ventures and foundations across the spectrum, we were asked whether this was a good year to train and launch another class of PresenTense fellows. “Is it fair,” we were asked, “to get someone’s hopes up when even existing ventures can’t stay afloat?”
O manoot o’namoot: art or we die. This play on words, found on an Israeli bumper sticker, demands that we reflect on how crucial art is to our existence. Art is one of the most accurate records of human history, a powerful form of cultural diplomacy, and a valuable educational tool.
How can philanthropies most effectively invest in leaders? While investing in talented individuals has great potential to impact the community, investing in an interconnected cohort of leaders can be transformative. Over the last two decades, numerous Jewish foundations and philanthropies have sought to further their missions by supporting fellowship grants, which help the greater community by empowering select individuals to become communal agents of change. Alumni of these fellowships have played a major role in the renaissance of Jewish life and the emergence of an entire sector of innovative Jewish organizations.
