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Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director May 2007 The most recent report Dr. Amy Sales and her Brandeis University research team submitted to the Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF) asserts that “relatively little is being done at the first steps of professional development where new talent is identified, recruited, and prepared for professional work. Unless these first steps are successful, problems with the quality of professional practice, attrition, and the absence of a professional culture will persist.” It is with this goal in mind that JJF Directors have approved a grant of up to $2.325 million to BBYO for implementation of a Youth Professional Initiative. In short, BBYO will identify a cohort of up to 20 young professionals, who during three years of youth group work with that organization will pursue an executive MBA degree and ongoing Jewish education. The professionals’ experience will include study and youth group advising in Israel. Each young professional will be mentored and afforded personal career guidance if s/he decides to continue working within the Jewish world. This grant provides for an independent evaluator to develop with BBYO and JJF agreed-upon benchmarks by which we will collaboratively assess progress the Initiative achieves in implementing its targeted outcome. JJF Directors will consider funding up to 3 additional cohorts of 20 young professionals in each cohort based on the success of the Initiative. Over the long term, working with BBYO and various other Jewish communal organizations, JJF aspires to achieve field impact. The Foundation’s effectiveness in this regard will be to demonstrate that its philanthropic support ultimately provides an increased supply of highly qualified educators who are retained for greater durations of time than is currently the case for educators of Jewish youth. JJF is in effect responding directly to a challenge issued by researchers Dr. Roberta Louis Goodman and Eli Schaap, who assert “System wide change on the national and communal as well as institutional levels are needed to make certain that Jewish education attracts, supports and retains outstanding Jewish educational personnel. Competent educators are essential to providing compelling Jewish educational visions to learners of all ages. In order to recruit and retain these competent educators, the whole system needs to raise the standards of the culture of employment including benefits and expectations and support for ongoing professional development and degree and credential acquisition. Other grants awarded by JJF Directors included a $2.275 million grant to birthright israel and funding for two early childhood education initiatives. A significant portion of the birthright grant is designated for locally-targeted follow up activities in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. birthright will work with existing local infrastructure to develop work plans for engaging birthright alumni in these four metropolitan areas. In the field of early childhood education, JJF took complementary actions by joining the nationally based Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (JECEI) and becoming the seed funder for a comprehensive Bay Area-wide early childhood initiative. Among the many funders and collaborations involved in the initiatives JJF will support by virtue of its recent grant awards are the Adelson, Grinspoon, Schusterman, and Steinhardt Foundations as well as the San Francisco Jewish Federation (whose planning and endowment departments developed the Bay Area Early Childhood Initiative). Collaboration and continuous peer learning ideally will be mainstays of JJF’s philanthropy.
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