Adjusting Our Lives

The question of whether Jewish federations for philanthropic work should join in Community Chests, that is, central city-wide money-raising agencies for all social welfare organizations with no regard to denomination or creed, is increasingly drawing interest and attention. At the time of the first census (1927) of Jewish communal organizations, taken by Dr. H. Lin-field, director of the statistical department of the American Jewish Committee, out of forty-two federations, twenty-six were members of Community Chests.

While the Jewish federations are numerously represented in Chest cities, yet the overwhelming majority of the Jews in America live in cities, such as New York, that are not included in any such Chest participation. Therefore, in any intensive effort to be made to increase Chest facilities or to establish Chests in cities where they are not organized, the matter will become a burning problem for Jews.

Recently the question was brought to the fore in a program announced at a meeting of the Community Chest Association forecasting an intensive publicity and other campaigns in order to bring about great money-raising activities on behalf of community needs.

A COMPLEX PROBLEM

In connection with this matter a few timely questions press for answer.

What should be the relationship between the Jewish Federation and the centralized money raising agency, both in Chest and non-Chest cities? In Chest cities where we may be members of the Chest and in Chest cities where we may be non-members, and in non-Chest cities, what is going to be the Jewish attitude toward this effort?

The majority of Jewish leaders are of the opinion that Federations should participate in Community Chests, or that Federations should be responsible for adequate Jewish giving in non-sectarian emergency welfare campaigns. Not only is it desirable that the Jewish community should be very liberal in its contributions to the Chest, but there should be no misgiving that we receive from the Community Fund more than the Jews contribute to it.

Again, it is an honorable duty of the members of the Jewish community to lend every possible help and service in Chest campaigns in order that the quotas expected by the Community Chest are completely raised.

The problem of Jewish federations and Community Chests has brought into American Jewish life the necessity for the organization of special organizations, called Jewish Welfare Funds, that take up the support of non-local Jewish national and international philanthropies and of purely Jewish recreational and cultural activities.

JEWISH PARTICIPATION

The experience in several Chest cities, notably in Detroit, has shown that the Jewish Federation’s contributions to the Community Fund have been more plentiful when it organized all Jewish workers into distinct Jewish teams responsible for Jewish givers, rather than merging its workers with the general money-raising organization. This latter plan, favored by the “assimilationists” in the Jewish camp, produced quite disappointing results in contributions.

It is, in other words, very important for the Federation to maintain a very strong and vital hold and direct discipline on the Jewish community, both in setting up the fund-raising machinery and in the all-important soliciting processes.

The contrast in experience in the first three-year period when the Jewish group in Detroit was responsible for the raising funds among Jews with very fine results, and—on the other hand—in the second period of three years when the Jewish part of the city was thrown into the whole community pot, with very poor results, needs no comment. It indicates how important it is for federations, in order to encourage adequate responsibility of the Jews to the community at large, to organize the Jewish participation in the general fund-raising process.

In the words of Mr. H. Wineman, chairman of the board of the Jewish Welfare Federation in Detroit: “The economic depression of the last few years may have a lot to do with this, but the plan where we worked as distinct Jewish teams and solicited Jewish prospects, was the most successful and is the best plan to follow.”

FUND RAISING AND COMMUNITY PLANNING

Thus in cities where the Federation or its constituent societies is financed by general Community Chest or by Emergency Welfare campaigns, the Federation should retain not only budgetary responsibility for its social welfare agencies, but a fund-raising machinery to assure active Jewish participation in campaigns financing philanthropic work of the city.

When all is said, the raising and distributing of funds remain the chief responsibility of federations. Two new circumstances, as a result of present-day conditions, have to be taken into account when basic principles for the federation function are considered in the light of the economic depression.

Diminishing income from the traditional sources of support requires in the first place an extension of money-raising efforts to include the participation of all groups in the Jewish community with corresponding democratization of federation management; second, a greater measure of community planning authority for the modernization and the economical operation of the Jewish community social work program.