UJA Unveils ‘capacity’ Campaign Aims for 1983

The United Jewish Appeal has unveiled a 1983 campaign plan that calls for the American Jewish community to give to its full potential to meet the humanitarian needs of Jews in Israel and around the globe, and is highlighted by an innovative ten-week opening program that spans three continents.

The 1983 campaign, outlined by newly installed National Chairman Robert Loup of Denver, at the UJA National Leadership Conference here last weekend gets underway with “Liftoff ’83”, an intensive series of major gift events in the United States, Europe and Israel beginning September 12 and continuing through November 18. The plan also calls for stepped up efforts to improve the flow of cash from U.S. communities to linked Project Renewal neighborhoods in Israel and includes a comprehensive strategy to eliminate the Jewish Agency’s indebtedness by the end of the decade.

“We have the capacity to double or more than double — the total we raise to meet the need in Israel and the world over,” Loup told the conference delegates. “The goal for ’83 is to begin to turn our capacity into life-giving reality.”

The plan presented by Loup, who chaired UJA’s 1983 Campaign Planning Committee, is built around the “Liftoff ’83” effort to establish an early level of increased giving far beyond all prior achievements.

Beginning with “Hineni I,” a major gift meeting in New York, the “Liftoff” program also includes a “Campaign Fly-In” by teams of prominent Israelis, national Jewish leaders and public personalities to sweep major Jewish communities in a concentrated fund raising effort; a “Campaign Leadership Gathering” of a projected 1,500 community leaders in Israel, including pre-Gathering missions in Europe and North Africa and special pre-and post-Gathering programming in Israel; the Ninth Annual International Leadership Meeting to be held this year in Geneva, Switzerland, and “Inside Washington,” a special post-election mission in Washington, D.C.

Former National Chairman Herschel Blumberg of Washington, D.C., who led UJA’s 1981 and 1982 campaigns and has succeeded Irwin Field of Los Angeles as UJA’s President and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, outlined for conference delegates a plan developed by the Jewish Agency Debt Retirement Task Force to eliminate the Agency’s indebtedness by the end of the decade.

DEBT RETIREMENT GOAL

Noting that “this is our debt,” Blumberg pointed out that American communities had not raised enough money in their campaigns to fund adequately Jewish Agency programs and services for the massive waves of immigrants to Israel in the 1950s. Subsequently, a decline in allocations to UJA from community campaigns and on erratic and inadequate flow of cash from communities resulted in heavy borrowing by the Agency and sharp cuts in personnel, programs and services. The Jewish Agency Debt Retirement Task Force is made up of leadership from UJA and the Council of Jewish Federations.