Jewish Philanthropy in Crisis, According to Veteran Observer

Shortly after the Chronicle of Philanthropy declared the United Jewish Appeal the top philanthropy in America, a veteran Jewish communal activist has issued a warning against euphoria.

“Jewish philanthropy is in trouble,” writes Gerald Bubis in the December issue of Moment magazine. “And the worst is yet to come.”

While Jews have more money than ever before, they are giving proportionately less to Jewish federations, writes Bubis, founding dean of the School of Jewish Communal Service at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

And the younger a Jew is, the less he or she gives, and the less likely he or she is to share the attachment to Israel which has long been the basis of the federation campaign.

Awareness of this connection between Jewish identity and the federation bottom line is only now beginning to percolate in the Jewish community. The clearest acknowledgment to date comes this week in New York, as Jewish continuity dominates the discussions of the 3,000 delegates gathered at the Council of Jewish Federations General Assembly.

In both 1990 and 1991, the nearly 200 federations across America raised more than $1 billion.

But, says Bubis, the health of the federation system should not be judged by how many dollars were raised this year compared to last, but by how many dollars were not being given to the Jewish philanthropic system.

“The crisis is not yet appreciated for what it is: the small number of Jews who are giving the significant number of dollars,” Bubis told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a recent interview.

The problem, he said, is that the federation system is dependent on a small number of very wealthy donors. He writes that 0.5 percent of Jewish households account for half of the money raised by federations. And while more and more Jews are entering the ranks of the super-rich, fewer and fewer are committing themselves to the Jewish community.

In 1986, Bubis notes, more than 100 of the 400 richest Americans listed by Forbes magazine — each worth at least $160 million — were Jews.

Comparatively few of them, however, place the Jewish community as their highest priority.

“There are a significant number of very, very wealthy Jews, who are not answering the call,” said Bubis.

“In 1923, the New York federation raised $5 million. If you go back to how many Jews there were at (that) time and the wealth of the Jews at that time, I would make the case that, as a proportion of available wealth, more money was raised in 1923 in New York City than in 1991.”

In part, this stems from the increased competition by non-Jewish charities for Jewish dollars. Museums and symphonies that once shunned Jews now court them as board members and donors.

Bubis cites the media mogul Walter Annenberg as an example. The same week he gave $15 million to launch Operation Exodus (“God bless that he did,” said Bubis), he also announced a $40 million donation to the United Negro College Fund.

This, for Bubis, raises the question of the role Annenberg’s children — and those of other major givers — will play in the Jewish community of the future. He is not optimistic.

“I’m saying that the grandchildren of Walter Annenberg are, with all likelihood, lost to Jewish life, since it’s not a matter of significance for Annenberg whether anything be put into place to ensure Jewish continuity here,” said Bubis in the interview.

The community is becoming increasingly dependent on the very rich at a time when middle-income Jews are finding it increasingly more difficult to give to charity for a number of reasons. Most notably, Bubis cites the skyrocketing costs of Jewish education.

“Once you finish paying for nursery school, camping, memberships, you have no discretionary money left over to give to federation,” said Bubis. “Jewish intensive is Jewish expensive.

“Or to put it a different way,” he said. Those paying for a Jewish education are really the ones underwriting the services far beyond any sense of proportion. They’re the ones engaging in real tithing, putting up a huge percentage of their income. They’re the tzadekim (righteous ones).”

Few of the arguments Bubis makes are new to the federation community. Most stem from the results of the 1990 National Jewish Population Study.

And several of Bubis’ key points echo those made by a document published by the Council of Jewish Federations this year, entitled “Jewish Environmental Scan: Toward the Year 2000.”

But at least one leading federation professional disputes the notion that a crisis exists. “We have outside testimony we’re doing well,” said Stephen Solender, executive vice president of New York’s UJA-Federation, referring to UJA’s ranking by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

And he noted as well the ability of the federation-funded system to rescue thousands of Jews from Ethiopia and resettle hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union in Israel and America.

For Bubis, though, these accomplishments do not negate the fact that for nearly 20 years, with the exception of special campaigns, federation revenues have been declining or flat, when inflation is factored in.

Bubis argued in the interview that it is fair to look at the money raised by federations without including campaigns like Operation Exodus, which has helped rescue and resettle hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union.

“The excitement born of the historic opportunity to help Jews from Eastern Europe, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union has enabled federations to avoid recognizing the degree to which giving has plummeted,” he charged.

Operation Exodus, he said, is not a solution to long-term trends.

Solender, however, said that the basic federation campaign, which runs around $125 million in his city, cannot be looked at in isolation.

“You have to look at all the different income streams,” said Solender. He pointed as an example to the New York federation’s capital campaign, which has raised $700 million since the middle of the 1980s.

Taken this way, “the picture is more promising.”

And Operation Exodus, Solender said, brought in new donors for New York UJA- Federation, bringing the total to 150,000 from 110,000 in the late 1980s.

Solender said that anxiety in the federation system is to be expected, given that it must pay the bills for “the miracle” of ingathering Jewish communities in the midst of a deep recession. “But there’s a difference in saying, yes, there aren’t enough dollars to go around, and saying the system is failing.”