A proposal to increase the national budget of B’nai B’rith by more than 30 percent will be presented to the organization’s triennial convention next year. Label A. Katz, president of B’nai B’rith, said today that he would recommend a $10 per capita increase in the voluntary fund-raising efforts of its 1,150 men’s lodges in the United States and Canada.
He said this would increase B’nai B’rith’s annual national budget, now in excess of $6,000,000 by an estimated $2,000,000. Mr. Katz told the annual convention of B’nai B’rith District 2, which covers the central states and Rocky Mountain area, that the additional funds were needed to extend B’nai B’rith’s international affairs program, meet new demands in human relations activities, and “relieve heavy pressures” for expansion of its multiple youth services.
As an example, he cited applications from more than 150 colleges for Hillel installations on campus. “The postwar baby boom is overtaking us,” Mr. Katz said. He told the 500 delegates that B’nai B’rith could not look to federations and welfare funds to meet “much of the increase.” He said this was “not a criticism of welfare funds, but a realistic awareness of their own burdens in maintaining present levels of allocation at a time when their income is not substantially increasing.”
He pointed out that welfare funds had been able to provide “only slight advances” in allocations to B’nai B’rith youth programs, in spite of favorable recommendations by the Large Cities Budgeting Conference of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.
“As a result,” Mr. Katz said, “welfare fund participation in the B’nai B’rith youth programs budget has decreased proportionately over the recent years, and is now less than 15 percent.” The bulk of the $3,200,000 youth budget, largest of its kind, is raised by B’nai B’rith from membership sources. This trend will continue, Mr. Katz added, if B’nai B’rith is to “meet some of the increased demand for its service and maintain its policy of a balanced budget.”
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