UJA Closes Operation Exodus Campaign; Expects Just Short of $1 Billion Goal

After more than four years, 500,000 new immigrants and nearly $900 million dollars, the United Jewish Appeal’s Operation Exodus is coming to a close.

Last month, at its national campaign conference, UJA formally ended its fund-raising campaign to help Jews immigrate to Israel from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. But the campaign will continue in many cities, as local federations solicit for Operation Exodus through the end of the year.

When completed, UJA expects to have raised $910 million for the project, slightly short of its $1 billion goal. The financial targets of Operation Exodus, however, have been in almost constant flux, matching the fluctuations in the numerical estimates for immigration from the former Soviet Union.

When launched in 1990, Operation Exodus was conceived of as a three-year campaign to raise $420 million for the 200,000 immigrants expected during that period. But as 185,000 immigrants arrived that year, predictions for immigration soared and the Operation Exodus goal was doubled.

Since then, with Russian Jewish leaders such as Natan Sharansky repeatedly charging failure by successive Israeli governments to devote enough energy to creating jobs for the new immigrants, the immigration rate has tumbled to the present 60,000 a year.

“Our hope is that the aliyah picks up, and that everyone who wants to leave will leave now,” said Richard Wexler, chairman of Operation Exodus and of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.

“The reality seems to suggest that there will be a steady flow. While the places Jews are coming from (in the various former Soviet republics) will change, the flow will probably remain the same — unless, God forbid, there is a crisis there,” he said.

OPERATION EXODUS TO BE PART OF CAMPAIGN

Money for Operation Exodus will continue to arrive at UJA, as donors pay off their three-year pledges. And the Jews from the former Soviet Union will remain a central focus of the UJA, as it folds the Operation Exodus theme of rescue into the regular campaign.

“Our challenge is to convince these (new Operation Exodus) donors to maintain these gifts by moving them into the regular campaign,” said Richard Pearlstone, UJA’s new national chairman.

“We will strive to increase the dollars into our annual campaign, because this is the foundation of our support,” he said.

In part, this will entail continuing one of the central challenges of the Operation Exodus campaign — maintaining the excitement even when the aliyah numbers slowed and donors had already pledged once for the campaign.

Maynard Wishner, president of the Council of Jewish Federations, told the UJA conference last month that the current rate of immigration still constitutes a “miracle” of “biblical proportions.”

Still, the UJA is not relying solely on the excitement of immigration to revive its annual campaign. This campaign has “atrophied” over the past five years, going from $760 million to $720 million, according to Rabbi Brian Lurie, the organization’s executive vice president.

Several new programs are being launched to “animate the donors to get excited, participate and give more money to the annual campaign,” said Lurie.

These include Partnership 2000, which will twin American communities with Israeli communities in the Negev and Galilee. The program is designed to build direct relationships between the Americans and Israelis who will jointly decide how the money will be spent.

For perhaps the first time, UJA is highlighting the portion of its campaign which helps promote youth trips to Israel.

And yielding to the trend of designated giving, in which donors choose the projects to which their gifts will be directed, UJA is introducing a program it calls Supplemental Earmarked Giving Opportunities. This will enable individuals or communities to designate specific projects as beneficiaries by increasing their present level of giving.