Time to Connect

These days, it is not unusual to hear a wireless device go off during a service, despite the fact that congregants are asked to turn off all wireless devices. And while we might feel momentarily annoyed, the truth is that the Jewish organized community also stands to benefit from integrating how plugged-in most of us are into veritable member engagement.  How can we do that?

Over and over what I hear is that we are ready to engage, but there is not enough time to be connecting online. The truth is, there is always enough time. For a real connection and honest member engagement to occur, what Jewish organizations need are:

• content (what you want to be saying and sharing)
• an organized way to share the content and
• a timely response to follow-up with your members about the content
  
  

Sharing information has evolved from being the sole responsibility of a rabbi or the front office receptionist to becoming a shared responsibility that involves every staff member and committee within your organization. A synagogue communication or outreach committee can develop a year-long communication strategy and calendar, but everyone needs to participate in implementing and carrying it through in order for it to successfully engage more members.

Content should come from various sources, and implementation through a variety of communication tools and media should be directed through the Committee. Most importantly, the growth of our Jewish organizations requires volunteers to step forward.  We should be able to reasonably expect plenty of community members who are willing to take on the task of helping to share content online.

Our members are connected online. Why not turn this fact into an asset by asking them to help the organization reach out to other members? The time is now. The people are there. Just like anything else, the first step to turning connectivity into connectedness is quite simply to ask.

Tips for Effective Rabbi Blogs (Hint: There’s No Secret)

To say that there are five secrets to effective blogging for rabbis would be no more accurate than to claim that there are five secrets to effectively understanding the Torah. In order to blog effectively, rabbis simply need to move past any lingering techno-phobia or preconceptions about blogging. In other words, there is no secret.

There are, however, so tips and reminders that may be helpful as you begin to blog: 

• A rabbi’s blog is today’s way of beginning a conversation and creating more member engagement.  
  
  
• A rabbi’s blog could be a weekly sharing of the weekly Torah portion and the rabbi’s reflection on its meaning to us today.
  
  
• A rabbi’s blog could be used to link up congregants with other Jewish communities online.
  
  
• A rabbi’s blog could convey a spiritual message, a community message, a leadership message, and/or an educational message.
  
  
• A rabbi’s blog needs to be regularly updated and consistently written.
  
  
• A rabbi’s blog needs to be featured in the e-newsletter, the website, and in all the written materials from the synagogue.
  
  

When it comes to rabbis blogging, let’s no longer refer to “secrets,” as if there is a special formula for success. Let’s just ask ourselves: How can a blog serve as a vehicle for the messages and meaning your community needs and wants to hear from the rabbi?

Purposeful and Passionate: Synagogues in the Age of Facebook

Synagogues lagging behind cultural change is nothing new. In fact, there are those who would say synagogues should operate from a thoughtful, process-driven perspective and adopt change slowly. In essence I would agree with that. The challenge is all in the balance.

Synagogues must be able to respond to a rapidly changing culture, while keeping themselves grounded in their mission. Not an easy task, yet we have always found a way to enhance our religious experience through the current culture of our times.

As Jews we must keep our attention focused forward - through the windshield and the dramatic changing landscape ahead. Of course, we must also be alert to the view in the rear view mirror - what we are leaving behind and what is gaining ground.

This dual outlook is what should drive us as individual Jews, just as it drives the Googles, Facebooks, Intels (all with Jewish inside), and even the State of Israel.

Synagogues have the same opportunity of using technology to build a bridge between the synagogue experience and today’s culture. Technology needs to be an outward- looking tool for greater connectedness for the community.

While there are a number of creative synagogues doing remarkable outreach and engaging more members, too few synagogues have been able to emulate their example and create an operational model that will lead them and their communities to a stronger future.

Change happens when leaders intentionally and constructively work toward a better future. Our synagogues need a modern Abraham or Moses - intentional leaders with vision and the passion to lead a movement.

Technology is only a tool. And when used to its maximum benefit, it is a tool that enhances our purpose, our mission, and our movement.

What is your purpose? What is your synagogues' purpose? Where is our passion?

What holds us together as a people, as a religion, is thousands of years old. Abraham, Rebecca,Isaac, Sarah, Moses, Ramban, Golda Meir -- each has served as a powerful connector to our Jewish roots and our religious traditions. Our challenge is to use our rich history of purposeful leadership to regain the strength and focus for our individual communities and create meaningful purpose for our lives today.

American society is constantly changing and that change has impacted our Jewish culture; yet our Jewish foundation remains firm. While our families are spread around the world, less rooted in one cohesive community, we are challenged to create a wholly new Jewish community based on the realities of our world today.

We need to understand today’s 4 P’s for synagogue prosperity, in order to reclaim our Jewish movement in today’s American culture.

• Purpose – the higher goal, the higher calling that resonates
• Passion – in any movement it takes firebrands to influence
• People – those we want to join with us
• Projects – purposeful doing brings people together

Purpose, Passion, People, Projects – the rest is all detail.

This is the time of year when synagogues have an opportunity to start fresh. The first step out of the gate for thinking fresh is to form a strategic planning task force that, with a clear focus and effective leadership, can help the synagogue better understand the community's passions and create a movement in support of them.

Strategic planning work is more about the process than it is about the outcome. Working together as a community, learning, listening to understand what others want and value, and then ultimately arriving at a common goal is key to successful community building and successful movement creation.

• Re-identify your purpose.
• Support it with a passionate commitment.
• Focus it outward toward the people most interested in being drawn toward the purpose.
• Then create projects that will drive action, and more people toward you purpose.
• The outcome - Synagogue well-being.
  
  

And through the process you will find out the power of the potential of connectedness in the community, in the synagogue and online.

Recession--Over?

Well, the government has declared that the Great Recession has ended.  So all those extra fundraising concerns you had are over.   Everything is headed back to the ­­­way it was.  No more financial worries.  How can they even release such a statement?  What newspaper is the Federal Government reading?  Oops, I’m sorry, what blogs are the Federal Government reading, what tweets are they receiving?

Fundraising must be a non-stop synagogue effort.  And synagogues must look at new ways of generating income.  All the things your community is now doing — book sales, special events and annual appeals — must go on with more energy than ever before.  But now you have the potential of a new 24/7 fundraising opportunity through your website.  Is your rabbi’s fund growing?  Does your community know there is a rabbi’s fund or what that money is used for?  Is your building fund growing outside of dues?  Does your community know what your building needs are or where to donate in support of those needs?

Your website can be an active part of your fundraising efforts.  Its only limits are your imagination, or your board’s point of view.  Just imagine weaving together our established Jewish pathways and online technology to do the right thing:

• if your calendar of events lead someone to an online registration form that included an immediate payment method,
  
  
• if the b’nai mitvah announcement had a link to a designated donation for synagogue youth activities,
  
  
• if your religious school asked for grandparent e-mails both to inform them of upcoming events and drive them to online donations,
  
  
• if the death announcement e-mails had a clickable link to a contribution in memory of the deceased,
  
  
• if your homepage “donate” tab provided multiple donation options (e.g. rabbi’s fund, building fund, library fund),
  
  
• if your recipe page provided links to an online book store where your members could buy the featured recipe, and the synagogue received a percentage of the purchase.
  
  

Your members, their guests, and the drive-by Jew who is sampling your synagogue online are all potential donors. Can you accept online donations on your website? Have you created online donations as a contextual part of our online Jewish pathways?

Is Your Website Helping You Meet Your Mission?

by Lisa Colton, Guest Blogger

Do you manage your technology to run your operations, or to achieve your mission?

According to a recently released study of synagogue web sites commissioned by Jvillage Network, the vast majority of synagogues have a membership management database and a website, but they are not using these tools effectively to achieve their mission. When investing in technology, most congregations focus on what will help them operationally, putting themselves first, rather than focusing on what will help their community lead rich, educated and active Jewish lives, which, last time I looked was the mission of most synagogues. How does a synagogue’s online presence help support its 3 pillars as a beit midrash (house of study), beit tefillah (house of prayer) and beit knesset (community)? How do their online tools help people connect with one another, lead meaningful lives, learn and support the community?

Let’s take online giving for example. In my experience, congregations are nervous about dealing with online security of credit cards, hesitant to invest in a system to accept online donations, or want to discourage their members from using credit cards since they will incur fees. Only 40% of congregations in this study offer online donations. Expecting your prospective donors to pull out their checkbook, an envelope and stamp is like a bank asking their customers to park their car and stand in line to talk with a teller to get $40 in cash, since ATMs are complicated to install and maintain. Online giving is a norm of being a nonprofit today. As reported here on eJP in June, 2010, the annual Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study showed that even in a down economy, online giving grew 14% in 2009, and 69% of organizations raised more in 2009 than 2008. It’s 2010. No more excuses.

A critical part of a successful, mission-centric online strategy is allocating the right staff time and skills to creating and maintaining the tools, and facilitating the community. In the synagogue survey, of those synagogues limiting or avoiding use of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, 86 percent cite a lack of time to devote to it. I often hear staff (especially at synagogues) rationalize that they can’t start blogging or maintaining a Facebook page because they don’t have a spare 10 minutes a day. No one does. But this isn’t the right calculation. The question is, “how do you get the most mission-centric bang for your buck out of 10 minutes?”

To illustrate the point, let’s look at the synagogue newsletter. Most congregations produce a 12-24 page print newsletter monthly. Producing these newsletters takes 20-60 hours a month (that’s 240-720 hours a year) of staff time to write, edit, layout, print, and mail, and somewhere between $10,000-$20,000 a year of paper, labels, stamps, designers, etc.

Now let’s look at the impact of those hours and tens of thousands of dollars. How many people read it cover to cover? Of the ones who do, are they more educated, involved, volunteering more, donating more, connecting more with their community because of the newsletter? I use this example not to say that you should ditch your print newsletter (I actually don’t think you should), but to illustrate that managing technology to meet your mission may mean re-allocating resources, and modifying job descriptions. At this moment of communications revolution, we must question our assumptions about where investments of time and money are best made, and align these investments with our goals.

Synagogues are in the business of creating and strengthening community. This is a relationship business. Effective communication and excellent customer service is the foundation of being in the relationship business. The technology is no longer complicated, difficult to use, or even that expensive. We need to stop dragging our feet and start embracing these tools, which are a great gift to nonprofits in the relationship business.

The data from this recent synagogue website survey is not surprising to me, but it is very important. It is a call to action for Jewish organizations to align our investments – both financial and human capital – in technology that will further our missions.

Lisa Colton is President of Darim Online.

Membership Has its Privileges

One of the key findings from the recently published synagogue web usage research for the organized Jewish community, including synagogues, is to use technology to be more outward facing.  As membership-based organizations, we tend to reflexively want to draw a hard line in the sand between those who belong and those who don't.  And as human beings, once we choose to belong to an organization, we want to maintain that dividing line--to be seen as a member of something valued and worthy. After all, as American Express has so successfully drilled into our culture, there are privileges to membership.

Every membership-based organization, Jewish or not, needs to deal with this dichotomy. On the one hand, membership does mean belonging to a special organization, and the organization must continuously provide benefits for participation.  And on the other hand, the organization must be constantly looking for ways to increase membership.  This organizational challenge can be effectively met by understanding and making good use of the rich technology available today.

My experience in the organized Jewish world is that there is much to gain from using technology to offer enhanced membership benefits.  Smart organizations know that continuously adding value to their members provides a rock-solid foundation for both a successful retention and a new membership strategy. In a world where value (or lack of it) is personally transmitted every moment of every day through Twitter and texting, creating positive word of mouth--both on and offline--is the key to building a successful future.

Let's use synagogue religious schools as an example.  In many ways religious schools are the foundation for the successful synagogues of the future:

• they provide learning and connectedness for our children
• they create congregation family connections
• they teach the parent through the child
  
  

And just like public education or others engaged in education, the synagogue can create a better learning environment through the use of technology.

Dream with me for a moment.  Imagine that through your synagogue website you had access to your child's classroom.  Imagine that you could understand their assignments, could access a parent's guide to help you ask the right questions. Imagine that parents and students from the same grade could talk to one another, that if your child missed a day of school, the material that was covered in class, plus the homework, were all easily accessible on the synagogue website. Imagine that the access you offered families became the standard of excellence for your community and that new families found their way to your doorstep by the local online buzz they had accessed.

Now stop dreaming. All this is available today.  One of our biggest challenges is to make religious schools such positive places for learning and community building that all those other after-school options available to parents and their kids are viewed as less valuable.

Synagogues that recognize the long-term value inherent in embracing technology to reach and expand their membership know that having a vibrant and engaging website is an important part of an approach to congregational growth and sustainability. The benefits of real time access to both community and to one's Jewishness should be available online through your congregation. The benefits of membership you offer your community will mean more satisfied and connected members, whose word-of-mouth will ultimately bring more congregants and members to your doors, both virtual and actual.

Does Your Website Push Information or Facilitate Community Building?

by Beth Frank Backman

Social media is much more than technology. It challenges us to rethink the nature and purpose of organizations and the reasons why we meet face to face. In doing so it will eventually force us to rethink the nature and role of the synagogue.

Will the synagogue of the future continue to be a coordination hub for Jewish education, bar and bat mitzvah preparation, Jewish identity activities, and prayer? Or will most of these functions move elsewhere, making the synagogue little more that a “meet-up” for ritually required prayer and life cycle events? Will it even be needed for those purposes?

In the future, even Hebrew school and bar/bat mitzvahs may no longer be a driving force in synagogue membership. Why cart kids half way across town to go to Hebrew school if the same learning can be had one-on-one via Skype? Imagine a world where bar and bat mitzvah tutors from Israel, Venezuela, San Diego and New York can be found in an on-line directory and are only a Skype call away. Imagine a world where one can find on the web free lance rabbis and cantors to lead private Shachrit and Mincha services in the Catskills, Rockies or Israel.

Imagine a world where kids form Jewish identity via summer camp and on-line networking with their camp friends throughout the year. Imagine a world where Jewish kids across the city keep in touch via Twitter and meet up at the movie theater or mall on Saturday night. What then happens to the traditional synagogue youth group? Why pay exorbitant synagogue dues just for Hebrew school training or the opportunity to participate in a youth group?
Much depends on how quickly synagogues see the opportunities of social media and incorporate them into their mission. Social media is allowing the traditional functions of the synagogue to be deconstructed and moved out of the synagogue. Many of these “imagined” services are already here and are beginning to generate loyalty.
This presents severe challenges for synagogues. The upcoming generation of 20 somethings sees on-line and off-line relationships as complements of each other. They expect communities where on and off line life create synergy with one another. Technology is fundamentally social and creates the infrastructure needed to maintain social relationships.

The current membership of many synagogues grew up in a world where real community is face to face. Technology is little more than a tool for delivering information. As a result of these differences, it sometimes hard for current membership to understand the need for a new type of on-line presence. When budgets are short there is little incentive to create a website for the Jewish community who has not yet shown up in the synagogue door. But if nothing is done, it is quite possible that the 20-something crowd may never show up.

Despite the challenges, at first glance it looks like synagogues are beginning to bite into social media. According to a study released by Jvillage Network, 66% of synagogues responding had a Facebook page. But a closer look at the data paints a very different picture.

Social media is much more than Facebook and Twitter. Even these classic social media tools can be used in ways that essentially ignore social media. Rather social media is an approach to technology that sees technology primarily as a way to create rich personalized two-way and multi-way connections criss-crossing a group of people.

To really grasp how a synagogue understands and uses social media we need to dig deeper and look at how and what kind of information is being shared on a website, Facebook page or twitter account. How does it build relationships? Is the information being pushed outward at people or are there genuine and personalized exchanges that create strong social bonds between members? When we look at how these tools are used, it is clear that synagogues have barely caught onto the idea of social media:

• It appears that none of the synagogues surveyed had primarily community generated content and only 21% have blogs where community members can comment. In general, website updates are centralized in the hands of staff people or a dedicated volunteer. Content is being pushed from the synagogue to the members and occasionally from member to synagogue, but almost never from member to member.
  
  
• Furthermore content pushed from the synagogue to members tends to be impersonal. While 49% of congregations updated their website with Jewish themed content and most had synagogue calendars, only 7% let members view their membership balances on line and only 4% use their website to help parents monitor their child’s progress in Hebrew school.
  
  
• Personalized information moving from member to congregation tends to be limited to administrative matters: membership application, Hebrew school registration, RSVPs and payment for synagogue events. Even then less than 30% of congregations had one or more of those services. Only 14% had volunteer sign-up tools and only 2% could make changes to their membership accounts.
  
  
• The impersonal nature of the websites is further underscored by the limited opportunities that members have to personalize their interaction with the website. Only 3% provide members a customized home page. Only 14% let users download the synagogue calendar into their personal calendars. 40% lack search functions making it impossible for users to go directly to the content most important to them.
  
  
• Even support of off-line community building is weak. Only 15% provided their membership directory on line. Only 3% stream religious services for house-bound community members.
  
  
• On the other hand, 40% accept on line donations. One has to wonder what message is being sent to members when donation features are more prevalent than features that support personalized member to synagogue communication.
  
  
• The sense that websites are being primarily used to push information to members rather than to facilitate community building is also reinforced by an apparent lack of interest in even passive sources of community feedback such as website analytics.  66% of synagogues either are not or do not know how to use analytic tools to monitor website usage.
  
  

Beth Frank Backman is CEO of Inverbrio.
This piece originally appeared at eJewish Philanthropy on October 20, 2010.