The Great Game of Synagogue Business

by Yoram Samets

I believe it is every member’s responsibility to provide financially for the success of their synagogue. I also believe that there are many different ways to financially support your synagogue. One opportunity that would make a big difference to the organization's financial success would be to bring the financial/business issues out of the back room.

Most of us receive our yearly fundraising appeals, membership dues reminders, and messages about the myriad schemes created to raise money for our synagogues. But few of us understand what is behind the ongoing need to raise money. Few of us think about our synagogue as a business, or understand what it takes to run a synagogue today.

By and large, the system most synagogues use to financially run their operations is directly related to the past, and not the future. The costs of operating a synagogue  -- and how the synagogue will raise the revenue necessary to be successful -- is often a closed-door conversation among a few members and key staff.  

Many businesses have moved to an "open book" policy -- where they share the financial successes and failures with their employees. The primary purpose of  this kind of transparency is to get more employees to think like owners. If business can move toward an open structure that results in a more successful operation, why don't synagogues follow?

As a non-profit business a synagogue already publishes its revenue and expense budgets for the congregation to see and vote on. Why not take "open book" approach and make it part of the synagogues ongoing culture?

Here are some of the advantages to exploring this idea:

• Teach and motivate your members. You have already opened the books to get your budget approved by the congregation, why not update the numbers monthly, this will unify and motivate members to act differently.

• Increase organizational trust. In the culture we live in, we see the continued erosion of trust in our institutions. Operating in an open book environment increases trust through open, honest information.

• Open books end organizational ignorance. Most synagogues have a constant need to raise more revenue. Everything costs more today, even if you do nothing to add to expenses. Having an open book process enables more members to understand the business of the organization. It enables members to see the strengths and the weaknesses of the business. This is all about providing information on an ongoing basis. Information leads to greater business success.
• Community teamwork. Neither being on the fundraising committee, or being the member that is asked for money is an enjoyable situation. And both roles are often made worse because neither really understands the business issues that are driving the need for the revenue. When all members have the same financial understanding, they tend to support one another, pull together, and achieve the communities objectives.
• Open books encourage innovation. Your synagogue's successful financial future is directly tied to improving its process and procedures. Open books will engage more congregants to contribute more money, volunteer more time, and provide new ideas to improve the synagogue’s operation.  

So what are you waiting for? Open your books and you will see many wonderful improvements in your community.

Getting More From Your Adult Education Offerings

By Yoram Samets

The synagogue I belong to  in Vermont has an Adult Education committee that does a great job putting together classes, speakers, and other opportunities to learn about a variety of Jewish and secular topics. This group of volunteers develops the programming, finds the educators, promotes the offerings on the website and in printed materials, and successfully sponsors many interesting programs. But I've often wondered, why not take one more step and offer the programs online? Whether in real-time or anytime.

Winters in Vermont can be cold and snowy and after a long day at work I sometimes struggle to get to the synagogue in the evenings. By 7:30 p.m., when many of the Adult Ed classes or special events begin, I am delighted to be home with my family. Actually, I think it is all about my slippers... While the classes and programming sound interesting, the thought of leaving the comfort of my home (and my slippers) makes the idea a lot less appealing. Wouldn't it be delightful to be able to go my synagogue’s website and view the latest Adult Ed program or special luncheon speaker on my time -- and -- in my slippers?

Developing online programming takes a little imagination -- and the right tools. There are a number of free or low-cost options such as JoinMe.com or AnyMeeting.com that are great places to start. GoToMeeting.com's webinar product is a little pricier, but it will enable you to present a one-time class or a series of classes to large or small groups. You can also choose whether you want to provide live video of the presenter, or just provide the content (such as Powerpoint slides) with a voice over. Best of all, once you've created your program you can save it on your website and make it available for future viewing by your membership.

Think about the value you could bring to your congregation if you had a cooking class for the holidays that was always available online, or a weekly online class presenting the Parsha, or a special guest speaker lecture that was available at any time! This is one of the ways you can be building content for your website and eventually have a library of programming that’s accessible to your members 24/7/365!

The days when everyone lived within a couple of blocks of the shul are long past. Why can't we figure out ways to make it easier to educate and engage members of our community -- and keep our synagogue connections strong?

What if...

By Yoram Samets


 

Is your website a Jewish portal?

Does it allow members of your community to connect with you on their terms -- and -- on their time? 

Can they find information about topics they care about?

Your website can -- and should -- be more than just a place people go to find information about services and candle-lighting times.

What if they could...

• Get caught up on the Israeli election?
• Join a live conversation on Election Day?
• Visit their child’s religious school classroom online and understand what they have been covering over the past month? Or how the curriculum is heading toward the upcoming holiday?
• Join others and study and discuss the upcoming Torah portion?
• Discover recipes for a vegetarian Shabbos dinner?
• Find a directory of Jewish professionals in their community?  

When it comes to the ever-evolving World Wide Web, the possibilities are limitless. And constantly changing.

Your members are ever more integrated into our American culture, what if you could use your website to help them connect to their Jewish culture? You can...

Facebook Best Practices For Synagogues

by Yoram Samets


Engage to Build Relationships
Facebook is a social space where people can connect and build relationships with others, including your synagogue, your religious school, youth groups, etc. One engages friends through conversation, rather than speaking at them. Keep the conversation going by monitoring and responding to posts and providing links to your website.

Speak in One Voice
Your page should represent the synagogue's brand in a tone and personality that’s consistent with its overall personality. You should work hard at one consistent voice through all channels of communication (especially when there are multiple contributors).

Keep it Brief
Posts between 100 and 250 characters (less than 3 lines of text) tend to get a lot more likes.

Change Up the Visuals
Consider changing your cover image from time to time to reflect holidays or special events taking place.

Utilize Multimedia
Include videos in your posts when appropriate to engage and educate your members.  And provide them with a link to more information -- preferably on your website.

Update Frequently
At Jvillage, we post status updates at least one to three times per week. The best times of day to post are between 8 and 10 a.m., between noon and 1 p.m., and after 4:30 p.m.

Use Tabs Effectively
You can support special initiatives/events by setting up appropriate Facebook tabs, such as YouTube and Twitter tabs to share information, as well as a “Welcome” tab, holiday tabs, new kitchen fundraising tab, etc.

Get to Know Your Members
Support engagement and gain feedback through the use of Facebook Questions and Polls.

Inspire Word-of-Mouth
If you want something, ask for it. Encourage your members to use the “suggest our pages” feature to promote the pages to their own networks.

Leverage Contests
Contests are a great way to get friends to “share” posts from your pages.  

Promote Your Pages
Consider using all your communication tools to spread the word about your Facebook pages.
Don’t forget, your website is your online home, and Facebook is your online community.   

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

by Yoram Samets, Jvillage Network Co-founder

The social media landscape is getting very crowded with options a synagogue can use to connect to members and prospective members.  

How are you using Instagram — probably one of the hottest social platforms of 2013? Or Google+ (where we are being increasingly forced to participate)?

What about Pinterest and Flickr? And do you have strategies in place for Facebook, Twitter, and your website?

We are only beginning to see the birth of social media options. Many of these options are being driven into the marketplace — whether we like it or not — by the ongoing competition between Google and Facebook to increase their revenue streams. Together, these two companies have acquired over 150 other online companies, with many of these acquisitions competing in the marketplace for revenue. (Motorola, YouTube, Zagat, Friendster, Instagram, and Frommers are just some of companies purchased over the past several years.)

Synagogues need to be very thoughtful about what all this means for their connections planning. More options are not necessarily better. Each option's effectiveness is based on the synagogue's management of content on each channel. Can a synagogue effectively manage a website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera? The answer is obvious — it depends. Synagogues must focus and deepen their content by channel in order to maintain an effective and successful social presence.

Avoid participating in more than you can manage. While it might feel good to think you are connecting with members on all those channels, in all likelihood your connections are only skin deep, which will result in a dead end. Over exerting your social reach just because a new network is enticing and free can also be troublesome. When establishing a new social identity, it is essential to fully commit to using the new channel. Accounts left stagnant and/or void of meaningful content often speak worse than having no presence on the channel.  

The key starting point is already complicated enough because you need two anchors for your basic social media presence — the synagogue website and Facebook. You cannot be without these two. Your website is your online home, and Facebook is your online community. In between these two you are building walkways of connections. Each of these channels need a good deal of content management to keep them vibrant and to ensure people will repeatedly return.

Today, when more and more members and prospective members live further and further away from synagogues, your online community building program is more important than ever. The majority of your congregants are involved with online activities, and you are challenged to meet each segment of your community uniquely with your online presence.  For example, those over 55 are using your website to gather information, while those in their 20s and 30s are using Facebook as their place for a connected community. Each segment of your membership has different needs. How are you connecting with them? Each segment of your community needs to be provided with the value they want, not what you want. This value-based approach requires both a brick and mortar strategy and an online strategy.

So, back to the original question: to tweet or not to tweet? While Twitter can be an important part of your online communications strategy, the real question to ask is whether you have the capacity to use multiple online tools to increase connections with your members, or whether you need to focus on your website and Facebook presence (and get your organization grounded) before taking on additional social options such as Twitter. How much is too much? That’s something only you can decide.

The Rabbi’s Secret Fund

by Yoram Samets, Co-founder Jvillage Network

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a member of a synagogue in New York. We were talking about fundraising for her synagogue (she’s on the fundraising committee), and I shared that I thought synagogues were missing too many undeveloped fundraising opportunities. For instance, I said, one of the most underdeveloped funds is the “Rabbi’s Discretionary Fund.” Her response reminded me of  the “Private Club” mentality that many synagogues trap themselves in.

My friend told me she had no idea what the Rabbi’s Discretionary Fund was used for. She was unclear on where the money came from and had no idea where the money went. I should have been stunned by this response, but instead it just reminded me of the “secrecy” of so many of our Jewish institutions. Of how we have forgotten that every day we welcome new members into our Jewish institutional homes, and somehow forget that they need a road map, or at least a thorough tour, to fully appreciate those homes. Not to mention, ongoing and timely reminders about the value of the synagogue to the community it serves.

Synagogues, and especially rabbis, need to let congregants peek behind the curtain and understand the value of the Rabbi’s Discretionary Fund. This is not money that gets funneled to the Rabbi’s investment banker for future retirement needs, or funds that are in anyway used as income for the Rabbi. These are valuable funds that are contributed by members and non-members to an individual they trust in order that those funds are used for charitable purposes that are valued by the community. Discretionary funds allow the rabbi to act quickly, efficiently, and often confidentially to help people in need or to offset direct costs for the synagogue – such as buying new classroom materials or even covering expenses related to a new website.

Although it is set aside for specific causes, the Rabbi’s Fund benefits everyone in the community. But seldom is the fund recognized for its value to the community. In no way am I suggesting that the Rabbi needs to publish a yearly list of how those charitable gifts are being used. But I am suggesting that – when possible – they should be recognized as gifts coming from the Rabbi’s fund. The more it is understood that the Rabbi’s fund is of value, the more people will contribute to the fund.

Rarely does a Rabbi’s Discretionary Fund contain a great deal of money. The majority of gifts provided to the fund are generally small. Yet if members of the community knew that these funds were used in benefit of the community, in benefit of specific needs, more people would make more substantial contributions.

Those of us with some knowledge of synagogue life – the Inner Circle, as it were – must work hard at breaking down the walls that are inadvertently created to the exclusion of others. In the end these walls only work to our community’s detriment. 

Do you believe that fewer walls can lead to stronger foundations? Please share how your synagogue promotes its Rabbi’s Discretionary Fund.

Translating Text Through Context

By Guest Blogger, Jed Filler

I still remember my first computer in 8th grade – called the vic20. It had 24k of ram and games and programming loaded from cartridges. I was amazed when my father brought home an IBM PC – with two floppy drives and 128k of onboard memory when I was in high school. There were hundreds of programs on one floppy – and you had to learn an actual language to use some of the programs. I helped him and learned about spreadsheets when he built an inventory program for his business (anyone remember 123?). Computers shrunk in size and increased in capacity at a furious rate – so that when I went to college –a few students on every floor had one. By the time I graduated four years later, many more students had one.

Why the trip down memory lane? Because shortly after graduating college, I started my career in Jewish education working in my home synagogue as a teacher. They were using textbooks that 12 years earlier I had used, and the only computer was in the synagogue office. We were still using a mimeo machine (remember the smell of a fresh ‘copy’)?

I went to a graduate program to study Jewish education, and my fellow students and I were determined to bring Jewish education up to date. While deeply respecting our own mentors and teachers, we knew instinctively that in order to learn most effectively, a student has to learn in a context that makes sense to them.

But this is nothing new. In our uniquely American experience, it seems that Jewish education has lagged anywhere between five and twenty years behind secular education in theory, application, and technique. Each new generation of Jewish educators work diligently to catch up, and over the past 10 years have made significant strides in closing the gap.

Even now as I write this, Jewish education students in graduate programs are doing what we did – working to make the text relevant, both in context and delivery method, for our current generation of learners.

Jvillage Network, Behrman House, Darim Online, our movements, and many other organizations are working to help educators create contextual connections between our texts and our learners.

When our kids speak through technology, so must we. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, foursquare, second life, skype, and texting occupy both their school and spare time, and we ignore their context at our peril.

We can't wait for students to come to us. When we do, we are relegated to the fate of the dinosaurs. Our tradition is rich, enlightening, fulfilling, and absolutely relevant - but requires constant translation updates to keep it so.

Pirke Avot reminds us that we are not required to finish the work, but we are not permitted to leave it for others either. Our students fill our classrooms today, and they cannot wait for the next generation of education professionals. That doesn't mean that we should wait for them to get into the field to catch up!

The blending of all the parts of our lives together in a mashup of content and context is gaining momentum. We must work to continue to grow in knowledge and expertise - in content, context and delivery methods to be as effective as possible in our classrooms.

In my next blog - I'll take a look at some of the ways that Jewish educators around the country, and world, are integrating technology in their classrooms - bringing our texts alive for another generation.

Kol Tuv

-Jed

Jed Filler is the Education Director of Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, MA