Frank: When I became president of the Nashville Jewish Federation in 1999, one of the hot topics that I had to deal with was the request by many of our donors to promote designated giving to the various Jewish organizations and agencies of the Federation, rather than giving a blanket donation to the overall Jewish Federation campaign.
The request to approve and support designated giving became a controversial subject and one that resulted in many off-line and Board meeting discussions. However, this was not brought to a vote as we did not have enough Board members who were willing to vote in agreement on a plan to support designated giving. With a flat yearly campaign achievement of approximately 2.6 million dollars, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville this year announcing a goal of raising three million dollars, it is time to revisit this concept of designated giving. Mark, what are your thoughts on this?
Mark: Frank, the very fact that in 1999, you already tried to develop support for Designated Giving, and that now, a quarter of a century later we still haven’t adopted that model of philanthropy, says all that needs to be said about this issue.
According to a recent study by Slingshot titled “Portrait of Next-Gen Jewish Giving Today,” the current and emerging generations of donors want to have a definitive say in where their dollars are directed. Shouldn’t the Federation allow donors to allocate at least a reasonable portion of their annual contribution — if not even all of it — to the Jewish organizations and causes with which they most identify, and which already fall under the Federation’s umbrella of supported organizations?
By not evolving into this model over the past few decades, individual donors are already bypassing the Federation. They are choosing to donate directly to the causes, organizations, and institutions in the Jewish community whom they wish to support more fully and significantly.
The truth is that many donors I know are already giving more to these individual agencies than they are to the Federation overall campaign. They are already bypassing the Federation allocation system to achieve their own philanthropic goals.
Frank, what would be the harm of attempting this model on at least an initial limited trial basis? My guess is that instead of the fear of reducing donations to the Federation, incorporating Designated Giving might even incentivize more members of our community to consider contributing even more to— and through— the Federation.
Frank: Mark, I believe that this could easily be a win-win situation for donors, Jewish agencies, and the Nashville Jewish Federation. As campaign members recruit donations from potential donors, they would explain the option of giving a Board defined percentage of their donated money directly to the agencies of their choice.
Or they could merely do as they have for years and make their entire donation to the Federation campaign fund, letting the Federation manage the distribution to the various agencies and Israel.
The Federation would consider the designated funds in their overall budgeting process thus allowing the Federation to potentially reduce the overall campaign dollars to those agencies which had been funded via designated giving thereby allowing for needed and desired budget changes within the Federation.
The donor would feel good about their donations. A combined campaign of designated and annual campaign donations would have a significant chance of meeting the three-million-dollar goal, thereby bringing satisfaction to the Federation. As I said, it would be a win-win situation for all.
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It will take a Federation Board vote to approve this approach to campaign requests from donors. However, if the Board approves and fully supports this change, I believe campaign workers will have an opportunity to make additional and creative requests that will increase campaign dollars.
Mark: The truth is that our local Federation’s campaign has been stagnant for many of the past several years. More candidly, it is now raising fewer dollars than it did almost a decade ago, when it reached a height of $2.8 million dollars. This does not even account for the impact of inflation on the value of those dollars raised.
Clearly, a change in the landscape of philanthropic contributions has occurred. And equally as evident, there has been a change in manner, level, and degree of generational giving. Even more importantly, the transfer of wealth from aging generations to the successive generations of potential donors will require new and innovative ways to meet the specific requests of those newer donors to designate their priorities of giving.
So, what is the worst thing that can happen, and what is the best?
The worst is that the campaign remains stagnant, as more donors bypass the Federation to give more of their contributions to the organizations they designate.
And the best thing would be that the Federation would successfully meet and surpass their campaign goal each year by welcoming those donors to designate at least a portion of their Jewish philanthropy under the Federation umbrella system of communal giving.
Whatever we call it, designated giving, donor-directed giving, or targeted giving, could be a win-win all around, for the Federation, for Jewish organizations, and for the donors. It would be a win-win, therefore, for our entire Jewish community.
Rabbi Mark Schiftan can be reached at mschiftan@aol.com
Dr. Frank Boehm can be reached at frank.boehm@vumc.org
