As president of the United Jewish Federation and as a former president of the Lawrence Family JCC, Gary Jacobs knows what it is like to ask for donations for the Jewish community.

But as the son and fellow shareholder of Qualcomm cofounder Irwin Jacobs, as well as owner of the Lake Elsinore Storm, a minor-league baseball team in the Padres organization, Jacobs also knows what it is like to be asked by the Jewish community for donations.

Having been on both sides of such transactions, he is concerned that fellow donors might someday experience "donor burn-out," and for understandable reasons. Jacobs paraphrases some donors telling him: "Monday I got a call from the Federation, Tuesday a call from the JCC, Wednesday a call from the JFS, and Thursday a call from the AJE... and they are all talking about their own thing."

"What we need," Jacobs continued, "is a community vision which everyone can subscribe to and which donors can buy into. ... As donors see a vision, a path of what is going on, they will be much more committed and willing to invest in the community, and that is really what we want them to do: invest in the Jewish community."

Joined by Dr. Steven Solomon, UJF's campaign chair, and Stephen Abramson, UJF's executive vice president, Jacobs met with Heritage on Wednesday, Feb. 19, to outline the process that the Federation established to develop that community vision.

"We have set up three task forces," Jacobs said. "One is the Community Vision Task Force led by Ken Polin. His group is composed of people who are not just 'Federation people' but from all over the community. Their goal is to sit down and say, 'What is it that we want the San Diego Jewish community to look like in 5-20 years?' and give us something to shoot for.

"And then Jan Tuttleman's task force on Financial Development is really designed to say, 'Okay, we have this great vision. How do we get there? How do we create the resources to get there, to be what we want to be?'

"And, obviously, Federation has to change in order to meet that vision and the fundraising requirements," Jacobs said. "So we have a committee headed by Jane Scher whose goal is to take a look at how Federation operates, and what do we need to do to change to meet this new vision?"

When one analyzes the numbers, one can see why any sign of "donor burn-out" at the Federation causes alarm bells to go off. Major donors— described as persons who give a minimum of $10,000 per year to the Federation— are responsible for raising most of the Federation¹s budget.

The major donors represented 62 percent of $6,829,405 in "unrestricted" or general funds raised by the Federation in its 2000 campaign, 62 percent of $7,005,602 in 2001, and 59 percent of $7,117,457 in 2002. In the current 2003 campaign, it is projected that major donors will contribute 60 percent of the $7,500,000 goal, according to UJF spokesman Elliot Wolf.
("Unrestricted" funds may be used for any Federation purpose, whereas "restricted" funds are those which donors earmark for specific purposes.)

Solomon, who serves this year as UJF's campaign chair — a traditional stepping stone to the UJF presidency— says the strategic planning process, which he heads, represents "a recognition that we can do a lot better for our community; we have the potential to be much more powerful in raising funds."

Unlocking that potential requires UJF "to step back and look at everything we have been doing," Solomon said. "There are no sacred cows. We need to be honest about where we have made mistakes, what our weaknesses are, and try to come up with new systems, new models of fundraising. We need a new vision that is exciting and ambitious, and big thinking and bold that will excite people so they will want to participate."

Whereas UJF's fundraising has increased each year, said Jacobs, "the problem is that we are not generating enough resources in the Jewish community to fund its requirements. Contributions are going up, but the needs have been going up greater.

"We don't want to be stuck in this firefighting mode of having a need today and raising money today to meet that need, without having the opportunity to think about what the need is going to be later on," Jacobs said.

"For all I know, we need to buy 100 acres of land in Oceanside to create a campus up there because the Jewish community may be moving north up the coast, and we should be thinking ahead," Jacobs said. "We should be thinking big for the future, and thinking ahead, so we are not just firefighting."

Abramson said that to understand UJF's soul-searching process, one must realize that the organization's ultimate goal is not simply to raise money, but "to raise Jews." Fundraising is a means to realizing the end, but not the end in itself, he said.

He noted that the reevaluation is occurring in the same year that the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County was recognized by the national United Jewish Communities as having one of the best fundraising programs in the country.

"One of the problems we have is that we are gaining people in all parts of the county," Abramson said.

Unlike some cities in the Midwest and East Coast, where Jews are migrating from one part of the city to another, "we are gaining people everywhere, in all parts of the county. So how much do you invest in infrastructure and staff, and how much do you invest in programs? What is the proper balance? How do you measure it? These are issues that we face every single day."

When the task forces finish their reports, UJF plans to write a summary of the ideas and send them around to community members and institutions for comments.

One idea that is being batted around, but won¹t necessarily make it to the stage of a recommendation, is for the UJF and such agencies as the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family Service, Agency for Jewish Education, Seacrest Village Retirement Communities and Hillel jointly to solicit the major donors.

"Those are the 'down and dirty details' that we haven't gotten to yet, and we haven't worked out the whole mechanism, but the idea is to protect the donor," Jacobs said.

Ken Mintzer, UJF's assistant executive vice president, said another preoccupation of the strategic planning process is Jews who have no affiliations with the community.

"What drives the process is the reality that community is growing, growing rapidly," Mintzer said. "We need to be thoughtful, plan-ful about where we want to take this community in the future.
What do we want, how do we engage the unaffiliated? How do we develop funding strategies as a community to meet those demands? And how do we begin to engage the next generation of younger donors for involvement in the community, participation and possibly a financial commitment for the future?"