Big Gail, Vicki (and Doron and Ron and....)

Since the first days of Howard Rieger's service as UJC's "President and CEO" (call him, that's how he is self-described on his VoiceMail), those most senior professionals who pushed back against policies or programs with which they disagreed faced humiliation and ostracism -- unprofessional treatment unbecoming a Jewish organization.

Gail Hyman was the first senior professional to resign after being treated in an unprofessional and demeaning manner by the "Rieger Administration." She would not be the last. "Big Gail" (who garnered the nickname not because she was, in fact, "big" only because she was "bigger" than her professional counterpart, "Little Gail" Reiss) was a consummate marketing professional. She was first hired away from the New York UJA-Federation where she had served as the CPO Marketing during the UJA "era" and she brought her talents at communications and marketing to, first, the national campaigns, and, then, in an attempt to "build (and defend) the United Jewish Communities brand" after the merger. She had built an annual Federation Marketing Conference into a critical date on the calendar of federation marketing executives, and, annually, assured an effective generic "Case for Giving" video in which federations partnered. Big Gail wasa great team player...and she had a loyal group of creative professionals working with her at UJC. Rieger, apparently ill-equipped to understand the value of national marketing and communications, ignored and isolated Gail. She was ordered to report through Rieger's chief bean counter; told there was a hiring freeze yet watched as other areas (including the CFO's) hired at will; told to "find a secretary to promote" when she needed new professional assistance; and found Rieger's son lurking about the Marketing and Communications field. Asking only to be treated as the senior professional she was, she was shunned. In 2005, she resigned. (Through year-end 2007, Big Gail had not been replaced. The once generic Campaign video [which allowed participating federations to insert their own leaders and message] had become, by 2007, a vehicle for Rieger's self-promotion. [He appeared in the 2008 campaign piece no less that 4 times -- this was evidence of the "cult of the non-peronality."])

The circumstances facing Vicki Agron were all the more humiliating and unprofessional. Agron, as a lay leader from Denver, was a past Chair of the National Young Women's Leadership Cabinet, had been hired by the Dean of Federation and UJA Executives, Stanley Horowitz, as a senior United Jewish Appeal pro, she had been the professional head of Campaign/Development since the UJA time, as well. She was a remarkably creative professional, having led the UJA through a masterful strategic planning effort, and collaborated in the creation of the Campaign Chairs/Campaign Directors annual Mission, the National and International Lion of Judah Conferences and the Jewish Leadership Forum. She directed the UJC National FRD Study and had the widest of followings among federation Campaign Executives. The largest federations' Executives with the most influence on Rieger saw no value in a major national campaign office and experienced little return on that investment -- the value to them being small, they failed to see or care about the value to others.

Soon after becoming CEO Rieger began his own "campaign" -- one of professional humilation and exclusion -- to force Agron's resignation. Rieger began meeting less and less, if at all, with his "SMT" -- his Senior Managers; instead, he created a smaller "team" and without consultation with Agron appointed the National Young Leadership chief professional, who herself reported to Agron, to it. He constantly berated Agron for "not being a team player" when she would push back or offer her own ideas in response to his. The Campaign/Development Budget became a "bank" from which Rieger and his leadership would withdraw funds to finance other programs and schemes. Agron was helpless; she was told that if she enlisted her lay leadership, she would be fired.

Then in late winter 2007, the situation worsened. Rieger and Kanfer, behind closed doors, concocted a "reorganization" for UJC. This "organizational strategy" became the raison d'etre for UJC's very existence -- although it proved to be but moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic. But, for Agron and the Development Department this reordering had dire consequences -- Development would no longer be an independent part of the national team, but would report through professionals with no background in Campaign or Development. Agron would be "reorganized" out of existence. While Rieger and Kanfer would argue time and again that the focus of the reorganization was "raising more dollars and donors," they had to be the only two UJC leaders who possibly could have thought so. Vicki dug in, determined to prove she was a team player. Rieger ignored her efforts. She resigned effective January 2008.

Shame on Them

In early 2005, after years of research including 10's of interviews with participants involved in the merger that led to the creation of United Jewish Communities, Gerald Bubis and his partner, Steven Windmueller, published a critical and critically important work: Predictability to Chaos: How Jewish Leaders Reinvented their National Communal System. Even before its publication, Jewish federation and UJC professionals, this blogger has learned, worked extremely hard to suppress this important academic work in a manner that can only be described as shameful -- and only they could possibly understand why they did so.

Bubis is not unknown to our system -- he has been studying it and reporting on it for three decades, has served on the Boards of the Los Angeles Federation and the Jewish Agency for Israel, and on the faculty of Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute of Religion. His collaborative works have had great value to federations and communal organizations including The Director Had a Heart Attack and the President Resigned and Professional Trends in Jewish Communal Practice in America. So why the communal organizational censorship of From Predictability to Chaos? Only the censors know for sure. But, here is what your bloggers have learned.

Pre-publication, Bubis and Windmueller convened a day-long "dialogue" in New York City among professional and lay leaders of the merger, federation and UJC executives, academics, religious and Zionist movement leaders. There was vigorous discussion, including deprecation of the authors' work by Federation professionals, most notably Steve Hoffman, Steve Nasatir and Howard Rieger. Their message was that the book, which they seemed not to have fully read, was unnecessary -- that it was time to look forward, and that history was only relevant, it appeared, as they interpreted it to be. Shortly thereafter in an interview with The Cleveland News Hoffman, who had by then had turned the UJC reins over to Rieger, volunteered out of context that From Predictability to Chaos would best serve as a fish wrapper. These were the first dismissals of a valuable work.

Then, censorship began in earnest. Bubis sought the opportunity to market the book at the UJC General Assembly in Toronto in November 2005. UJC denied that opportunity outright. A review of the book was written by Moe Stein, a respected former federation executive, for the esteemed Journal of Jewish Communal Service. The Journal was pressured by persons unknown not to review the work but looking at the involvement of Federation professionals on the Journal's Advisory Board, little more needs be added. Journal management, your bloggers have learned from confidential sources, told Bubis that a "reviewer of Stein's review could not be found. Pressure was placed on the Association of Jewish Community Organization Professionals ("AJCOP") in a similar manner.

So a work written to help all of us understand UJC, its mission, vision and operation, has been blacklisted by the Jewish professionals who lead the federation sytem. For no reason other than they could. Shame on them. Shame, shame, shame....

A Bust!!

Notwithstanding the hopes of the federation system and the merging organizations that created United Jewish Communities in 1999, any fair review of its "accomplishments" since its founding would have to conclude that UJC has been a costly bust. After spending over $280 million (or more given that in its early years millions were expended on severance payments "off the books" out of allocations due the JDC and JAFI) in aggregate budgets, what has our system to show for it? The Washington Office? Sure, but that was incredibly effective in the era pre-merger. Diasaster Relief? The same. The Israel Emergency Campaign? Great, but that was driven by the individual actions of 155 federations with UJC counting the money and monitoring its expenditure.



What UJC is today is nothing more than a stumbling bureaucracy that can't get out of its own way. Fund raising -- the lifeblood of federations -- has been reduced to an afterthought, marginalized notwithstanding that in every survey UJC itself has conducted over its lifespan, financial resource development assistance has been at the top of the owners', the federations', priorities for their national organization. How did we get to the point that UJC is allowed to spend in excess of $40 million per year of donors' dollars -- donors who, in the main, haven't a clue that there is a national entity out there literally throwing our money away? These will be the questions that this Blog will attempt to answer in the weeks and months ahead -- how did we get here and what are we doing about it? This is about the Emperor's New Clothes.