Tag Archives: Jewish Community Association of Phoenix

THE JCA’S REPORT CARD – FULL OF EMBARRASSINGLY FAILED GRADES

25 Sunday May 2014

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A Gallup poll study is hardly necessary to conclude that the performance of the Jewish Community Association (JCA) and the local Jewish Federation before it has made the Greater Phoenix Jewish Community one of the most underperforming Jewish communities in the nation. Even without hard data it would be difficult to find any knowledgeable and engaged Jew in the area who would contradict the premise that the JCA’s fundraising ability as reflected in its annual Campaign for Jewish Needs is embarrassingly meager. And as a result of such shameful results the JCA’s financial support of critically important and unmet community needs has been nothing short of pauperous and misery.

But despite what most knowledgeable people have intuited to be a failed fundraising machine for decades it should not be left to conjecture and assumption to indict the lay and professional leaders of the JCA for their shameful performance as fundraisers. That indictment deserves to be supported by facts and analysis by an irrefutable source… data that the local JCA itself has provided to an authoritative national study published by the North American Jewish Data Bank in cooperation with the JCA’s own umbrella organization, the Jewish Federations of North America.

A November 2013 study Comparisons of Jewish Communities – A Compendium of Tables and Bar Charts was prepared by the very distinguished Dr. Ira Sheskin, Director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami. The study contains comparative data on virtually every aspect of American Jewish demographics and behaviors in a 36 chapter report. But the one chapter that analyzes the relative fundraising performance of Federation study participants is found in Section 29 Donations to Jewish Federations. And the data is both revealing and chilling regarding the Greater Phoenix Jewish community. Data that the JCA has understandably been eager to keep out of public view. And data that JCA leaders are constantly trying to dodge and excuse as not relevant. When it comes to this data and its implications the JCA has done more spinning of this data than a school full of children with Hanukah dreidels.

According to the introduction of the report: “The compendium is a single source of tables and bar charts designed to provide a comparative context for understanding American Jewish communities. It is intended for local Jewish communities seeking to compare themselves to others as well as for researchers, teachers and students of North American Jewry. In short, it is an invaluable tool that is based on self-reported data by local Federations.”­­

The entire 67-page Section 29 Donations to Jewish Federations can be found online at: https://tinyurl.com/nbp6j77 . Here are just a few highlights, or perhaps it is better to describe them as lowlights from this important benchmark study.

  • Phoenix ranks 48 out of 54 participating communities when measuring the number of households who donated to the local Jewish Federation in the last reporting year. Phoenix reports that only 25% of Jewish households donated to the JCA while eight cities report that between 50% to 61% of their households donated.
  • 71% of Jewish households in the Phoenix area do not contribute to ANY Jewish Federation which explodes the myth that many Phoenix Jews give to Federations in cities where they have a second home or where they emigrated from. Of the 34 communities reporting in this area only two cities (Las Vegas and Seattle) had a worse performance.
  • Of 44 communities reporting the number of Jewish households which do not support ANY Jewish charity, Phoenix reports that 49% of its community falls into the group that do not support any Jewish charity. Only four communities report a worse percentage of support for Jewish charities.
  • Perhaps one of the most shameful statistics is the average gift per total Jewish households in a community to its local Federation campaign. Phoenix ranked 50 out of 53 reporting cities with the average gift per household at an appalling $65. The ten Federations with the largest average household gift to their campaign are: Detroit $968; Tidewater (VA) $778; Charlotte $753; Minneapolis $731; Cleveland $716; Baltimore $617; Pittsburgh $613; Milwaukee $599; Richmond $582; Columbus $561. Tucson reports an average gift per Jewish household of $254.
  • A related piece of data shows the number of households and the total size of the Federation campaign in each community. In this chart Phoenix reports 44,000 households and a campaign total of $2,863,000. The cities with the closest number of households and their campaign totals are: Denver 47,500 households and $6,040,000; San Diego 46,000 households and $6,135,000; Essex-Morris (NJ) 44,500 households and $19,684,000; Baltimore 42,500 households and $26,241,000; Cleveland 38,300 households and $27,411,000; Detroit 30,000 households and $29,051,000; Miami 54,000 households and $21,695,000.
  • Communities with a much smaller number of Jewish households but with relatively remarkable robust annual Federation campaign totals include: Tidewater (VA) 5,400 households and $4,202,000; Charlotte 4,000 households and $3,013,00; Minneapolis 13,850 households and $10,131,000; Pittsburgh 20,900 households and $12,805,000; Milwaukee $10,400 households and $$6,232,000; Richmond 5,000 households and $$2,946,000; Columbus 11,878 households and $$6,658,000; Lehigh Valley (PA) 4,000 households and $2,176,000; St. Paul 4,700 households and $2,278,000; San Antonio 4,500 households and $1,883,000; Cincinnati 12,500 households and $5,111,000; Rochester 10,230 and $4,133,000; St. Louis 24,600 and $9,288,000; Jacksonville 6,700 and $2,327,000; Hartford 14,800 households and $4,684,000; New Haven 11,000 and $2,906,000; Seattle 22,490 households and $4,907,000 and Tucson 13,400 households and $3,400,000.
  • One of the charts in which Phoenix is notably absent measures “Familiarity with the Local Federation”. 37 communities responded with a range of 20% to 60% of local Jewish households reporting that they are not at all aware of the Federation. The fact that Phoenix didn’t report indicates that the local JCA is completely out of touch with what the broader Jewish population in the Valley thinks about the JCA or if they even know it exists.
  • And the last piece of data that speaks volumes about the disastrous market condition of the local JCA is the chart that measures the “Perception of the Local Federation”. In this chart, 34 communities report a range of 93% to 68% of local households that regard their perception of the Federation as Excellent or Good. And once again, the Phoenix JCA did not report leaving one to conclude that they are clueless as to the qualitative perceptions of their local community about their organization.

There is considerably more data available in this study but in no case does Phoenix ever report statistics that are exemplary or commendable. And there are at least 100 other Federation communities which did not even participate in the analysis so it is difficult to say how Phoenix would compare if the report was complete and comprehensive.

What can be concluded from this is that the JCA, and the Federation before it, have been woefully underperforming organizations in the past, they continue to show their inability to motivate and engage the community today and it is highly unlikely that they will be able to engender sufficient trust and confidence to lead Phoenix to become a high performing Jewish community in the future. The only thing that might change the JCA’s failing trajectory is to eliminate it completely, let the dust settle, and convene as a community to take stock in what the best way forward might be to create a vibrant and thriving Jewish community.

IT IS TIME FOR THE JCA BOARD TO ASK FOR STUART WACHS’ RESIGNATION. IN THE ALTERNATIVE, FIRE HIM.

15 Thursday May 2014

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I do not know Stuart Wachs.  I have criticized Stuart Wachs’ stewardship of the JCA based upon empirical analysis of the JCA’s IRS 990s and the IRS 990’s from the previous JCC he ran. I have criticized him for a lack of disclosure and truthfulness about the Solar panel scandal that has rendered the project both costly and useless, for not donating to the JTO, while urging the rest of the community to do so, and for having Joel Kramer, the Chairman of the JCA, call me up to see if I had a hidden agenda in writing about their malfeasance and ineptitude with the JCA’s assets.  Most notable in Joel’s call to me was his assertion that “the masses” could not know about the engineering report I published and that the “masses should not know” because the report was marked confidential. Evidence of managerial ineptitude is not a trade secret, as I pointed out to Joel and Stuart.  I found it notable that Joel, who is a CPA and was the Treasurer before he became the Chairman of the JCA, told me that my numbers are wrong and that the Solar panels would not cost nearly what the report indicated.  However, Stuart wrote to me in a letter (that I published in this blog) that the solar panels will actually cost the community nothing because he re-negotiated the deal, and that there is an “opportunity for savings”.  Joel Kramer has a pretty good reputation in his field, so I am guessing that he is telling me something closer to the truth.  Stuart, who has lied to me in what he has written to me, has exhausted my ability to find him credible. I am aware that giving the benefit of the doubt to Joel Kramer on this subject is akin to trying to decide who was the better sailor: the Captain of the Titanic or his First Mate?

A quick summary for the uninitiated.  In 2010, the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix and the VOSJCC were finally run into a ditch by an inept board of directors who had overseen the building of our own golden calf, which is what I euphemistically call the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus.  The Campus is routinely utilized by approximately 4% of the Jewish population of the Greater Phoenix area (this year the VOSJCC consumed 30% of the JCA’s funding allocations) and is comprised of a financially unsustainable collection of buildings that house the detritus of a failed Jewish high school, a poorly designed health club, a huge collection of costly and economically inefficient solar panels, the offices of the JCA, and several other Jewish agencies.  The JFED spent millions of dollars propping up the Campus that they built, and the propping up of the Campus contributed very heavily to the destruction of millions of dollars of donations to the JFED.  The inept leaders of the JFED who oversaw the creation of our golden calf got it into their heads that this was the apex of Jewish achievement for the Jewish Community, completely ignoring the fact that two previous JCC’s went out of business here.  They were somehow oblivious to this and undertook this new adventure with other people’s money which ended up in the same position.  So, after 6 years on the board, Bob Silver (who was the board Chair of the JFED in 2010) finally figured out the the Federation had a “structural deficit” as he called it, and decided that the only solution was to shut down both institutions, lay off half of the staff, merge them together under a new name (the Jewish Community Association), and start again.

Unfortunately, the board that oversaw this entire fiasco actually thought they were qualified, apparently based upon their previous lack of stewardship, to go out and hire a new leader for the Jewish Community.  This is how Stuart Wachs ended up darkening the Community’s door.  At this point in the story, it would be an excellent time to review an article that appeared today in ejewishphilanthropy.com entitled I Thought You Said You Wanted To Run Things Like A Business. The article is on point, and will take us to the next fiasco.

Stuart Wachs’s entire executive management team that he hired, since he arrived here, has been fired or has resigned, except for Alison Johnston.

1) Anthony Slayen – Vice President of Operations and Innovations – hired by Stu Wachs in August, 2012, fired or resigned in February 2013: 7 months

2) Kimberly Kur – Chief Development Officer – hired by Stuart Wachs in April 2013, fired or resigned in February 2014: 11 months

3) Jennifer Grossman – Vice President of Marketing – hired by Stuart Wachs in August 2012, fired or resigned  in April 2014: 21 months

Not Hired By Stuart:

4) Debbie Siebels – CFO – Seven years at JCC and JCA, abrupt resignation this week.

Executives hired by Stuart Wachs who are still in place as of the date of this article.

5) Alison Johnston – Chief Operating Officer of the Jewish Community Center, hired June of 2013.  This is a curious hire by Stuart because Ms. Johnston was previously at Ballet Arizona, and during her year there as executive director, their revenue decreased from 5.5 million dollars to 3.4 million dollars, a decrease of 38%, and their operating surplus decreased from 2.8 million dollars to $856,000, a decrease of 69%.  Another curiosity is that Ms. Johnston has listed on her CV on LinkedIn that she was the COO of Petsmart Charities Inc. for years spanning 2010 – 2012.  However, there is no mention of her in their IRS 990’s, which by law must list their officers and board directors, and Chief Operating Officer is an important position.  I just don’t think it was her position.  In fact, she was a Senior Director of Operations, which is a different position than the Chief Operations Officer of a $40,000,000 charity.  But she is not the only person to pad their resume, so in the interest of full disclosure, I admit I lied on my LinkedIn CV too and have claimed that I was a tofurkey fabricator at Akbar and Jeff’s Tofu Hut from 1981 – 1985.  I actually was employed as a marketing representative at IBM selling copiers, and I just thought it was less embarrassing to say I was fabricating tofurkey.  I am sorry.  But I do wonder what qualifies Ms. Johnston to run the VOSJCC.

6) Ofer Alphabet – Chief Information & Campus Operations Officer at Jewish Community Association – I have no idea what a Chief Campus Operations Officer does, but he has been there for a month and Stuart knew him from Minneapolis.

If Stuart is such is an accomplished manager and our great hope for the Jewish Community of Phoenix, how is it that every senior officer of the JCC that he hired has quit or been forced to resign? Turnover of that magnitude from his hand picked subordinates is a widely acknowledged sign of terrible management.  I suppose that we will soon learn why Ms. Siebels resigned, and we may have to look no further than the 2013 IRS 990, which is for some reason, not yet available.

I have excerpted the following information from an article by Ralph Heibutzki from a company called Demand Media.

Company Lacks Good Management

An employee’s relationship with his supervisor is often the most decisive factor in assuring his loyalty, according to “Forbes” magazine’s January 2012 article, “Why Your Employees Are Leaving.” Good managers who connect with employees are more likely to retain them, even if they’re making top money. Bad managers don’t communicate regularly with their team members, or express appreciation for their work, which makes them more likely to quit.

Employee Workloads Are Too High

Turnover can serve as a wake-up call to revisit workloads that trigger significant burnout and stress, according to a 2006 survey by the National Council of Crime and Delinquency. The council interviewed 297 former child welfare and juvenile justice workers, to determine why they quit their jobs. Sixty-five percent of the participants identified large caseloads as a factor in their resignation, while an additional 35 percent would have stayed on the job if their workloads had been more manageable.

Jobs Don’t Match Expectations

Thirty-five percent of 19,700 U.S. employees surveyed by the Saratoga Institute quit during the first six months because they don’t like something about the job, management consultant Leigh Branham states in his February 2005 article, “The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave.” This situation results when managers soft sell a job’s less appealing aspects, asserts Branham, writing for the Center for Association Leadership. Once workers discover the truth, however, they’re out the door, which further aggravates a company’s turnover issues.

Opportunities Are Nonexistent

Opportunities for career advancement and growth play a key part in determining how long employees stay with a company. Eighty-five percent of the employees in the Saratoga Institute survey identified career growth as a key reward, but only 49 percent saw companies taking measures to promote it. Managers compound the problems by failing to praise employees who exceed expectations, Branham says. Staff members who feel devalued or unrecognized, in turn, are more likely to find an employer who acknowledges them.

Work Environment Is Stressful

A continual exodus of talent can indicate a stressful, unstable work environment of ever-changing job titles, workloads and supervisors. One reality of this situation is that some people lose their jobs, which doesn’t inspire the survivors to put down roots, according to “Forbes” magazine. This situation also makes itself felt through departmental turf wars that pit employees against each other. Faced with these situations, employees will opt to go elsewhere than stay in an unhealthy atmosphere.

If we want the best results from the JCA, then we must have the best people running that organization.  Unfortunately, Stuart is unable to create a culture of excellence and exceptional performance, and his hand picked executives have either left of their own volition or been terminated.  Stuart either has an inability to hire the right people, an inability to get along with people he hires, or he hires people who are incompetent and he has to fire them.  Stuart wrote to me and told me that it will take 3 – 5 years to turn around the organization he inherited, which might mean another 20 executives rotated through the management suite of the JCA.  In the meantime, the losses will pile up, the Campus will be propped up at the expense of the elderly and infirm, Jewish day school education, and helping kids get to Israel to spend quality time there.  Stuart will continue to collect his enormous salary, and we will be much further on along the road of destruction.  Keep that in mind when you are asked to donate to the JCA.

8 Million Dollar Solar Scandal and Cover-up by JCA

26 Saturday Apr 2014

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In 2012, the Levine Campus embarked on a great solar power project that was created under the leadership of Bob Silver, the President of the Federation, during a tumultuous period when our leaders finally succeeded in running the Jewish Federation into the ditch. This was certainly not Mr. Silver’s fault alone, but according to the explanation given at the time, the leadership of the Federation just figured out, after many years on the Board, that the Federation had a “structural deficit”. There is a very detailed analysis on this blog in an earlier post entitled: Smarter Jews Needed, Or Maybe We Just Need A Few Decent Ones. A Salute to the Federation’s New Donors.

I questioned the qualifications of the leadership of the Jewish Federation and the ineptitude of their Board of Directors.  I singled out Bob Silver at the time and wrote:

Bob Silver should also step down at once. He has served on the Board since 2002, and if he is just now, in January of 2011, discovering that the Federation has a structural deficit, then I question what he has been doing as a member of the Board for the last 9 years. See article from Jewish News. Additionally, Mr. Silver was quoted as saying that they have done a very poor job in engaging the community. So, the next question that begs to be asked is why is Mr. Silver, a Board member for the last nine years during which this disaster was unfolding, now tasked with solving the problem? What specific skill does he now possess that has been dormant for the last decade? For that matter, the following board members, who have also served for the last nine years, should also step down:

Ann Zinman, Lanny Lahr, Joel Bernick, David Weiner, Sandra Scheinbein, and Barry Zemel (Zemel served since 2005)

In the January 13, 2012 issue of the Jewish News, we were treated to a story entitled Going green, which highlighted a a new solar panel project for the Levine Campus.  Mr. Silver was quoted in the article:

“This no-cost approach to ‘go green’ was perfect,” said Silver in the release. “We knew this would make a huge impact economically for the campus. It demonstrates to the 25,000 people that walk through our doors each month that it is the right thing to do financially and environmentally.”

First, there are not 25,000 unique visitors to the Levine Campus each month. That would equal 1/3rd of the Jewish population of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.  It is closer to 3,000 unique visitors, but that is for another day.  Second, we were treated to another article when this no-cost solar project was completed, entitled Campus completes greening.  The article highlights include:

The green initiative kicked off about 18 months ago with a campus recycling program. In January, a solar panel thermal system was installed by Arizona Solar Concepts. The panels, located on the campus roof, are expected to provide energy to more than 70 percent of the facility’s thermal hot-water heaters, according to a VOSJCC press release. The system is scheduled to turn on at the end of the month, said Dae Williams, campus facilities director.

The next phase of the project, through Green Choice Solar, involved installing about 400 solar canopy parking spaces in the campus parking lot. In addition to providing covered parking for campus visitors and employees, the panels are expected to meet 90 percent of the campus’ energy needs and are anticipated to save 11 percent in APS costs, according to the release.

The renovations were done at no cost to the community, Bob Silver, association board chair, told Jewish News at the start of the project (“Going green,” Jewish News, Jan. 13, 2012). The vendors took advantage of tax credits, government programs and rebates run through the utility companies.

Here is what we were not told.  Instead of saving the JCA more than $6.6 million dollars in energy costs over a 25 year period, it will now actually cost the JCA more than $2,000,000 in higher energy costs.  In the first year alone, this so called “no cost” solution of solar panels that the leadership of the JCA was happy to publicize actually cost the JCA more than $120,000 in higher energy costs.  I have a copy of the report that was commissioned by the board of directors of the JCA and prepared by Energy Management Advisors, LLC.  Download the report by clicking  ILJCC Solar Installation Situation.

This is everything that is wrong with the JCA.  Instead of being truthful and informing the Jewish Community that they made a serious mistake by investing in the solar project and that there will be an 8 million dollar swing in the benefit projection, which will ultimately cost the JCA more than $2,000,000 over 25 years and has already contributed to a cost increase in their energy bills of $125,000 in the first year, they have told the community nothing.  I would say that higher energy bills of $125,000 per year contradicts the “no cost to the community” statements made by Mr. Silver.

I think it could be argued that the Jewish News has not done the job they are capable of doing and has done a disservice to the community by sitting on this story.  As a community newspaper, they must walk a fine line between appealing to advertisers and informing us all what is going on.  If the story was important enough for the Jewish News to run two stories on the wonderful greening of the Levine Campus, it was important enough to tell us that the whole project has been a financial disaster, not the “zero cost to the community” wonder that they have written about. The very community the Jewish News is supposed to serve is being trampled under foot by JCA management and the Jewish News appears complicit through the sin of omission.  The Jewish News of Phoenix sat on relevant news of this disaster that would clearly make people question or change their giving strategy after being pressured by the JCA.  They must decide whether or not they will a be a newspaper that informs the community of the issues facing the Jewish Community or a newspaper that focuses on appeasing advertisers. It stands to reason that people have given to the JCA not knowing what the Jewish News knew about this fiasco and more money will most likely be unnecessarily squandered.  This is unfortunate.

Circling back to the subject matter of my last post, this is one reason that 46% of every dollar you give to the JCA goes up in the smoke required to run the JCA.  Gross financial mismanagement, a lack of transparency and accountability, and the sins of commissions and omissions. If the JCA was a public company, these omissions would spark lawsuits and most likely an SEC investigation.  To ask the Jewish community to donate to the JCA, when their leadership is not truthful about their managerial errors and the true state of their projects to protect our future, is an outrage and a moral failing from people we are supposed to be able to trust.  The JCA is nothing more than a financial organization that can not tell the truth to people from whom they want to raise money.

PS – At the rate I am being sent information, I might have to quit my day job.