JustASC

This has been brewing for a while, but the national United Jewish Communities (UJC) is changing its name to The Jewish Federations of North America. 

The UJC was formed in 1999 with the merger of United Jewish Appeal (UJA), Council of Jewish Federations, and United Israel Appeal. The intention was to concentrate the various functions of federated giving — the single community campaign that raises money for local Jewish agencies, Israel, and global Jewish casues.

But it’s legacy has been rocky, with various complaints that the UJC didn’t do much for its federation members, lacked a vision, and didn’t act nimbly in the face of various new challenges to American organizational life, especially the overall decline in federation-style giving.

But now the umbrella has a new head, Jerry Silverman, who has a background in marketing and branding. According to a release, the name change is: 

part of an ongoing effort to create a stronger continental brand and market positioning for the Federation system…. [T]he new name builds on strength of familiarity of local Jewish Federations, aligns with 90 percent of local Federations’ names, and reflects the best practices of other large federated non-profits.

The name does sort of leave stranded the federations, including United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, who changed their name in the last decade in order to be in synch with the UJC brand. (Its previous name was United Jewish Federation of MetroWest.) Does this mean some of them will begin switching back?

UJC (sorry, JFNA) already seems to be urging federations to adopt their new logo (see above):

The new logo of The Jewish Federations of North America – with a circular design and menorah – is a strong, innovative mark, rooted in Jewish tradition, signaling our centrality and stature, while being inviting and optimistic. Local Jewish Federations have embraced the need for greater consistency and many have volunteered to adopt the visual identity (e.g., logo) locally. The logo will also be customized for use by our 400 Network Communities. Nearly 20 Federations have already expressed their interest, and are looking to adopt the new logo in the coming months.

A big part of this rebranding, obviously, is to reclaim the “federation” name, which both UJC and a lot of local federations ran away from in the past decade — prodded, famously, by a remark by mega-giver Charles Bronfman that most young people associate “federation” with “Star Trek.” (Find a short history of the merger here.)

Now they’ve come full circle, reclaiming a name most of their constituents were never really able to part with.

(I think the new logo echoes the United Way’s famous logo with its rainbow motif. That would make some sense, since federations engage in “United Way” style giving — a consolidated community campaign for a variety of causes.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.