A tribute dinner honoring outgoing president Robert Kuchner and others preceded the annual meeting of the Central federation.
Photo by Elaine Durbach
June 26, 2008
In distributing the funds it raised and managed over the past year, the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey is facing a growing demand from donors for measurable results, according to its outgoing president, Robert Kuchner.
Addressing the federation’s annual meeting at the Wilf Jewish Community Campus in Scotch Plains last Tuesday, June 17, he said donors “are intent on seeing how their gift is going to bring about the world they want to see.” In response, the federation has focused its efforts on “concrete projects with quantifiable outcomes.”
He said, “Whether it is setting up a project for at-risk youth in Israel or building facilities for the elderly in the former Soviet Union, these concrete projects have quantifiable outcomes — in dollars raised, lives saved and communities transformed.”
Kuchner said that in the past year the federation raised $9.9 million. That includes the approximately $5.5 million raised by the annual campaign, almost $4 million in endowments, and $425,000 in supplemental giving — an overall increase of about $1 million over the previous year.
Kuchner described the enormous boost to the organization’s impact in Israel generated by the bequest left to it by Watchung farmer Mack Ness. Through the business loan fund established in his name this past year, the federation provided $800,000 for projects in Israel’s Negev region.
With that new scale of largesse, Kuchner said, has come “new responsibilities, with the requisite growing pains.” The Central federation’s role has inspired participation in Negev development from other, much larger American federations — like those of New York and Miami. The federation also brought additional support to Sderot, the border town battered all year by nearly daily rocket bombardments from Gaza.
Kuchner added, “We’ve fostered real synergy through public-private partnerships and brought in Israeli philanthropists and NGOs.”
Gerald Cantor is succeeding Kuchner as president of the federation, taking on the role for the second time; he also served as president from 1994 to 1996. He was absent on Tuesday night (he was on a trip to Idaho that he won in a raffle run by the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation).
In a message read by federation executive vice president Stanley Stone, Cantor highlighted three aspects of change facing the federation: the ways in which the strategic plan developed over the past 18 months will transform the model for giving, the energizing of the annual campaign under incoming chair Julie Singer, and the emergence of a corps of younger leaders.
Affection, appreciation
At the tribute dinner that preceded the annual meeting, Kuchner and a lineup of other community leaders were recognized for their services. Annual meeting chair Gerald Flanzbaum teased Kuchner, suggesting that he wanted those others also lauded at the dinner “otherwise only about four people would have come.”
Instead, there was an outpouring of affection and appreciation expressed for his leadership over the past two years and his commitment to the community. It came in speeches from Gordon Haas, Norman Weinberg, and Stone. Paula Zaltsman also spoke, as a representative of United Jewish Communities.
Kuchner assessed the budget not just on the bottom line, said Stone, but also on “outcome and impact” of expenditures.
Kuchner himself said he is looking ahead to his next leadership role in the community — as chair of the federation’s Jewish Community Endowment Foundation. “If you look after the Jewish community, the Jewish community looks after you,” he said.
Also honored at the dinner were: outgoing campaign chair Toby Goldberger, who received the President’s Award; Mark Ginsberg, who was given the Joseph Weinstein Award for financial resource development; Karen Simon, who was named Volunteer of the Year; Jennifer Zairi, recipient of the Young Leadership Award; and Rabbi Elazar Teitz and Chanie Moskowitz, who accepted the Community Service Award on behalf of the Jewish Educational Center Rav Teitz Mesivta Academy in Elizabeth.
The Rabbinic Award was given in absentia to Rabbi Leah Doberne-Schor of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, who was attending an event at the temple. Federation associate executive vice president Amy Cooper was given a surprise award — in recognition of her leadership of the New Jersey Association of Jewish Communal Service.
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