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Why Santa Barbara Hillel’s largest donor is the Jewish Federation of … Boston

Rabbi Evan Goodman, executive director of UC Santa Barbara’s Hillel, was concerned when annual funding allocations from The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles were cut year after year, beginning in 2011. But he wasn’t surprised.
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March 4, 2015

Rabbi Evan Goodman, executive director of UC Santa Barbara’s Hillel, was concerned when annual funding allocations from The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles were cut year after year, beginning in 2011. But he wasn’t surprised.

After all, officials from the two organizations had come to a new funding agreement in 2011 after Federation announced a new policy that limited allocations to groups within the borders of Los Angeles County. Santa Barbara Hillel, which is 104 miles from Federation’s headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard, sits 70 miles outside the Los Angeles County line. 

So Hillel and the L.A. Federation, its largest single donor until recently, according to Goodman, agreed that through 2014, the final year of their relationship, Federation would gradually reduce its annual support in order to give Hillel time to find other donors to fill the impending gap.

Santa Barbara Hillel’s budget has ranged from $535,000 in the 2010-2011 school year to $687,000 in the 2014-2015 school year. In 2010, Federation gave Hillel $150,000 but gradually reduced that amount year after year until 2014, when it gave $35,000. Goodman said that most of the funding was for general expenses and operations, but that from year to year some of it was tied to specific grants and programs.

“It was over a 50-year relationship that was terminated at that point,” Goodman said. “It’s still a challenge for us to replace the unrestricted dollars that were coming to us from L.A. Federation.”

So far, Goodman and Hillel have managed, thanks, in part, to a major grant, not from The Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara (which gives about $20,000 per year to Hillel), but from a Jewish Federation 3,000 miles away, in Boston. The Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (CJP) serves not only that metropolis’ Jewish community, but also pro-Israel campus programs in New England and across the country, including at the University of Florida, the University of Maryland, The Ohio State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and now UCSB.

Its campus initiative, known as IACT (Inspired, Active, Committed, Transformed), aims to capitalize on Taglit-Birthright programs. It recruits students who are less involved in the campus Jewish community for Birthright trips, and then follows up with them regularly upon their return to inspire them to increase their engagement in Jewish and pro-Israel activities.

“[We are] trying to engage the non-low-hanging fruit, those the least likely to walk in the doors of a Hillel,” said Cheryl Aronson, CJP’s vice president.

CJP launched IACT in 2007 at three schools in the greater Boston area, only to expand the program to 12 more schools across New England, and then five schools nationwide. Aronson said CJP plans to launch the program at seven more colleges in the near future. 

“Birthright is a gift, and we have the opportunity to take advantage of it,” Aronson said. “UC Santa Barbara is a great site for us because there are so many students who are marginally affiliated.”

Goodman said that CJP’s grant for IACT to Hillel for the 2014-2015 academic year came to about $100,000, which includes the cost of UCSB’s on-campus IACT coordinator, Rafi Schraer, 25, an alumnus of San Diego State University and a former engagement coordinator with the Hillel at the University of Vermont. Goodman said Hillel’s goal for the upcoming Birthright trip in the summer is to sign up 120 UCSB students, 80 percent of whom IACT will aim to regularly engage in Jewish and Israel programming following their return.

But, while Goodman envisions Hillel’s relationship with CJP as being an ongoing and productive one, he remains concerned about the impact that the loss of funding from the L.A. Federation will have on a Hillel that he said reaches about 900 Jewish students per year on a campus that has among the highest percentage of Jewish students of any school in the University of California system.

“[The] IACT program allows us to delve deeply into one area of tremendous interest for us, and that is Israel and Birthright,” Goodman said. “Our biggest issue is asking ourselves the question, can we continue to provide the services we provide at the level we’re providing for the students who are here with this loss of funding?”

He said that in past discussions with Federation about their ongoing relationship, he made the case that large numbers of young Jews from Los Angeles attend UCSB, benefit and grow from their experience at Hillel, and then return to Los Angeles. Goodman estimates that about half of UCSB’s Jewish population is from Los Angeles.

Jay Sanderson, L.A. Federation’s president and CEO, said he felt it “didn’t make sense” that the organization was spending time on Hillel in Santa Barbara, when Hillel 818 — which serves CSU Northridge, Pierce College and Los Angeles Valley College — could use more attention.

“There’s a limited amount of things we do,” Sanderson said. 

Asked to respond to Goodman’s point that many L.A.-area students attend UCSB, benefit from the Hillel, and then return to L.A. (some of them going on to work in Jewish professional life), Sanderson said that the same logic could be applied to universities even farther away from Los Angeles. 

“The truth is there’s a large number of Jewish students [from Los Angeles] that go to the University of Michigan,” Sanderson said. He added that Santa Barbara Hillel could use the Jewish Federations in both Santa Barbara and Ventura.

“Their funding is a small portion of our needs,” Goodman said referring to the Federation in Santa Barbara, and noting his gratitude for the decades-long relationship between Santa Barbara Hillel and the L.A. Federation. He added, though, “Santa Barbara’s Federation does not have the capacity to fund at that level.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara’s executive director, Michael Rassler, said in a Feb. 24 interview that Santa Barbara Hillel is Federation’s largest single grant recipient in Santa Barbara and that Federation boosted its support to Hillel by 10 percent this year, to $22,000. He made clear, though, that the Santa Barbara Federation is neither capable of closing the gap left by L.A. Federation’s absence nor of matching the support offered by CJP.

“Our Federation is not like the L.A. or the Boston Federation,” Rassler said. “Our total budget is approximately $1.2 million.” 

Santa Barbara’s entire population of about 90,000 is significantly smaller than the Jewish communities in Los Angeles and Boston.

Despite Santa Barbara Hillel’s newly challenging financial environment, Goodman remains optimistic that Hillel will be able to provide what it has in the past for its students — such as weekly Shabbat dinners to more than 100 people — even if its reliable source of core funding is no longer there.

“We’re confident that as long as we get the word out, that we can find people who care passionately about what we’re doing,” he said.

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