First J'lem forum for Diaspora

[Tina Greco - Melbourne]

 First J'lem forum for Diaspora, local philanthropists
By Anshel Pfeffer
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/971183.html

With the level of U.S. fundraising for Israeli causes in danger of decline, 200 Jewish philanthropists arrived in Jerusalem this week, to see what their Israeli counterparts were doing about it.

"There is a feeling that despite the increasing affluence of Israeli society, the local businesspeople aren't doing there share and Israelis still look to America for much of their funding. This is going to have to change," said a participant at the Jewish Funders Network conference this week.

This is the first time the JFN held its annual conference in Jerusalem, with the stated intention of engaging Israelis in Jewish philanthropy. JFN was founded 18 years ago, but through much of its existence, it merely organized a yearly conference. Over the last six years, it has broadened its activity, providing individual donors and relatively small, family-based charitable foundations with tools to make their donations more effective, to examine prospective projects and to manage them, and a venue to create partnerships.

JFN president Mark Charendoff told Haaretz that the annual conference is "30 percent about content and 70 percent networking." He agreed that many of the JFN members coming to Israel "had the feeling that Israelis aren't doing enough in philanthropy, but that is based on false impressions and unfair expectations.

"If you ask me, philanthropy in Israel is not state of the art, but neither is it in the U.S. Comparing isn't fair, because Israel is still at a different stage of financial development. It's not just about the situation now, but where this is going. If you look at where we were five or 10 years ago, it definitely has evolved."

His members were "pleasantly surprised" by the number of Israeli participants - more than 150 - who joined 200 donors, mainly from the U.S. but also from Canada, Britain, France, Russia, South Africa and Australia.

One clear sign of the difference that still exists between Israeli donors and American Jewish philanthropists is that while in previous years the JFN conferences were open to the media, this time sessions were closed to journalists, at the express request of the Israeli participants.

Charendoff understands their sensitivity. "For the vast majority of the Israelis, this is their first experience talking about issues of personal wealth and engaging the family and children. People felt that the conversations might be inhibited if there were media in the room. We're trying to create a safe space for people to have the kind of frank discussions they want to have."

High-tech entrepreneur Shlomo Dovrat told Haaretz, "The significant development here is that Israeli philanthropists can sit around one table with their Jewish counterparts from around the world.

Dovrat, a founder of IVN, a network of Israeli venture-capital funds that raise funding for social and educational projects, spoke at the conference.

"The Israelis bring the advantage that they are here on the ground, but there is a big difference also in the Diaspora donors. This is not the like the old days of schnorr when someone would just sign a check and have his name on a plaque; people today want to be engaged partners," he said.

He agrees that the frustration over the lack of Israeli participation used to be justified, "but it's not true anymore. Today there is a totally different attitude, and I saw how the participants from abroad were surprised about what we are doing here. But we can still do a lot more.

"Right now there are islands of philanthropy in Israel. It has to be wider and there has to be a more strategic view toward cooperation instead of ego competitions. We also have to pay more attention to groups in society that have been disregarded, especially the Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities," he said.

Despite all this, Dovrat believes that is too early to talk of an end for Israel's need for Jewish philanthropy from abroad.

"A strong Israel is in the interests of the entire Jewish people, and we are still a nation in the building, with many challenges. A small state with a huge defense budget, large social gaps and facing terror, Qassam missiles and the Iranain bomb, we still have many needs, and the potential to be a leading nation on the international level has yet to be realized."

Figures on the levels of Israeli philanthropy are hard to come by. Avner Stepak, managing director of the Meitav Group, believes that donations from Israeli individuals and foundations could be anywhere between $300 million and $500 million a year.

"We really don't know anything for sure. There is a group of wealthy people who give a lot but it is still relatively small. The large publicly-quoted companies donate on average about 0.9 percent of their net profit, but this is still low when you compare it to the average of the Fortune500 companies, which donate 1.5 percent," Stepak said.