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Thoughts on "Connected to Give: Key Findings from the National Study of American Jewish Giving"

For centuries, doctors had all sorts of assumptions about human anatomy. For example, it was believed that men had fewer ribs than women,...

Rosh Hashanah, The Art of Embracing Uncertainty

When I lived in Europe I used to run seminars for Community Leaders. The venue was a beautiful 14th century palazzo in Venice, near the...

Adopting a Collaborative Leadership Paradigm

The problem is that the Jewish Community hasn’t yet fully internalized the need for a new leadership paradigm that places networking and...

Engaging Jewish Next-Gen Donors

Foundations and organizations must not treat Jewish next-gen donors as if they are the same as their parents and grandparents. Imagine...

The Love Story Between a People and a Book

A couple of years ago, my sons, among other first graders, participated in something called chagigat hasefer, the celebration of the...

Engineered Serendipity: Creating Space for Innovation and Risk-Taking

We sometimes pay lip service to failure but our actual tolerance for risk and failure in the Jewish community is limited. We don’t...

Ten Commandments Of Smart Philanthropy

A new Decalogue of effective Jewish philanthropy. Recent decades have seen incredible growth in independent philanthropy. In the past 10...

Building a Better Philanthropist

In the last couple of decades, a tectonic shift has altered the landscape of Jewish philanthropy. The phenomenon is not only Jewish – the...

After Newtown

What can we do as philanthropists amid the horror of this recent tragedy? Can any parent be relieved? Can any mourner be comforted?...

Things I Learned in Baltimore

Until the JFNA General Assembly, earlier this month in Baltimore, I didn’t know that the famous Exodus ship, the one that brought the...

Operation Pillar of Cloud

Unfortunately, Israel is once again engulfed in violence. As rockets fall on the south and center of the country, the IDF is trying to...

Hurricane Sandy and Crisis Philanthropy

Following the devastating storm that just hit the North East Coast, our thoughts and prayers go out for all those affected by this...

Funders and Typists—The Failure Series

For most Argentineans my generation, the name "Pitman Academies" produces a sort of nostalgic smile: a bizarre reminder of a bygone era....

Rosh Hashanah and the Possibilty of Time Travel

The Russian cosmonaut Sergei Adveyev proved Einstein right when he became the first person to travel in time. According to the theory of...

$6 Million for Moishe House: The Good News, the Better News and the Caveats

A few months ago, the Jewish Funders Network organized a series of events to discuss the “JDub case,” how as a community we support...

Funders and Apes: Seven Steps for Constructive Failure

Friday, I wrote a bit about how funders, like all humans, are programmed by millions of years of evolution to hate failure. But our DNA...

Funders and Apes: Our Troglodyte Approach to Failure

Last year, influenced by the hype around Darwin’s 150th anniversary, I developed an interest in evolutionary theory. I read a few books...

Video: Networks & The Future of Jewish Philanthropy—Andrés Spokoiny

JFN President & CEO Andrés Spokoiny's address to the 2012 Jewish Funders Network International Conference is entitled "Networks and the...

Our Great Incomplete Journey

Passover is a holidays of journeys. The journey of the Hebrews from Egypt to the Promise Land; the journey from Slavery to Freedom and...

Networks and the Future of Jewish Philanthropy

FN President & CEO Andrés Spokoiny's address to the 2012 Jewish Funders Network International Conference. A person is walking in the...

Purim, the Beauty of Difference

Purim is arguably one of the merriest holidays of the Jewish calendar. Because of that, perhaps, we don’t often reflect on its deep...

The Redcoats are Coming – and Hope Out of Boulder

Every school child in America knows that Paul Revere rode through Massachusetts warning the militia that “the Redcoats were coming”....

The New 10 Commandments of Strategy: Planning for our Uncertain World

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Arab Spring, the travesty of Argentina’s early elimination in the 2010 Wor

Three Questions And Three Certainties: Philanthropy In The New Economy

Just a year after economists say the “Great Recession” ended, instability and market crisis are rearing their ugly heads again. For the Jewi