Montclair philanthropist Elisa Spungen Bildner urged a group of Jewish teenagers to pool their resources to solve problems inside the Jewish community.

Speaking at a local program that trains teens in the ways of philanthropic giving, Spungen Bildner drew on lessons she learned after she and her husband, Robert, founded the Foundation for Jewish Camping in 1998 and turned their own charitable giving from “helter-skelter” to a “more focused approach.”

“I said to these kids, ‘When you pick an area, one way to be successful is to find other people to partner with.’ The kids in this group are pooling their money to increase their impact on whatever groups they choose to give it to,” she said.

The teens were part of the Iris Teen Tzedeka Program, which is sponsored jointly by JCC MetroWest, the Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life of MetroWest, and the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest.

Each teenager in the program must donate $200 of his or her own money to a pool of funds, which is then matched by the Herb Iris Youth and Family Philanthropy Endowment. The teens then allocate the funds to agencies supported by United Jewish Communities of MetroWest. The program is named in memory of the late Herb Iris, a builder and philanthropist who died last April.

“The kids put out requests for grant proposals and decided behind closed doors how to allocate the funds,” explained Adam Oded, teen educator at the Partnership.

Spungen Bildner addressed the program’s young members on March 1 at the Aidekman Jewish Community Campus in Whippany. She said that she and her husband were motivated by a desire to fulfill a goal they found “extremely compelling — to increase the number of kids going to nonprofit Jewish camps.” The assets of their foundation — which provides advocacy for nonprofit Jewish overnight camps — have grown to $11 million.

“It took us some time to focus on an issue that was extremely meaningful to us,” she said. “We saw Jewish camping as a compelling way to get kids to love being involved with Judaism. It is very different from formal education. Kids live 24/7 with other Jewish kids and have a tremendous amount of fun. It is learning by enjoyment and quite different from other experiences they might have had.”

And yet the teens don’t necessarily have to start a new organization. They can, she told them, “transform an organization by bringing leadership, and then change its direction. If you pick an issue in the Jewish community and really think strategically about how you can change a part of the Jewish community, it is possible.”