New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature
Teens attend Jewish youth philanthropy conference in Denver
Jennifer Schechner, 15, of Short Hills was overwhelmed by the number of her peers who want to give their money away. One of 107 teens attending a teen philanthropy conference in Denver March 30 to April 3, she said, “I thought ours was an isolated program. But it turns out it’s a nationwide thing. It was overwhelming in a great way,” she said a few days after the conference.
Schechner is part of a new local initiative, the Teen Tzedaka Project, created jointly in December 2005 by JCC MetroWest, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, and the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, to develop a new generation of philanthropists. So far, 18 teens from around the MetroWest area have joined the project. All participants are required to contribute $200; each gift is matched by an anonymous donor, and then all of the gifts are pooled together. Throughout this first year, teens have been learning about local Jewish agencies, and they will eventually decide together where to donate the money. A program in Princeton, now in its third year, gradually extends the students’ reach from local to national to global, respectively, each year.
The NJ programs are relative newcomers to the field of organized youth philanthropy, which began in 1997 when the Community Foundation of San Diego created the Community Youth Foundation; the next year, two more initiatives, the Jewish Youth Philanthropy Institute in Washington, DC, and the B’nai Tzedek Teen Philanthropy Program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation in western Massachusetts were launched. By 1999, the Rose Community Foundation in Denver added its Rose Youth Foundation. Today, there are 51 similar programs around the country.
The Jewish Youth Funders! Conference was a natural outgrowth of the informal communication that has taken root among directors of the different programs, according to K’vod Wieder, cochair of the conference and director of HGF’s B’nai Tzedek program.
“Now there’s been a critical mass reached…, [and] over the last two to three years, there’s been steady network of professionals starting to share best practices through conference calls.”
Eliza Millman, who advises the MetroWest program, acknowledged that the first thing she did when the Teen Tzedaka Program was formed was contact other professionals with more established programs. The conference was spearheaded by the Grinspoon Foundation and supported by the Ricky and Andrew J. Shechtel Philanthropic Fund, the Rose Community Foundation, United Jewish Communities, the Estelle Friedman Gervis Foundation, and the Manuel and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation.
The highly structured conference was largely facilitated by teens themselves. It was designed “to put the issue on the national stage for people to see,” according to Ricky Shechtel, vice chair of the national conference, president elect of the Jewish Funders Network, and sponsor of the Princeton youth philanthropy group. Formal goals of the program included networking among teens, deepening teen skills and knowledge of Jewish philanthropy, sharing different models and methods of Jewish philanthropy, showcasing excellent youth grant-making, inspiring youth leadership, deepening the skills of the program director, and creating a network of funders involved in Jewish youth philanthropy. The youth funders’ conference was organized to overlap with the adult Jewish Funders Network Conference. “It was important to have them coincide so the younger philanthropists could interact with the older ones,” said Shechtel. A roundtable discussion putting the two groups together was incorporated into the two conferences.
Seven delegates from New Jersey attended the national conference, including four from the MetroWest area: Gadi Abramowitz of West Orange, Jessica Bernstein of Livingston, Ethan Chaleff of West Orange, and Schechner. Beyond the 107 who attended, 70 applicants were turned away, according to Wieder.
In addition to meeting peers from around the country, delegates said, they gained a greater understanding of the choices and issues facing philanthropists. “I realized there are many factors to consider when granting money to an organization,” wrote Bernstein in an e-mail. After carefully laying everything out, from decisions over whether to “choos[e] Jewish organizations over secular ones, as well as those promoting support of the local, global, or Israeli community,” she concluded, “the thing that truly matters is that the giver is passionate about her cause. I realized there are plenty of Jewish organizations to pick from, and that after the philanthropist decides what causes or populations to support through extensive research, she can find the right charity.”
Marsha Atkind, manager of Philanthropic Initiatives for the Jewish Community Foundation, who accompanied the MetroWest group to the conference, said the teens “are eager to be empowered to make a difference. Through these programs, they begin to internalize the power of philanthropy.”
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