by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

September 9, 2008

The philanthropic endowment arm of United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks has taken steps to market its services to the wider Mercer County community.

The first move in the new direction is a change of name. The Jewish Community Foundation of Princeton Mercer Bucks will now be known as the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Mercer.

“It’s a new image, a new branding, and a new way of reaching out to the community,” said foundation president Florence Kahn of Princeton during a recent interview. “The foundation represents the entire Jewish community — people who are affiliated and people who are nonaffiliated. We’re reaching out as an independent Jewish community foundation — a foundation that embraces the entire Jewish community.”

At the top of Kahn’s agenda are hiring an executive director for the agency, strengthening its 27-member board of trustees, and devising a marketing plan.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she said. “We need to have our own database, we need to brand ourselves — branding is extremely important — and we need to market ourselves.”

‘This is the best opportunity we will ever have to grow the foundation into a broad community organization.’

The foundation, which was established in 1963, currently has investment assets of $13 million — including 43 donor-advised funds and some 30 other restricted funds, according to Kahn. It earns a 1 percent fee on the funds it invests. Kahn said that she and her board hope to double the foundation’s assets within the next five years, particularly through marketing the advantages of donor-advised funds to the entire Jewish community.

“In today’s philanthropy, donors want to be in control of their money,” she said. “This is the way philanthropy is going throughout the United States, Jewish and non-Jewish.”

For example, Kahn said, individuals have established donor-advised funds through the foundation with such diverse designated beneficiaries as the federation, Greenwood House, American Jewish Committee, Harvard University, Tel Aviv University, Planned Parenthood, Abrams Hebrew Academy, the Center for Jewish Life, and Peace Now.

“We’re also trying to build collaborations with different agencies, synagogues, and nonaffiliated Jews — through many avenues,” Kahn added. “We need to work in cooperation with federation. That’s extremely important. But we need to work in cooperation with other local agencies, too.

“We have a very diverse Jewish community — a community that has a great philanthropic thrust in many areas,” she said, “and this foundation gives people the ability to be as philanthropic as possible within their own domains. I would hope that once people begin to understand what the foundation is all about, people will begin to look at it as their philanthropic savings account.”

For foundation secretary Rick Glazer of Lawrenceville, the headline behind the initiative is that the JCF of Greater Mercer is mounting a big push to grow itself.

“The larger goal, what we are trying to do, is to see if we can enhance the visibility of the foundation, creating a capital base for the benefit of the community,” said Glazer, a former attorney and retired manufacturer who has served as a foundation trustee since 1976. “We’re trying to grow beyond just being perceived as a stakeholder solely for federation, but to grow into a foundation that can benefit the entire Jewish community.”

One way to do that is through educating people about donor-advised funds, Glazer said. Another is through PACE — perpetual annual campaign endowments — under which donors can endow their annual gifts in perpetuity.

‘A rebirth’

“We’ve got a president who’s skilled in fund-raising, and we’re trying to hire a skilled, high-level executive director,” he said. The name change, said Glazer, is intended to make it easier for people to distinguish between the foundation and federation. “We’ve changed our bylaws to make it easier to accomplish these purposes,” he added.

‘It’s a new image, a new branding, and a new way of reaching out to the community.’

“I’m very optimistic about the prospects,” he said. “I think this is the best opportunity we will ever have to grow the foundation into a broad community organization.”

Federation executive director Andrew Frank, who is also the nominal executive director of the foundation, said the changes constitute “a rebirth of sorts. The foundation has changed its name in a concerted effort to advertise its presence to Princeton Mercer Bucks.”

The initiative also serves to clarify the relationship between the foundation and the federation, he said. Under the foundation’s amended bylaws, federation will now have at least two ex officio members on the foundation’s board of trustees and executive board, instead of just one. The new appointees to those positions are Ken Mack of Mantoloking, a former federation president, and Howard Cohen of Lawrenceville, a former president of the region’s Jewish community center and federation vice president for domestic issues and allocations.

“The foundation is federation’s endowment arm, but they have always been separately incorporated,” Frank said. “I still view it as an important partnership. Both of us need each other without sacrificing our independence.

“We look forward to the continuation of a positive working relationship on behalf of the community we care so deeply about,” he said. “Their success is our success, and vice versa.”

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