MetroWest budget to include $400,000 in cuts to local agencies

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Balancing pride in a record-setting fundraising campaign with a series of belt-tightening measures that sets the federation “on a stronger course for the future,” the board of trustees of the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey voted June 30 to approve a 2004-2005 allocations budget that implements $400,000 worth of cuts to its local beneficiary agencies and caps use of its reserve “stabilization funds” at $500,000.

Facing cutbacks in their appropriations are the Jewish Vocational Service, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Community Center, Community Relations Committee, Israel and Overseas Committee, and Daughters of Israel Nursing Home.

In addition, the Jewish Historical Society, which had faced an 83 percent reduction in its allocation, had some of its proposed cuts restored.

At the same time, the UJA Campaign will receive an additional $250,000 to beef up its fundraising staff.

UJC officials said the vote capped a year of happy plusses and painful minuses: The UJC anticipates raising in excess of $24 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, even as it carries out structural changes intended to reduce the draw on its “rainy day” stabilization fund.

“The plusses were that we got our financial house in order, greatly reducing our dependency on the reserves in our stabilization funds,” said Gary Aidekman, the Madison resident who chaired the Allocations Council. “I’m very pleased with the work of our task forces and committees in making these strategic cuts.”

On the “minus” side, Aidekman said “it was difficult for us and difficult for our agencies” to scale down their allocations. Aidekman called the belt-tightening measures a “bet on the future that the campaign will be successful in providing more funds in coming years.”

The prevailing budgetary philosophy behind the board’s action is to make an “increased investment in the campaign in the next few years and hopefully drive an increase in the campaign’s results,” said Arthur Sandman, associate executive vice president for program services at UJC MetroWest.

He told NJ Jewish News the steps taken now are intended to safeguard federation finances against an uncertain future.

“It is difficult to know whether the campaign will show a significant growth next year. It is not something we are going to know for a good while yet, but we do know that we have made the added investment in the campaign, and that was an important thing to do,” he explained.

In prior years, Sandman said the federation had spent up to $2.25 million annually out of a reserve fund that has declined from $14 million to nearly $9 million.

Among agencies that will be forced to make sharp cutbacks is the CRC, which will lose one of the three members of its professional staff and some of its areas of responsibility. The CRC serves as the public affairs and public policy arm of UJC.

“It means there will be an impact on the programs and the ability of the CRC to program at the same level it has in the past,” he said. “We have not yet finalized a plan as to exactly how those programmatic reductions will be made. To some degree certain things the CRC has done will be placed somewhere else in the organization,” he added.

“Details haven’t been worked out yet. But I always believe that when you reduce resources you reduce output as well,” Sandman said.

Facing a $100,000 cut in its appropriation, officials at the Daughters of Israel Nursing Home in West Orange have been drafting contingency plans for possible layoffs in order to balance its $24 million annual budget. [See box.]

Sandman said the Historical Society was originally slated to face a deep cut because of an assumption that it had a proven ability to raise private funds and foundation grants outside the federation.

But board members relented after hearing the concerns of JHS president Bob Max “that its ability to raise funds was not going to be as great going into the next year because of government budget cuts and operations in the philanthropic marketplace. JHS also argued successfully that “it would further harm their fundraising ability if they could not demonstrate support from their own community. The money came out of contingency reserve funds so that it would not deepen cuts in another agency’s budget.”

The board of trustees approved a plan to eliminate the 14-year-old Pathways program aimed at outreach to intermarried families. It lost all of its $87,000 allotment, although the federation has earmarked up to $50,000 to develop other programs to encourage Jewish affiliation among interfaith couples and their children.

As he prepared for a two-week Israeli vacation after arduous weeks of shepherding the budget through layers of review, Sandman said the past year’s battle was the most difficult he has faced in his three-year tenure.

“The choices we made were tougher choices that have had impacts that were hurtful: hurtful personally to those of us who were involved in the processes and care about the services we provide and hurtful to people who have relied upon services that will not be there at the same level or in the same way they were in the past,” he told NJJN. “That is a difficult and troubling thing, and staff relationships are torn by this kind of thing.

“But on a process level, I am very proud of what this community did this year. They maintained a real sense of discipline that the allocations process would not simply be an effort to keep everyone happy. Difficult choices were made not with an eye toward getting through this year in the most expedient way but with an eye toward trying to lay the groundwork for the future in the most responsible way that we can, that by taking steps to solidify our financial base both in terms of fundraising and in terms of our reserves we set ourselves on a stronger course for the future.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.