By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent
The housing market is going soft, many folks are concerned about paying the bills, and gas and food prices are shooting up. People are nervous. But that hasn’t stopped the capital growth of Washington State’s Jewish community — and, in some ways, it makes the growth more necessary.
In the case of organizations like Jewish Family Service, for instance, the implementation of its years-long strategic plan, and the connected fundraising that goes along with it, can help alleviate that nervousness around the availability of direct service, even before its new headquarters is built.
And while most agency representatives JTNews spoke with felt confident their big capital campaigns could be completed, some expressed nervousness about where the economy was going, especially those who have been struggling to reach their goals. Time and again, however, these representatives stressed the benefits — Jewish education and continuity, social services, community building — and the community members who support these organizations, particularly those with deep pockets, have appeared willing to shoulder much of the cost.
A solid starting point for the buildup of the local Jewish community is the $2.3 million renovation of Congregation Beth Shalom in January 1998 ($3 million in 2008 dollars), followed immediately by Temple B’nai Torah’s move from Mercer Island to Bellevue four months later. Temple De Hirsch Sinai followed that $4.1 million project ($5.4 million adjusted) three years later with the completion of its $9.7 million Bellevue sanctuary, giving Seattle’s first major Reform congregation a second location.
Also in that timeframe were the opening of the $36 million Summit at First Hill Jewish retirement community; the $12 million rebuild of Hillel at the University of Washington; and the unintended remodel of the Seattle Hebrew Academy, which came about as the result of extensive damage in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. A $9.6 million campaign retrofitted the 1909-built school on the east side of Capitol Hill to current seismic standards, in addition to modernizing the bulk of its facilities.
Several smaller campaigns stand out as well over that time, ranging from the $675,000 remodel of the Seattle Kollel that opened in 2005, to Congregation Kol Shalom’s purchase of its synagogue building that same year, to the purchase of an old church to facilitate the growth of Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia in 2004. Additonally, a special campaign by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle resulted in that organization raising $1.3 million to cover a full remodel and security upgrades in the wake of the 2006 shootings which occurred at its downtown Seattle headquarters.
The Caroline Kline Galland Home and Affiliates
The biggest campaign by far, however, is not a capital campaign. The Caroline Kline Galland Home and Affiliates, which includes the Kline Galland nursing and care facility in Seward Park and the Summit at First Hill near downtown Seattle, are hoping to raise $100 million by 2014, its 100th anniversary, to shore up its endowment.
While the endowment would cover about 5 percent a year in operations, “it would also assure future innovative programs for the elderly,” said Josh Gortler, the Kline Galland’s former CEO, who remained with the organization to build the endowment.
Gortler noted that health care costs increase about 6 or 7 percent a year, with the state’s Medicaid disbursements increasing at only about two-and-a-half to 3 percent. The endowment would help to alleviate that pressure. But, as current CEO Jeff Cohn pointed out, with operating costs of approximately $25 million per year, in an emergency, $100 million could only sustain the facilities for a maximum of four years.
Gortler, who retired from his CEO position in 2006, said he is looking beyond the usual list of big donors in the Jewish community to meet his goals. He talked of one man who met with Gortler once: they had a discussion about what Kline Galland would do as a beneficiary of the man’s estate, and then then man wasn’t heard from again. But his bequeathment was one of two that set the stage for the endowment.
“When he died, he left $3 million,” Gortler said. “By the time the estate closed, it was $5 million. From nowhere. It was the largest single gift we got.”
The burgeoning campaign for the Kline Galland endowment comes about six years after the completion of the $36 million campaign that built the Summit at First Hill tower, some of which came not as cash, but as land and building donations. Gortler said an additional tower could figure into future plans, though not in the immediate future.
Jewish Family Service
Jewish Family Service of Greater Seattle began work on a strategic plan in 2004 to chart the growth and expansion of its health and human services. What became abundantly clear was that the small, two-story building on Capitol Hill would not be able to handle that growth.
“We had completely outgrown our space that we [had] to date,” said Judy Neuman, one of the co-chairs of the JFS campaign. “We’re full in Capitol Hill, we’re full in Kent, we’re full [at the Multi-Ethnic Service Center] in Bellevue, and we lease additional space for the homecare program.
JFS is in the
middle of a years-long quiet phase — expected to end around spring of 2009 — with the new facility’s groundbreaking — of what has become a larger-than-$30 million campaign that includes the building, expansion of existing services, and an endowment.
“It isn’t only about the building,” said Neuman. “It’s all about the operations of JFS and growing our services to meet the demands of the community, but we need a larger building in order to really roll out the plan successfully.”
Unlike many projects with cost overruns, the growth in the size of the campaign has not been due to building costs.
“It’s mostly the implementation of our programs,” said Ken Weinberg, Jewish Family Service’s CEO.
Neuman said that part of the process was to work with outside organizations to ensure that they could be meticulous in how the money is raised and spent. According to Weinberg, many of those services have been donated or provided at below-market rates.
JFS has so far raised $25 million from 140 individuals and families, though a number of those donations are not cash in hand — they extend to pledges extending as far as 10 years.
“I think we’ve done very, very well so far with a relatively small portion of the community,” said Weinberg.
The Stroum Jewish Community Center
“We have been on the precipice of exploring a capital campaign for some time,” said Barry Sohn, the Stroum Jewish Community Center’s executive director. “We are now at a point where we are moving forward in the quiet stages of the campaign, and…we are still exploring the strategic components of that.”
A JCC building campaign has been talked about, whether officially or unofficially, for years. Sohn said he was aware of a push to remodel the facility in 1999 or 2000, before his arrival in Seattle. The JCC passed on an opportunity around that time to purchase the building that housed its Northend Seattle branch, which runs early childhood and senior programs, and last year began renting space at nearby Temple Beth Am.
Like Jewish Family Service, the JCC has hired a campaign consultant to help in its strategic plan: the Dallas-based Ketchum, which has done similar work with other JCCs around the country. At this point, Sohn said it’s too early in the process to put a price tag on a project that would update the center’s 40-year-old Mercer Island facility, but, he said, “I think we’re looking at something significant.”
The two main areas Sohn mentioned were its school and its gym and workout areas.
“We need to do that just to be competitive in market conditions, and we want to build on the excellence of our school. We believe…that we’re the preeminent early childhood [program] in the greater Seattle area, and I’m not just talking Jewish community,” he said.
He said the school has a 94 percent retention rate and waiting lists to enter the program. “We want the ‘J’ to be the center of the community,” Sohn said, and “we believe that this exciting opportunity is going to help us meet those needs.”
Camp Kalsman
When Camp Kalsman, the 13th in the Union for Reform Judaism’s camp system, opened last summer, the budget to build had increased by between $2 and $3 million due to unanticipated costs.
“Though we had good advice all along, we found that the wetlands mitigation process… became costlier than we had anticipated,” said Rabbi Lennard Thal, formerly of Bellingham but now the URJ’s Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer in New York. Another surprise? “The impact of Hurricane Katrina for building supplies all over the country.”
But fundraising for the first phase of the 300-acre camp near Arlington, which came to $20.8 million, is close to complete.
“We were fortunate in getting some very favorable loans to cover the gap between the fundraising and the amount needed to open the camp last summer, as well as to cover those portions of gifts that were still pledged but not fully paid,” said Thal. “In the first two or three years of operating any camp in our system…we know that we are very likely to run to the red to some degree.”
The camp, however is selling out. An expected 275 campers for its first season ended up being 350, and they expect about 400 kids this coming summer.
One of the reasons that synagogues in the Pacific Northwest region, which includes Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and British Columbia, have gotten behind the camp, Thal said, is its value in Jewish education, and the role two weeks of immersion in camp life “[deepens] the sense of Jewish identity.”
Thal said the costs of the campaign, as well as those of subsequent phases, would not be integrated into tuition.
“We don’t expect the families who are paying a significant fee in order to send their youngster to camp to also bear the burden of the capital costs,” he said. But, Thal said, every little bit helps.
“We really want this to…feel like everybody who’s interested in it has a stake in it,” he said. “For some people, making a gift of $100 or $500 is every bit as meaningful as another giving $10,000 or $25,000 or $100,000.”
Temple Beth Am
As the Reform movement’s camp continues its campaign, one of the region’s largest Reform temples, Temple Beth Am, completed its K’hila Center last year at a price tag of $7.3 million.
“We haven’t 100 percent officially stopped the capital campaign. We’ve raised about $5 million and we’re kind of taking a bit of a breather,” said Dita Appelbaum, Temple Beth Am’s board president. “I think that right now people are a little bit anxious where the economy is going and it’s not necessarily the best of times to think about raising money.”
The K’hila Center replaced outdated classrooms that had formerly housed the Seattle Jewish Community School. The JCC now occupies the space.
“It was totally inadequate,” said Appelbaum. “The classrooms were…not ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] accessible, they were small, not really up to any kind of current code…. We needed more gathering spaces, more multipurpose spaces, and an income stream.”
The community has doubled to 870 families in the past 13 years, since the arrival of its senior rabbi, Jonathan Singer. (Rabbi Singer’s wife, Rabbi Beth Singer, has been promoted to co-senior rabbi as of June 1). Appelbaum said that with that growth, the necessity of building relationships with its members has been the priority before attempting fundraising.
“Just because somebody is a member of a synagogue, you can’t go up to them and ask for a big gift without having some personal connection with them, without them feeling integrated in a very special way,” she said.
But the temple is now facing emergency repairs — poor workmanship on the roof and siding installed when Beth Am first expanded 15 years ago has begun to result in major leaking.
“The way we know about it is because of leaks and areas within the building that have shown deterioration that would otherwise be unusual in a building this age,” said Esther Herst, Beth Am’s executive director.
Repairs could cost as much as $2.5 million, and at this point are not being covered by insurance. A request for a capital grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle is pending.
“Our congregants are being wonderfully generous,” said Herst. “There’s plenty of grumbling and frustration among all of us. Many of our congregants are coming forward and saying, ‘It’s our house, it’s our home, it’s our sanctuary, we have to do what we have to do.”
Seattle Jewish Community School
Two years ago, when Temple Beth Am demolished its old classrooms to make room for the K’hila Center, Seattle Jewish Community School, the K-5 day school that occupied that space, moved further north. Now SJCS is in a quiet phase to fund the $5.125 million purchase of its current home. That purchase price includes the third floor of the three-story elementary school building, which currently sits unused, and a house on the property currently being used by a separate organization.
The property, just south of Shoreline right off of Interstate 5, is currently owned by the Indonesian Gospel Fellowship.
“We have moved approximately every five years of our history,” said Deborah Frockt, the director of admissions and marketing at SJCS. “We’re now beginning our 18th year in the fall, and it’s time for us, I believe, to have a permanent home,”
The goal of the purchase, said Frockt, “is to meet the demand. We have a significant waiting list at our entry point of kindergarten, so we don’t have a place to put anybody else.”
The location, which has been pulling students from the large Jewish population in Seattle’s Ravenna, Wedgwood and View Ridge neighborhoods, as well as less Jewish areas west of I-5 and in the northern suburbs, is optimal in terms of accessibility, Frockt said.
From a staff and parent perspective, “It’s fair to say that we are 100 percent on board with this being the future of the school,” Frockt said. “There’s great enthusiasm for the location, so I think the board would certainly consider that this is a comfortable home that people feel very committed to after a very short time.”
Jewish Day School
The finishing touches on the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle’s new gym are nearly complete. A public grand opening will be held in June, and the campaign to raise $15 million is down to its last $1 million. The campaign, however, wasn’t exclusively for the new gym, according to JDS board president Laurie Minsk.
“It also includes a new grass playfield and new play areas for the kids. It includes pretty extensive new landscaping, hardscape and cement work,” she said. A new road runs along the east side of the school’s Bellevue property to the gym, and the classrooms in the 50-year-old building got “a basic safe and sound remodel” that included new carpeting, paint, roofing and some electrical work. Three million dollars from the campaign will go toward an endowment.
The school board had been talking about how to make improvements to the school for close to a decade, and moving from its six-and-a-half-acre property in the Crossroads area turned out to be unfeasible.
“There really wasn’t anything out there,” Minsk said.
Still, the existing gym, which was used as a gym, lunchroom and performance space, was inadequate, Minsk said, and the facilities not suitable for the middle school.
With fewer than 200 families connected to the school, “we think we’ve done remarkably well, given the size,” Minsk said.
Part of that is due to people in the community who appear to have a strong interest in furthering Jewish education.
“Many of our donors are not parents or grandparents,” Minsk said. “They are community donors who don’t have a direct connection to the school.”
With all of these ongoing projects, where does the money come from?
In the cases of the Jewish Day School and the JCC, or Camp Kalsman and Temple Beth Am, for instance, there is overlap in the use of the services. But most representatives of each organization believe that competition for dollars is not a matter of one beating out the other, but of people choosing where they want to be generous, and in many cases pledging to many options.
“I think we are blessed in the Seattle Jewish community, and I think this community has unbelievable capacity, so there are clearly people — my husband and I would be examples — that are supporting numerous campaigns,” said Neuman of Jewish Family Service.
“There is always competition and there [are] always needs, but I think each agency has to make its case and also find its niche,” said Gortler of Kline Galland. “Do I think we’re wearing people thin? I think some people get tired being asked all of the time. But you know what? They also dig deep, and if they’re truly philanthropists at heart, at whatever [level] they can give, they dig deep one more time.”
The success of the Kline Galland endowment cannot come at the expense of JFS or the JCC, added Gortler.
“Really, we need all of the agencies, and hopefully they’re all doing wonderful and unique work in the community,” he said. “The strength of them together is what makes this a powerful community, not the strength of any one in and of itself.”
Rabbi Thal, who from his national office in New York has more of a big-picture view of capital campaigns, said the Seattle area has “a very positive attitude toward Jewish philanthropy.”
“In any…Jewish community that’s vibrant and growing, there will always be multiple capital campaigns going on,” he said. “Show me a major metropolitan Jewish community, I’ll show you a place that’s got major capital campaigns occurring.”
But Appelbaum, Temple Beth Am’s president, noted that competition does exist, and not just from other Jewish agencies.
“As Jews we’re constantly asked for our financial commitment to lots of different organizations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and we have choices,” she said, adding that not everyone has the means to give a lot, or even at all.
And, as Amy Wasser-Simpson, Vice President of Planning and Community Services at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle pointed out, capital campaigns don’t cover operating budgets. The same organizations raising money to build must also, at the same time, raise money to keep the lights on.
“[Agency] fundraising continues to grow to make ends meet,” Wasser-Simpson said. The portion of the $6 million that the Federation raises in its annual community campaign that goes to local organizations helps, but has increasingly become a smaller piece of each agency’s pie.
“If, 10 years ago, collectively, all the partner agencies were raising $10-$12 million on an annual basis, it’s probably one-and-a-half times that money or more,” she said. “That’s not including our synagogues.”
The Federation is also not in a position to add to these capital campaigns. According to Wasser-Simpson, a $100 million capital fund has dwindled to about $400,000 in the past 14 years. Its purpose is for emergency funding, such as with Temple Beth Am’s repairs, according to Federation CEO Richard Fruchter.
“Unless we figure out a way of growing that fund,” Wasser-Simpson said, “the Federation’s role in capital campaigns will become very small.”
Gortler agreed.
“I don’t see [that] ongoing campaigns at [the] Federation…will keep up with [the] financial demand of agencies,” he said. “The only way to assure the future of any organization is to have enough foundation money coming in, in interest, dividends and growth, in order to sustain the operation and increase programming in the future.”