by Julie Gruenbaum Fax
February 3, 2010
Jewish Journal

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About 30 minutes into the question-and-answer portion of the public’s first chance to grill Jay Sanderson, he started singing.

It was just weeks before Sanderson took over as president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles on Jan. 4. After fielding about a half-dozen questions about the state of L.A. Jewry, Sanderson looked out at the 200 community leaders, rabbis and activists gathered at the Luxe Hotel in Bel Air and quipped, “I guess we’re at a place right now, and I have to recognize that, where there may be some negativity around Federation, based on these irrelevancy questions and alienation questions.”

Then he started to sing “It’s a New Day,” the song Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am composed for President Obama’s victory. It was a glimpse into Sanderson’s hopes for transforming Federation and a sign of his unrestrained way of communicating.

“It’s a new day,” the 52-year-old Sanderson said. “I think if we do the kind of work that I want to be doing, and if we throw the doors open at [Federation headquarters at] 6505 Wilshire and in the West Valley, people are going to see a different day.

“I look around this room, and I see some of the most exciting Jewish leaders in the community here,” he continued. “I see a wealth of talent and passion in this community, but many of you probably feel like you haven’t been engaged in the Federation world. I am going to change that.”

It’s a big promise coming from a man brand-new to the field.

Sanderson is taking over an institution with a $50 million annual budget that funds more than 100 initiatives and programs in Los Angeles and around the world, and creates some of its own programming as well.

For the last 20 years, Sanderson headed up the Sherman Oaks-based Jewish Television Network (JTN) whipping up philanthropic support for programs like “The Jewish Americans,” which attracted millions of viewers when it premiered on PBS in 2008. His interactions at federations and foundations across the country involved asking for funds — now he’ll be on the other side of that desk.

Sanderson wears his energy on his sleeve; his words come quickly and often in hyperbole or colorful examples. He is a sharp contrast to his predecessor, John Fishel, whose understated steadiness and analytical approach were a hallmark of his tenure.

Sanderson is, all agree, an unconventional choice. It’s a job usually handed over to people who’ve worked at least somewhat within the Federation world. Fishel directed Montreal’s Federation before helming the Los Angeles Federation for 17 years.

Fishel left behind an organization lauded for its accomplishments in Israel-Diaspora relations and for its ability to rally support during crises. But he also left a Federation whose membership and fundraising have stagnated over the last several decades.

For the last 20 years, Federation has run a relatively flat annual campaign and has been steadily losing donors. About 18,000 of Los Angeles’ estimated 200,000 Jewish households — under 10 percent — give annually to Federation. That means that more Los Angeles Jews go to synagogue (about 35 percent) than associate with Federation. Even many highly affiliated Jews don’t see the value of putting a personal stake in what they see as a bloated, ineffective bureaucracy that is out of touch with the community.

And national trends are working against large umbrella organizations, as major philanthropists and small donors choose to put their money directly into causes they are passionate about. The days of giving to Federation as an obligatory communal tax are ending.

It’s not an accident that Sanderson comes from the outside. Immediate past Federation chairman Stanley Gold spent his two-year tenure reorganizing the institution into five areas of interest, revamping how allocations are made and restructuring Federation’s connection with the 30 or so agencies with which it has a historical and financial relationship. He reached out to young leaders and experimented with giving donors more control over where their money ends up.

Gold’s changes met with mixed reactions, but Sanderson says he supports the approach.

“Even though I want to transform Federation, Federation is already an enormously effective institution, doing incredible work,” Sanderson said in an interview before taking office. But, he said, “there has not ever been an opportunity to take a step back and breathe and say, ‘The Jewish community in L.A. is significantly different than it was 20 years ago, and if the community is different, then the needs are different. And if the needs are different, then we need to do business in a different way.’”

Partnership, Not Patriarchy

Sanderson says he wishes he could start with a blank slate to figure out how to best use $50 million. Instead, he has inherited an institution with both a proud array of social, educational and cultural beneficiaries, and an entrenched way of doing things.

As executive director of Jewish Television Network, Sanderson saw himself as more of an observer than a player in the organized Jewish world, and he did a fair share of criticizing the community, often with a heavy hand.

“Most Jewish organizations in this community are completely overstaffed,” he told The Jewish Journal one year ago. “They are enormous for what they do. There are tired organizations that don’t have a lot of vision and are spending a tremendous amount of money doing the same old, same old.”

Sanderson has since tempered his rhetoric. In the month since he took office and in the few months before, he and board chairman Richard Sandler have been meeting with Federation staff and lay leaders, having conferences with agency heads, talking to community leaders who aren’t involved with Federation and getting a feel for what regular people want to see from the organization. His first week on the job he held a large staff meeting, and he has planned the first board retreat in many years.

“I hope he is listening more than he is talking,” said Gerald Bubis, a longtime community and Federation activist, who says he has high hopes for Sanderson. “This is a real opportunity for the leadership to hear what people really think about Federation in its present form and what they hope it might become in its future form. Those voices will be diverse, they will be highly contentious, and they may be irreconcilable at times. He must listen to all those voices so he can thread the needle and come out with some kind of tapestry that on the one hand connects all these groups when they need to be connected, and on the other hand celebrates their differences where they should be celebrated,” said Bubis, who founded Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s school of communal service.

Sanderson said some underlying components are likely to remain constant as the vision materializes.

For example, Sanderson knows Federation needs to remain the central address for the Jewish community in times of crisis. He knows that fostering Jewish identity among the broad spectrum of Jews is at the core of everything that happens. He knows that trying to be everything to everyone is a setup for failure.

And he knows that Federation needs to abandon its self-image as community patriarch.

“My vision is that Federation become more of a partner with the community,” Sanderson said. “It is time for us to do some really hard thinking and hard looking at what this community needs, and the only way we can do this is by talking to partners and talking to the community. It’s not about us coming from the top and saying ‘we are or are not funding this initiative anymore.’ ... This is about two-way communication, not about us dictating.”

Sanderson envisions Federation as setting goals and priorities and constantly updating an aerial shot of the Jewish community, to connect potential partners that should be collaborating, offer aid when needed, support new programs and identify gaps that either Federation can fill or can guide others to fill.

It’s a matter of figuring out what Los Angeles is now, Sanderson said. Just a few decades ago, he points out, major organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Skirball Cultural Center and vanguard organizations like Progressive Jewish Alliance or IKAR either didn’t exist or weren’t significant.

“There are a lot of organizations in this community that don’t have relationships with Federation that need to have one, and we have a lot of long-term relationships that need to evolve,” he said.

In With the New

Sanderson says he is committed to improving existing institutions while nurturing startups. He is working with the philanthropic Jewish Community Foundation and Jumpstart, an organization that helps seedling programs become established, to explore a plan to dedicate office space in the Federation’s Wilshire Boulevard building to a cluster of new and innovative organizations, where they could share some overhead and work in collaboration.

At the same time he’d like to continue helping existing agencies evolve and become more independent, Sanderson said.

Some organizations felt bruised by Gold’s introduction two years ago of a system that leveled the allocations process for previously unfunded organizations and traditional agencies — like Jewish Family Service, Jewish Vocational Service and Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles. Allocations are now based on programming proposals, rather than as annual entitlements, and subsidies for rent and other items are being scaled back.

One agency head said she senses “a certain fatigue — the fear and the excitement neutralize each other,” while others said they are excited about the burst of energy Sanderson is bringing.

Sanderson said he wants to empower the staff, to find out their long-term visions.

He’s looking to boost staff morale, even hoping to open a cafe as a setting for a natural exchange of ideas. He recently hosted a buildingwide party to thank staff for their work on the 2009 campaign. And he’s bringing in a rotation of community leaders to teach at Federation once a month.

Sanderson has already made some big moves. He put the 2010 budget on hold as Federation reevaluates the allocations process. On his first day in office, he announced that Federation would put in $700,000 for a grant to be matched two-to-one by the Adelson Family Foundation, yielding $2.1 million for Los Angeles Birthright Israel participants.

He rolled out a new marketing initiative, titled “Only Federation has the strength of community,” which he promises will be a more intimate way of telling Federation’s story. He has enlisted Blue State Digital, which ran Obama’s online campaign, to create a conversation with the community using the Web and new technology. Sanderson’s first weekly blog post garnered dozens of responses.

And, he boasts, Federation’s centennial celebration in 2011 will “take the city by storm.”

Barry Shrage, president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston — the city’s Federation equivalent — says Sanderson should be quick in setting priorities. Shrage is widely admired for his vision-driven transformation of his organization, both in terms of communal relevance and the campaign’s bottom line.

“You need to be able to start articulating a vision for the community pretty quickly, and not just saying you are going to be creative and make change.

“It is about articulating what change looks like, even if it might alienate a particular part of the community,” Shrage said.

Does Jay Sanderson Have What it Takes?

Sanderson is a graduate of Syracuse University who worked in independent film production before he took over the Jewish Television Network in its infancy in 1989, when it had a budget of about $75,000. He enlisted philanthropists and built the organization into a significant Web presence and the largest provider of Jewish content for cable and network television. While for large projects like “The Jewish Americans” he had a staff of 60 and a budget of more than $5 million, much of the time he had a full-time staff of just a handful. Federation employs about 150 people.

Richard Sandler acknowledged that the search committee confronted that issue and that some leaders were surprised by the choice of Sanderson.

But Sandler said both the search committee and doubters who have since met Sanderson have been impressed with his passion, his willingness to take risks and his ability to get jobs done well and efficiently.

“The skill set I have seen is that he is mature, he is smart and he listens — he’s not set in his ways, not stubborn. And he cares — he really cares — about this community,” Sandler said.

If Sanderson’s professional background leaves some question marks, his Jewish passion is unassailable. A competitive athlete and a foodie, he lives in Encino with his wife, 21-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter, and makes a hobby out of going to synagogues. As one of the panel of three that selects Newsweek Magazine’s annual list of the top 50 rabbis in the country, Sanderson said he personally has visited about 100 synagogues — something he plans to continue to do, though he will no longer help create the list. His family has belonged to many synagogues in Los Angeles, and now prays at Rabbi Naomi Levy’s Nashuva minyan. (Levy is the wife of Jewish Journal Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman.)

Sanderson said one of his earliest role models was a rabbi who stepped in as a mentor after his father died when he was 5. He grew up in the projects outside of Boston, where he was once left in a plank-covered ditch by an anti-Semitic gang of boys.

He found solace in his grandparent’s Orthodox milieu, and said one of his most formative memories was a Jewish Agency trip to Israel when he was 14.

“Judaism has always been central to my life. I’m deeply spiritual,” Sanderson said, though he says his level of observance has varied over time.

Some wonder whether L.A.’s elite is ready for Sanderson’s informality and how his rough edges will go over with big donors or policy makers. But perhaps his unadorned spirit, so far free of pretense if also somewhat coarse, is the boost Los Angeles needs.

Sanderson said he isn’t intimidated by the vast challenges that now sit squarely on his plate, and he is excited about building meaningful relationships with donors large and small.

“Before I decided to enter into this fray, I had an outsider’s point of view,” Sanderson said. “Now I see things differently. I don’t believe we’re in a doom-and-gloom scenario. Actually, every day when I see something that is a challenge, I get more excited, because these challenges seem so solvable. Do I think that many organizations in the community are stuck in an old model of doing business? Absolutely. Do I think many have evolved and are evolving? I do as well. I think that now that I’ve been in Federation a couple months, I’m far more optimistic then I was when I was standing outside the building.”

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