Conrad Giles doesn’t fool himself into thinking that the mega-merger of two Jewish fund-raising giants will wow the average federation donor.
“I don’t believe he or she will notice any difference,” acknowledged Giles, president of the Council of Jewish Federations.
Nevertheless, the CJF’s upcoming merger with the United Jewish Appeal is expected to save millions that now go to administration — allowing that money to instead flow directly to charitable needs.
In the first year alone, Giles estimated, savings may hit $2 million.
Giles, a Detroit-area pediatric ophthalmologist, flew in and out of the Bay Area on Monday of last week in order to address the annual meeting of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay.
With no interview time during his visit, the 63-year-old instead agreed to speak by phone from his home three days later. Taking a break from watching his hometown team vie for the Stanley Cup, Giles said that after years of CJF-UJA merger negotiations, things are starting to roll.
Right now, the two groups are in a formal “partnership” — a predecessor to merger. Giles expects the full-fledged merger to be completed by April 1999.
At the end of this month, the CJF and the UJA are taking the big step of moving into the same office in New York — like a couple moving in together to test-drive marriage.
The United Israel Appeal, another major-leaguer on the national scene, also joined the partnership last month.
Giles expects all three to be merged before 2000.
One of the reasons average donors might not pay attention to the merger is that they don’t necessarily know the differences among the three groups.
The CJF, an umbrella group, helps more than 200 Jewish federations in the United States and Canada coordinate their work. The UJA sends collected money to aid Jewish needs around the world. And the UIA handles the UJA funds specifically earmarked to Israel.
If their purposes are so intertwined, why didn’t they take it upon themselves to merge a long time ago?
“I’m not certain at all that the organizations themselves would ever have done it,” Giles said. “It took pressure on the part of the federation movement to say that we didn’t want to pay three organizations when one could be more effective.”
Giles wholeheartedly advocates the national merger. But he doesn’t necessarily feel the same way about local federations, particularly the East Bay federation and the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
San Francisco’s federation is the bigger kid on the block, with territory ranging from Sonoma County to Silicon Valley and an annual fund-raising campaign topping $20 million.
The East Bay’s federation covers Alameda and Contra Costa counties and brings in less than $3 million to its annual campaign.
“My sense is that communities take on different personalities,” Giles said. “Nobody would suggest that Oakland and San Francisco become one city. They are different cities, [each] with a different personality and a different background and a different sense of self.”
The same goes for the two federations.
“It’s not surprising that San Francisco and the East Bay have never talked about the possibility of a merger,” he said.
Even so, Giles would like to see them working together instead of functioning separately as now.
For example, he said, Atlanta’s large federation shares resources and offers support to the smaller federations in its region — without trying to take them over. And the smaller federations acknowledge that they need the help.
Similarly, Giles wishes that San Francisco’s federation could work as a mentor to federations in the East Bay, Sacramento and San Jose.
“The system benefits by everybody being strong,” he said.
At the same time, the system suffers when Jews are divided.
The religious pluralism crisis that hit Israel last year hurt the UJA campaign at the last minute. Angry donors spoke through their checkbooks.
Giles predicts the same will happen this summer.
“We’re about to have an explosion in Israel,” he said. “Again religious pluralism will come out and bite us.”
Nationally, UJA’s joint campaign with local federations raised about $757 million in 1997. Right now, the 1998 campaign is about 10 percent ahead of last year, but Giles fears that extra margin could disappear.
Even with problems in Israel, Giles said, “we’ll match last year.” But to him, standing still is “not a reasonable goal.”