When the Albert L. Schultz JCC recently faced a significant financial shortfall, it didn’t have to look far to find someone to help — Albert L. Schultz.
Thanks to a $225,000 challenge grant established by the Jewish Community Center’s namesake and longtime benefactor, the Palo Alto JCC hopes to make up for a projected $450,000 deficit this year.
Carol Saal, the JCC’s president, approached Schultz several weeks ago with a request for help, but the idea — and size — of the challenge grant were all his.
“They came to me, and I said I’ll help to the extent of half of it [the projected deficit] as a challenge grant. Let’s see the community come through for the rest of it,” said Schultz, 88, a longtime Peninsula resident who now resides with his wife, Janet, at San Francisco Towers.
“There are a lot of wonderful people who are helping and making contributions, but I’d like to see more contributions from the general Jewish public. I felt a challenge grant would shake ’em up a little bit.”
The grant, which will directly aid child care, adult and emigre programming, is open until June 30.
According to JCC officials, the shortfall hails from the double whammy of a depressed Silicon Valley economy and continuing uncertainty expressed by JCC users over the center’s future status.
The JCC will leave its current Arastradero Road site in August and move to its temporary “Greendell-Cubberley” sites, although the fitness center will remain at the current site for another year.
The center is still in negotiations with Sun Microsystems to purchase a Palo Alto “Jewish campus.” Saal said the deal should be concluded sometime between June and September, with financial incentives benefiting a quicker conclusion for the JCC.
Confusion over what JCC programs will be offered and which of the pair of adjacent temporary sites or current site will house them have led many users to be wary of renewing their membership, said Karen Stern, the center’s executive director.
“When you’re making a decision about paying your annual dues to the fitness center, you’re not going to make a commitment if you’re not sure it’ll be there in a year. People are thinking ‘I’m going to wait until the center has decided what it’s going to do and then reconnect.'”
Stern emphasized, however, that members will be able to use the very same fitness equipment they currently use until August 2003, despite “all the press the center has gotten about us being evicted.”
All told, Stern said, membership numbers are hovering between 1,300 to 1,400 families, roughly down 300 from last year.
While Stern and Saal anticipated confusion and financially strained times in the period leading up to the center’s temporary relocation, they did not expect that the Silicon Valley’s combustible economy would cause such a large impact on the JCC’s early childhood services.
While the center anticipated — and budgeted for — 120 children in its day care program, it now serves only 80.
A number of Palo Alto-area parents who lost their jobs pulled children out of the center’s day care and preschool programs. Since such programs are open to JCC members only, the center loses membership and program fees, in addition to transportation fees. All told, the 40-child drop in the day care program will cost the JCC roughly $200,000.
Schultz’s challenge grant, however, could ameliorate the JCC’s financial woes. Saal characterized the $225,000 goal as “realistic,” and, moving into the public phase of the fund-raising drive this week, the center has already amassed roughly $160,000.
Saal admitted the difficulty of simultaneously raising funds for a new campus and current day-to-day programming, but she said donors understand the necessity.
“It doesn’t do any good to have a beautiful building but have a wobbly agency.”