After 12 years as executive director of the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, Judy Wolff-Bolton will step down Dec. 31 in response to the center’s need for a massive financial overhaul.
The BRJCC has piled up a $450,000 deficit over the past three years. As part of a major restructuring plan and budget approved Sept. 22 by the BRJCC board of directors, Wolff-Bolton’s position was eliminated.
In her place, a director of finance and operations — essentially, a CEO — will be hired to run the North Berkeley center within the next month or two.
Also, the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay is going to “step up our involvement with the BRJCC to create a new mechanism of financial oversight,” said Ami Nahshon, the federation’s executive director .
A joint management committee, headed by Jerry Yanowitz, former federation president, and made up of members from both the BRJCC and federation boards, will oversee operation of the BRJCC until “it is on stable financial ground,” Nahshon said.
That could take anywhere from 12 to 36 months, or even longer, according to one BRJCC board member.
When fiscal stability is achieved through budget-tightening and some program cuts, the BRJCC will go back to being run solely by its own board and managers.
The BRJCC’s annual budget is $1.4 million.
“We really see this as a federation-BRJCC partnership to get the center back on track,” Nahshon said. “Our board was unanimous in support of this partnership.”
On Wednesday of last week, the federation board voted 20-0 to accept the recommendations made five days earlier by the BRJCC board.
The most notable recommendation was cutting the executive director position and asking Wolff-Bolton to resign.
Longtime BRJCC board member Donald Brody, who is also vice president of the East Bay federation, said most fellow BRJCC board members were and will continue to be Wolff-Bolton supporters. In fact, she’ll be asked to join the board, he said, after she steps down.
“It’s not at all because of any shortcoming Judy has,” Brody said. “She has done wonderful work for the center over the years, and it’s a much better place than it was 13 years ago when she arrived.”
To get her to step aside, “no muscling was necessary,” he added. “Her skills are not best suited to turn around a business organization that’s in debt to this level, and she certainly understands that. She felt it was time for somebody with different skills to come in.”
In a letter to the board last week, Wolff-Bolton wrote: “It has always been my desire to act in the best interest of the BRJCC…While this is a difficult personal and professional decision, it does reflect what I believe to be in line with the needs of the JCC at this time.”
The aim of the new director will be increasing income and finding additional revenue resources — with much of the money going back to the federation to repay the $450,000 deficit.
At least one board member, Ursula Sherman, contended the BRJCC’s financial bind is nothing out of the ordinary.
“All nonprofits, whether Jewish or not, have terrible problems and are working very hard to raise money,” said Sherman, BRJCC board president from 1984 to 1987. “Unless you have extraordinary talents at writing grants, or have people [donors] with much generosity and deep pockets, life is going to be very difficult.”
The BRJCC’s Jewish Music Festival, which will be staged for a 14th straight year in March, is one example of how the center has piled up debt.
Sherman, who founded the event, said it costs about $50,000 to run, but that only one-third to one-half of that cost is recouped from ticket sales.
That shortfall of about $25,000 to $33,000 a year is just one of the many shortfalls the federation has been covering the past three years, but could no longer stomach.
“When you reach a deficit approaching half a million dollars, it’s cause for serious concern,” Nahshon said. Contrary to rumors that the BRJCC might be shut down entirely, Nahshon said that was not considered.
There will be cutbacks, however. Brody said these include: the teen program; advertising and promotions; “small pieces” of the youth program; and services, such as busing, that can be offered more economically by outside firms.
Also, the popular Jewish Food Festival will be held every other year, rather than annually. This year’s event has already been canceled. “We feel a year off would be best,” Brody said. “Community support would be better if it was every other year.”
“Essential core services” will be retained, said Brody. These include the afterschool program, the preschool, older-adult services, adult education and the Jewish Music Festival.
Those budgetary decisions arose in part following a report last month by the independent consulting firm of Leventhal-Kline, hired by the BRJCC board. The consultants, who worked closely with Wolff-Bolton while gathering data, also recommended the new management structure.
The new director of finance and operations will oversee a director of programs and development. The hiring search for both positions is expected to take 30 to 45 days, Brody said.
There will also be a new BRJCC board president. Citing time constraints, Mike Rose stepped down as president a few days after the Sept. 22 meeting. Rose, who will remain on the board, is a co-owner of Semifreddi’s bakery in Emeryville, and had difficulty committing time for BRJCC business and meetings.
He will be replaced by board secretary Marla Kane, although she won’t be formally confirmed until the next board meeting later this month.
The BRJCC, in its 18th year, is used by more than 500 people a day, according to Wolff-Bolton. The East Bay federation has allotted 8 percent of its annual budget — about $92,000 for each of the past three years — to the BRJCC.
Many blame the BRJCC’s dire financial straits on the drying up of revenue from two key sources.
United Way pulled the plug on funding to the BRJCC three years ago, and a weekly bingo game that once raised nearly $100,000 per year was scrapped because of “the spiraling down of interest in playing bingo,” Nahshon said.
But critics say current managers of the center and power brokers on the board dropped the ball in coming up with new and creative ways to raise money. “The head people that run the center don’t have the knowledge to amass the money that they need,” said one board member.
“The responsibility of an executive director is community relations, fund-raising and interchange with the board,” the board member continued. “Everything depends on raising money and creating friends. If they don’t have those skills, they can’t survive.”