After several generations, the East Bay federation has opted to change its name — to parallel that of its San Francisco counterpart and many North American federations.
Ami Nahshon, the federation’s executive vice president, announced this week that the East Bay federation has officially changed its name from the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay to the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay. He said the federation held its previous moniker for at least 60 or 70 years.
He hopes the small change speaks volumes about the federation’s priorities — a primary commitment to strengthening the local Jewish community.
Nahshon said he’d “felt it out” with Sam Salkin, the chief executive officer of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, who had no problem with the East Bay using a similar name. Salkin, who was ill this week, did not return phone calls.
Nahshon believes changing the East Bay federation’s name to more closely resemble that of the S.F.-based JCF would neither help nor hurt name recognition, publicity or fund-raising.
The term “Jewish Community Federation” is the most common among North American federations, according to Nahshon, who believes that adopting uniform names would benefit all federations.
He said he isn’t worried about people mistaking the San Francisco and East Bay federations.
“There would be some benefit even on the national level if all federations used the same language, much as the United Way has done; it’s a national brand.
“When you move from Chicago to Detroit, you still know that United Way image and what it represents. In the Jewish world, we haven’t been as strategic as the United Way, perhaps. There are vastly different nomenclatures around the country.”
Nahshon and Marjorie Wolf, the federation’s president, said they’ve been bandying about the idea of injecting the word “community” into the federation’s title for several years.
“The community has always been the focus of who we are; yet somehow, over the years, it never made it into our name before,” said Nahshon.
“A new name, logo and image are all rolling out. A couple of months from now, we’re moving into a new facility. The East Bay federation is getting a makeover.”
With the federation set to move a few hundred yards down Grand Avenue into a recently donated building by June, advertisements, letterheads and business cards will soon have to be altered, so the name change will entail only minimal expenses.
“We’re moving our offices, so it felt like a good time to do it, We have to redo the stationary and everything else anyway,” said Wolf.
“We felt like what we’re doing is much more community development than traditional federation fund-raising only, so it felt like time to add that to our name. The name has to reflect the times, and these are times of community development.”