Economic slump felt at Campus

Summer is always the slow season for the organized Jewish community. But this summer, it’s even slower than usual at the Jewish Community Campus, thanks to the nation’s economic slump.

Some cubicles in the Jewish Federation office are vacant because their normal occupants are being forced to take unpaid furloughs as part of package of budget reductions.

And attendance at the Jewish Community Center’s Barney Goodman Camp, which began Monday, is down 9 percent compared to last year, according to Director of Youth Services Stephanie Katzif.

Katzif said she’s pleased that the figures are only down by that much.

“When we started in February, we had two days of open enrollment,” Katzif said, “and … we were off 40 percent from last year. So I was worried it would be a lot worse, but we sort of caught up.”

Barney Goodman Camp has a broad-based program of activities. Katzif said the numbers at JCC’s specialized camp programs — Sports, Theater and Maasim Tovim, or Good Works — held steady this year, as compared to last. All told, over 300 youngsters will go to camp at the JCC this year,

Katzif said that as the year progressed, she noticed more families opting for shorter camp stays — e.g., one two-week session instead of all four — or three days a week instead of five, plus lots of last-minute sign-ups.

“Either something fell through or something came up,” she said. “Maybe they didn’t have a job, and now they might, so they need to make sure their kids have something to do. People seemed reluctant to commit.”

Scholarship applications, she said, ran about the same as last year. A two-week session at Barney Goodman Camp starts at over $400, with price breaks for multiple sessions.

Rainy days and Mondays

While campers splashed and shouted Monday afternoon in the JCC pool, the Jewish Federation office across the Campus was quiet and cool. Reducing staff hours over the summer is just one method that Federation officials have chosen to make ends meet.

Others include dipping into its reserve fund, reducing executive pay and staff benefits, cutting back on program spending and not filling a marketing position that had been budgeted.

Altogether, the cuts amount to 17 percent of the Federation’s budget, compared to what it planned to spend at the beginning of the fiscal year in October. It’s an actual, year-over-year budget cut of 5.5 percent. Thus, Federation will spend about $1.44 million on internal operations in Fiscal Year 2008-09, rather than the $1.74 million it originally planned. That comes out of its annual fundraising campaign, which in 2008 brought in $4.87 million, rather than the anticipated $5.05 million.

Federation Executive Vice President and CEO Todd Stettner said the budget cutting began back in February, when the 2008 campaign results became known. “We lost several major gifts we expected to receive in late 2008 … so we decided to do something sooner, rather than later,” Stettner said, “We implemented a series of measures designed to save 9 percent right away, in this fiscal year. We didn’t hire a marketing person. We cut all our programs back, plus travel.”

That means there will be no community mission to Israel next summer, no annual meeting to speak of, and no spending on “leadership development” such as subsidies for young adults to attend national meetings.

In all, Federation leaders implemented three rounds of budget cuts, the last of which reduced the pay of Stettner and other top execs by 5 percent annually, eliminated any employer match for 401-K contributions and dropped life-insurance coverage for workers.

And while some staffers are working one-half day less each week, there have been no firings, Stettner said.

“I want to emphasize how carefully and artfully the budget reductions were made,” said Federation Treasurer and Director Rodney Minkin, who sat in on all the budget discussions. “It was well received by the staff.”

Minkin said the Jewish agencies that get annual grants from the Federation are tightening their belts, too, in anticipation of future funding cuts.

“We’re all in this boat together,” said Minkin. “We share the concern of beneficiary agencies.”

Now the Federation is pushing to substantially complete its 2009 fundraising campaign before the next fiscal year begins in October. The budget planning that goes on at this time of year is always a guessing game, in that fundraising campaign totals are as yet unknown.

“I hope the campaign will do well enough that we won’t have to draw on our reserves again,” Stettner said, “but if we have to, that is why it’s there. The board has been fiscally prudent to allow for a year like this.”

The Federation withdrew $134,000 from its reserves to spend this year. The rainy-day fund still has $978,000 in it, according to a budget summary Stettner provided The Chronicle.

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