For some people, it’s all about creating relationships. Cultivating relationships is something Todd Stettner excelled at during his tenure at the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City.
“I think I am good at connecting people. Building partnerships. Building collaborations. Making connections. Bringing people together. Creating synergies,” he said.
On May 13 Stettner, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City, will retire from the agency that builds community, raises funds and helps strengthen both our local and overseas partner agencies, institutions and programs. As he helps transition his successor Helene Lotman into the position he’s held for almost 17 years, he looked back on his years here, and the culmination of his 40-plus year career in Jewish communal service.
He recalled when he came on board in August of 1999, his first charge was to implement the Jewish Federation strategic plan that had been adopted in 1998.
“The cornerstone of that plan was creating the climate of collaboration, which I think still exists to this day,” he noted.
Deborah Bretton Granoff, who has known Stettner since he first arrived, notes that his vision and leadership have enriched our community and his innovative programming brought national recognition to the Jewish Federation.
“Our Kansas City Jewish community has been fortunate to have Todd serve as president and CEO of the Jewish Federation for the past 17 years and I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him and learn from him,” Granoff said.
Community volunteer Merelyn Berenbom agrees.
“Todd is a master bridge builder. He easily makes connections locally, nationally and internationally and has helped the community achieve its goals,” Berenbom said.
Building bridges
One thing Stettner said he never dreamed he would have to facilitate is the way the Jewish community thinks about security today. That became necessary following the April 13, 2014, tragedy when three people were murdered at two Jewish sites.
“It wasn’t something that I ever anticipated. But I’m certainly proud of getting the things that we needed to do, done,” he said. That included hiring a director of community security, implementing the recommendations of the Department of Homeland Security.
It took a lot of collaboration between agencies, organizations and congregations to implement these security changes across the community. Kansas City is known as being one of the most collaborative Jewish communities in the country and through the success of the Jewish Funders Council here, Stettner can take some credit for that cooperative spirit.
He explained that the Jewish Funders Council was the brainchild of Stan Bushman and the late John Uhlmann. But it blossomed during the time Berenbom was president of the Jewish Federation and Stettner was its chief executive.
“Along with Steve Israelite (former director of the Jewish Heritage Foundation) and Susie Goldsmith (former director of the Jewish Community Foundation), we made the Funders Council what it is today, which is certainly a model of collaboration of institutional funders who really have helped shaped this community. As I’ve gone around the country and talked to people at Jewish Federations of North America, there’s no model like this Funders Council anywhere in the country,” Stettner said.
Fundraising and hard times
Through the Jewish Federation’s network of partners, the organization helps feed, clothe, comfort and inspire people here at home and in more than 60 countries worldwide. As its CEO, one of Stettner’s main concerns is making sure there are funds available to do those things.
Along those lines, Jewish Federation’s largest fundraising year was attained during Stettner’s tenure. In 2006, a little more than $9 million was raised by the annual campaign, which raised more than $5 million, and two special campaigns — Operation Promise, a three-year campaign launched in 2005 by JFNA to raise $160 million to care for hundreds of thousands of needy Jews in the Former Soviet Union as well as help bring the Ethiopian Jewish community home to Israel, and an Israel Emergency campaign initiated by JFNA to respond to the reality of Israel at war and the tremendous humanitarian needs created by missile attacks targeting the Jewish state. A few designated special gifts came in that year as well.
“By that December, Gail (Weinberg, campaign director) and Bev (Jacobson, Women’s Philanthropy director), our whole team and our volunteers were just exhausted because we had been doing one campaign after another. It was just amazing when we got to the end of the year and we totaled everything we had raised. I was stunned by the total.”
While fundraising dollars dipped during the recession that began in 2008, programs the Jewish Federation had begun years earlier helped members of the Jewish community weather those tough economic times.
“We were fortunate in this community because the community had the vision before there were those hard times to have things like the Gesher Fund and the Hesed Fund already in place (these programs involved loans or outright gifts of emergency funds for people in need). Then thanks to a donor we created the Gesher XL Fund and eventually, along with Valley View Bank we created a low interest loan as well.”
In addition, Stettner said Jewish Federation brought together Jewish Family Services and Jewish Vocational Services to expand “the jobs program at a time when it was most needed.”
“JFS and JVS collaborated to create a program that we funded and encouraged to help members of the Jewish community find jobs,” he said. “The community really rose to the occasion during that time and we played a lead role in that.”
When the recession began Jewish Federation also made sure that rabbis and other Jewish leaders in the community knew exactly what types of programs existed in the Jewish community to help those facing employment crises and other monetary issues.
“Many of our leaders did not realize what was available in the community to help their members and friends. Making sure they had all that information to steer people in the proper directions was key in helping people get through the hard times in that recession,” Stettner explained.
When it comes to fundraising, whether in good times or recessions, the charitable organization has been considered well run. For that reason, last year Jewish Federation received a four-star rating from Charity Navigator, America’s largest and most-utilized independent evaluator of charities.
“Out of the thousands of nonprofits Charity Navigator evaluates, only one out of four earns four stars — a rating that demands rigor, responsibility and commitment to openness,” said Michael Thatcher of Charity Navigator. “Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City’s supporters should feel confident that their hard-earned dollars are being used efficiently and responsibly.”
Creating overseas partnerships
Over the years Jewish Federation had always supported Israel and overseas programming. During Stettner’s tenure, those relationships became more up close and personal. Kansas City already had a sister-city relationship with the Ramla-Gezer Region in Israel and began a relationship with the Jewish communities of Bulgaria and Romania.
At the urging of Trisha Uhlmann, who would eventually serve as chairman of the Jewish Federation board and is very active with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Stettner traveled to Bulgaria and Romania in his first year here with several other members of our community. Following that visit, he organized a professional exchange where professionals from those Eastern European communities and the Ramla-Gezer region got together in each of the three Jewish communities to learn from each other over an 18-month period.
Stettner said everyone, including the Kansas City community, learned different things from those sessions. In fact, the local community ended up tailoring programs leaders witnessed in Israel and Eastern Europe to fit the needs of Jews here. Just one example is the Help@Home program run by JFS that is patterned after a similar program in Israel.
“To this day there is such a wonderful feeling from all sides because of that relationship,” he added.
Those relationships with these communities is indeed special, according to Shari Stimetz.
“Because of Todd’s immense care and concern for Jews worldwide, I think the Jewish Federation’s partnership with Bulgaria and Romania is one of his most important legacies. Todd raised the image of Kansas City and strengthened our partnerships with the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and The Jewish Agency for Israel. Along with volunteer leaders and staff, he led a number of important and successful overseas missions, which educated and informed community members about their brothers and sisters in the worldwide Jewish communities,” said Stimetz said, who started working for Jewish Federation in 1980 and retired as its assistant executive director in 2014.
In recent years Stettner takes pride in helping Heart to Heart International (HHI) —a humanitarian non-governmental agency based here that is committed to expanding access to healthcare by connecting people and resources to a world in need — create a partnership with Jewish Federation.
“They have supplied us with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of medical supplies for Eastern Europe,” said Stettner. “We in turn helped them with disaster relief, not only domestically but overseas and created this relationship with JDC. Now there is this tremendous synergy with one of our international partners and with Heart to Heart.”
Not everything has been a bed of roses over the years, and Stettner has a few things he wishes might have turned out a bit differently. But overall when he looks back at his career he can say, “Wow. It’s been incredible.”
The future
While he’s officially retiring from the Jewish Federation on May 13, he’ll remain on board as a consultant for a couple of months assisting with the leadership transition. He will also continue raising funds for a security-related project.
But at age 66, Stettner said he’s “too young to fully hang it up.” So he hopes to find things to keep him busy and intellectually interesting. It may be consulting, it may be serving other non-profits in an interim capacity, it may even be teaching.
One thing has been decided. He and his wife Shirley enjoy living here and do not plan to move. Their sons live out of town — one son, his wife and two grandchildren live in Chicago and the other lives in New York, Stettner’s hometown — meaning there could be more travel on the horizon.
Looking back on his entire career and what has happened in Jewish history during his lifetime, he said it is nothing short of incredible.
“I was born in ’49, just after the founding of the State of Israel and when Jews were still dealing with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Then there was the fall of Soviet Union and the Jews coming out, and Ethiopian Jewry and all of the various wars with Israel and the intifadas. There’s been an incredible re-birth of Judaism and the renaissance of all of that.
“… When I think of being in Ethiopia and sitting on a plane with 100-some-odd Ethiopian Jews who were coming to Israel for the first time and watching them kiss the ground when they came there … it is an indescribable feeling. How do you recapture all of those kind of moments?”
