By Lacey Storer
Contributing Writer
Few people could have predicted a year as uncertain and unprecedented as 2020. That leaves many of us asking, what’s next?
Leaders of the community’s Jewish agencies and organizations have looked into their crystal balls through scenario planning workshops facilitated by the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City.
The local initiative built on work started in the spring by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). The organization hired a consultant to work with hundreds of Jewish organizational leaders to create four scenarios for the coming months and weeks.
The planning started with two critical questions: What are the possibilities for social gathering, and will financial stability improve or worsen over the next 24 months?
JFNA then enabled Federation professionals to run scenario planning workshops in their own communities, with ideas like “core bets” and “side bets” and with optional JFNA-recommended facilitators. Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City took the opportunity to help its partner agencies.
“We all collectively face an incredibly uncertain future that contains many unknowns,” said Helene Lotman, Federation president and CEO. “By looking at these potential scenarios, we—as individual organizations and as a community—can have a stronger plan going forward.”
The process allows organizations to be nimble, said Derek Gale, Federation’s vice president and chief operating officer.
“If we think scenario A is the most likely, we’ll plan for it and put more resources behind it, but we will also have a plan for if it goes to scenario C,” he said. “We’re not caught off guard, we can pivot and go in that direction.”
Much work remains for the agencies to refine their ideas, but some potential themes emerged, including technology sharing and marketing collaboration.
In five two-hour Zoom sessions in November, participants discussed two core questions locally about the next 24 months. The questions addressed what the lives of “Jewish communal stakeholders” would be like and what organizations could and should do “given the values and vision for our community.”
Each session included a mix of group discussions and breakout sessions for individual agencies and agency pairings. Federation is facilitating future conversations among and between the organizations.
Eleven local organizations participated in the scenario planning, including: Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, Jewish Federation, Jewish Community Center, Jewish Community Foundation, JCRB|AJC, Jewish Family Services, Jewish Vocational Service, KU Hillel, Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, New Reform Temple, and Village Shalom.
For Matt Lewis, CEO of Village Shalom, the scenario planning workshop offered the opportunity to think beyond the day-to-day challenge of running the facility during a pandemic. He is confident about the protocols in place to keep residents and staff safe.
“We’ve been so focused on the pandemic that we really haven’t taken the time to step back and ask, what is our organization going to look like down the road,” Lewis said.
Adam Tilove, Head of School at Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, said one of the most valuable things about the workshops is being able to think about big issues as a group.
“There is an opportunity for us to bond as a Jewish community and do some strategic planning to move the entire community forward,” he said. “That has felt exciting and meaningful and something I look forward to. I think that’s an area of growth and potential.”
Lewis agreed that hearing everyone’s challenges has been beneficial.
“Being able to hear the stories and questions and comments of the other agencies that are involved, you just take away a lot of good things. It was kind of reassuring; we’re all kind of in the same boat, so to speak,” he said.
“We’re all so different in many respects, but in terms of our commitment to the community and wanting to help people, I think that’s what brings us together and what is the commonality of all of this.”
To Federation CEO Lotman, it’s this kind of teamwork that will help our community move forward in months ahead.
“This is a great example of the desire and willingness among our Jewish agencies and organizations for collaboration,” she said, “and Jewish Federation is happy we could help facilitate this process.”
