← Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Nonprofit Leadership Amid Global Turmoil with Rabbi Joanna Samuels
00:36:58
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- [00:00]
Julia Campbell
You pour your heart into every single fundraising appeal. You juggle a dozen different tools trying to piece together a clear picture of your supporters. But what if your fundraising platform was built with a deep understanding of those challenges? That's the difference a purpose built giving platform like Bloomerang can make. Bloomerang customers aren't just fundraising. They are seeing a 27% larger one time gifts than the industry average. They're growing their supporter base by an average of 12% year over year. And that's the confidence to know who to ask and when. It's the joy of seeing your community rally behind you with greater generosity. It's turning passion into unstoppable momentum. Your purpose is limitless and your fundraising tools should be too. Learn how you can start raising more@jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang that's jcsocialmarketing.com Bloomer B L O O M E R A N G All right, on to the show. Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Welcome or welcome back to Nonprofit Nation. Thank you so much for listening. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. Today we're going to talk about what it takes to step into leadership and lead during times of profound cultural, social and institutional change. And my guest today is Rabbi Joanna Samuels. She joins Nonprofit Nation to share how she is navigating the challenges and the opportunities, the ups, the downs, as the CEO of the Marlene Myerson JCC Manhattan, one of the largest and most influential Jewish community centers in the US So thanks so much for joining me. I know you're incredibly busy. I mean, I've had CEOs on the podcast before and I know taking time out of your day is is really difficult. So you let's just jump right in to maybe your journey into the CEO role. What led you here?
- [02:54]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
So I am a lifelong New Yorker, something I am very, very proud. Proud of the child of lifelong New Yorkers and even the grandchild of lifelong New Yorkers. And so this City means a lot to me. And so the professional roles that I've chosen since my ordination from rabbinical school have all been right here in this city, either uptown where I live and serve now, or for nine years on Lower east side of Manhattan. A wonderful neighborhood, very different from this one, full of incredible diversity and community and connection. And so, you know, I was ordained as a rabbi. I was very blessed to serve as the rabbi of a congregation right here on the up for just about seven years. And then my next major role was helping to open up and then lead a new community center on the Lower east side. This was a totally new set of skills for me. I don't actually know why I was hired to do it, but I was lucky enough to be able to do that work successfully and stay there for nine years. And then when the role in my local jcc, which is right near where I live and where my children went to preschool, when that role was open, I felt strongly that it was the right time for me to make that shift. And so I guess if there's a through line, it's that I really believe and feel passionately about place based organizations, about that pretty analog experience of just being with other people in person, doing things. I feel passionate about the Jewish community and the wider city in which we live, which is really, you know, the greatest city in the world. No offense, but an amazing, I don't.
- [04:50]
Julia Campbell
Know from Boston, I might have to counter that, but okay, I like Boston a lot too.
- [04:55]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
I guess we just, we're used to what we're used to. But this is a really terrific, exciting canvas on which to be creating opportunities and programs and connection between people. Maybe because it is such a big city, the opportunity to kind of break it down for people and create environments of connection is a wonderful privilege.
- [05:19]
Julia Campbell
I love New York City. I do, I really do. And my daughter, she's going to enter her junior year, this year of high school, and she's dead set on nyu. She's had her like laser vision, so since she was in eighth grade, since she went to her first Broadway play, since we first went to New York. So she's completely in love with New York. So you stepped into the CEO role at sort of during a global crisis. Can you talk about that? And maybe some of the, some of the reasons why you did it and then some of the struggles that you had and how that experience worked.
- [05:58]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
You know, it's so funny, there have been so many crises, particularly in the Jewish community since then, that I sometimes forget about COVID Covid I'll say this about my own orientation, which is that, like, I hated remote work. I hated being on Zoom. I went back to work full time the minute we were allowed to, which was very early on in the pandemic. We were running a community center. I was insistent that we open up, particularly our early childhood program. This was when I was still on the Lower east side, but because I felt like parents would not be able to get back to work or get their lives back if their children were not in school, and that kids needed to be around other kids. And so I felt strongly about that. I do think it ended up being the right decision for the community that I was serving. And so by September 2020, I was back at work. If I had my druthers, I would never have another Zoom meeting in my life. Fast forward, you know, it's. It's a year later and this job becomes available. And I realized, first of all, I've always loved this jcc. It's been a part of my life, my family's life. But I also felt like, as I was reading article after article about how, like, nobody is ever gonna get off their sofa for the rest of their lives. No one's ever going to see a performance, no one needs to go to school, all this sort of stuff. I just thought, this is totally wrong. Because here's what we're also seeing. Huge rises in depression, diseases of isolation, tons of physical problems that come from being sedentary, and a kind of breakdown in the world where each one of us is scrolling through the algorithm on our phone telling us exactly what we want to hear without the benefit of actual human contact. It helps us to be more humanly connected to other people, right? And so all of those things together to me were like a disaster. And so I was blessed, you know, to be offered this job and to start as the CEO. In January 2022, our building was mostly empty. We just had a few programs that were operating. And that was a huge problem, right? There was some feeling among the staff of like, oh, look at how well we're doing on Zoom. Like, let's just keep doing things on Zoom. And I'm sitting here like, well, it costs $4 million to, like, keep this building open. So, like, if what we want to do is be a content provider, we're definitely in the wrong business, right? Because actually, you know, this is an in person place. Our finances develop, you know, depend on having a very full fitness center, a wonderfully full swimming pool, lots of classes, lots of kids in our spaces. Camp, all kinds of things. So, like, if you have a different idea for how we pay our bills without any of those things, interested to hear it. But actually, we just have to go back to being in person. And so that was, I think, initially not like received with 100% delight by 100% of the people.
- [09:31]
Julia Campbell
Is anything, though.
- [09:33]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
I mean, I was lucky because my wonderful board really supported this. They understood the finances, they understood that, like, we're not going to start competing with Netflix, you know, for delivering content to people. So what is our unique competitive advantage in the marketplace and what is our advantage? It's that no matter what we do, whether it's a swim class or ceramics class or nursery school or a Hebrew language class, like, we are selling community, we're selling friendship. And I really don't believe that you can do as well on Zoom to actually get people to be friends with each other. So, you know, I ask most of our staff, we're not working in person full time, to come back three days a week and then four days a week. And now the majority of our staff is here full time in person. And that did a bunch of things very quickly. The first is that despite, despite my fears of being a new CEO and being someone that everyone would feel like, oh, where did she come from? The fact is, completely improved the culture because when people are actually with each other, they remember what they like. They have those conversations while they're getting coffee. How was your weekend? You know, what's going on with your kid, et cetera. Whereas Zoom is such a kind of formalized environment where you get on, you do the work and, and you shut off and then you go back into your life. Right? Whereas a workplace at its best is a place where you're doing the work and you're also showing up in your full humanity, right? Oh, I like your haircut. Oh, what a nice pair of shoes. You know, all of these little kind of social experiences that connect us to each other. So I brought everyone back and focused predominantly on building back our revenue driving businesses like fitness and aquatics and children's programming, which had really, you know, sort of gone to zero. Obviously when, you know, buildings closed and people can't leave their houses, it's hard to be running a pool, for instance. And so we could see pretty quickly that people were coming back and they were coming back in larger numbers than we even predicted. And I work with people who have been running these programs for like a decade plus, and they understand really well, like what the cycles are of membership and what months people Join gyms and all of that.
- [12:10]
Julia Campbell
Yes.
- [12:11]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
And they set out a plan that showed it would take a set number of years to build back to where we were. And the fact is, within two years, we had built back to where we were. We're now we've exceeded where we were, like, in January 2020, which is kind of the place where we put the pin on the map to say, how do we compare ourselves to this? And so that's a great success. And it makes a lot of things a lot easier because once you have a stable business, stable and growing business, then you can start thinking about all of the really fun enhancements and opportunities and all of the stable staff developments that can take place when you're not, like, on the treadmill, like, oh, God, you know, we have to get to X, you know, thousand members or else. So that's just one piece of. Of what happened. But there was also a lot of change management that had to. Oh, yes, brought to bear. I was following not just a CEO, but a whole senior team who had been here for, you know, 20 years plus. And, you know, they left this, like, incredible legacy of this amazing institution that everybody loves in the community and we love them back. And coming in as the new person, feeling the urgency of getting our businesses back and the people back in the building, I think required a lot of diplomacy and also a lot of holding people to meet some standards that, you know, were maybe short term uncomfortable, I believe.
- [13:55]
Julia Campbell
Well, first of all, I joined the school board here in December 2020 for the exact reasons that you described. We did not have a plan to go back in person. I think that we obviously wanted to do it safely and in a responsible way. But I think looking at that North Star, like, if you have that North Star, if you have that mission, if you have that reason that you exist, like, why does the community love you? They love us because they can come and gather in person. We can certainly offer things on Zoom or virtually. You know, we can have those kinds of offerings. But really, I mean, I love that you led in such a time when I can't. You know, there's so many questions, and I'm sure there was a lot of opposition. Not everybody was on the same page. And I do think that's what's going on right now, in the moment that we're in right now. Now, when this is released, who knows what the latest horror is going to be? I mean, as we're recording this, two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses were just murdered in their homes. I mean, there are the no Kings marches, which are, to me personally, I was very supportive of that. But there are so many. It's just such a moment of complete turmoil, and I think people are emotionally and mentally exhausted. How do. How do you navigate this moment and how, you know, no matter what is going on and how do you engage your team and really keep up this momentum when there's so much uncertainty and people's nerves are, I think, are frayed?
- [15:36]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
All of the above. Everything you said is so resonant for me as a human on this planet, as a parent, as a rabbi, as the CEO of an organization, as a New Yorker. We're headed into this very contested mayoral primary that we're a lot of strong feelings about. I was just in the lobby, and we have this wonderful volunteer table full of information about people's voting places and really just encouraging people to get out and vote because a democracy, and that is a privilege to vote, and Americans don't vote in very large numbers, which just feels like such a shame, you know, and such a lost opportunity. I was speaking to one of my rabbinic colleagues, and he shared, you know, he grew up in Argentina during the military junta, and there was no voting, there was no democracy.
- [16:34]
Julia Campbell
Wow.
- [16:35]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
And so that's in our lifetimes, you know, so we have to really, really, really look at the ways in which we do have agency to have an impact in creating the world that we want to live in. And I think voting is a huge, easy, important way that we do that. So I guess that would be sort of the number one, which are, like, what are the things that are within the zone of our control? Oh, there seems to be a celebration going on in the office next door. Can you hear all of that?
- [17:07]
Julia Campbell
Oh, no, I don't, but that's awesome. I love. I love hearing happiness and celebration and laughing. It's great.
- [17:14]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Just as an aside, we. We had our staff community day on Friday, where we close our building through the whole day and give our staff, like, we show movies, we do yoga classes, we have surroundings, all the things that our community gets to do every day. Like, we offer them to our staff. And one of the things that we do is re recognize with milestone anniversaries, 10 years, 20 years. And my sense is what's going on next door is that someone who wasn't able to be there on Friday is having their milestone anniversary celebrated by their.
- [17:45]
Julia Campbell
That's fun.
- [17:46]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
By their team.
- [17:47]
Julia Campbell
So that's so important, too, to recognize.
- [17:50]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
It's so good. It's like people really deserve to be Appreciated.
- [17:55]
Julia Campbell
And that's something that. That we could do that actually ties back into the question. Even just something simple like recognizing milestones, recognizing even small achievements, like small and large achievements and accomplishments can really help center people back into the work and the importance of the work.
- [18:13]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Absolutely. I feel so strongly. It's, like, so easy to do that. What we do at the jcc, I'm sure other people do this in other organizations is when people have a milestone anniversary, we ask that person, person's supervisor to write, you know, a short kind of speech about that person and recognize them. And we make like a little video montage and the whole staff hears it and watches it. This year, we added to it in such a fun way, which is that all over the building we have, you know, television screens that are, you know, always pumping out marketing material like, come to this movie, do this, come, come swimming, whatever. And this year we slapped into all of those screens pictures of the people who are celebrating milestone anniversaries so that when the community is coming to the building, they're seeing, oh, this person who runs the nursery school, she's been here 10 years. That's amazing. And they can say congratulations to her for that achievement. And so that's fantastic. It's just a nice. It's a nice way to kind of have the virtuous circle of, like, our staff working really hard, our communities seeing the impact of that and then being able to acknowledge them. So I think that's something we could do too, is like, we don't have a lot of control, it turns out, over all of these really challenging circumstances that our country and our world are in right now. And I think that the healthy and best thing to do is for each person to say what is in the zone of my influence and my control, and how do I act within that to build the kind of world that I want to live in. So what I say every day is like the privilege of running the JCC is that I get to work with other people so that we can build the world that we want to live in. Right? And that world, like, right now, is frightening. It's very, very frightening. But in these four walls, I feel like we have the opportunity to say, this is a safe place, this is a generous place. This is a place that models a kind of abundance, a kind of acceptance, a friendliness, a love and a sense of possibility. Is that enough in this world? I don't know, and it's probably not. But it's the only thing I can do besides vote and, you know, Space, speak out in ways that I think are important.
- [20:43]
Julia Campbell
So you have been a longtime advocate for gender equity and social justice. You've written about how nonprofits can rethink engagement, lift up, you know, historically excluded voices, and lead with courage. So what does that look like to center inclusion and equity in real time operations? And how can we do it better?
- [21:07]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Such a live question. Actually, right now we run one of the first programs in the country, and I believe one of the best programs of any community center of working with children and adults of all ages who are on the autism spectrum. And that means that anywhere that you go in our 14 story vertical village, you will see people of different abilities in the fitness center, working out, in our Jewish learning classes, in the pool, in anything that we're doing here. We have made a commitment to inclusion. We're now at this really exciting point where we're thinking about, okay, so we have programs that are inclusive. For instance, we had a bunch of our personal trainers get trained with a special certificate to be able to most effectively work with adults and young adults on the autism spectrum so that they can do personal training in a way that meets their needs and helps them to be physically healthy in the way all of us should be physically healthy, if we can. So that program is going on and we started to think about, well, what's the whole experience of our building for somebody who may be on the autism spectrum or for someone who may have challenges with mobility, maybe they use a wheelchair or maybe they're using some other kind of assistive device. And how do we start to audit all of the steps, literally, of someone walking into the building, of someone going through our security desk, of somebody going up to our registry, which, by the way, the counter is too high, and so someone with a wheelchair cannot necessarily see their way over it. So we are doing a construction project right now to make that desk ada accessible. Right. When this building was built, it was not something that people thought about. And so I think that's one of the things that we feel most passionately about is saying, like, these people, and I'm putting that in quotes, are our people. They are us. They are part of this community. They are the parents of children, they are the children of parents. They are the siblings and the friends and the community members of everyone who's here. And so how do we show up? Yes, to them? And the answer has to be in the way that they need us to show up, actually, yes. Which means that we have the opportunity to be on that journey with them. I'll Give you another example. We have a beautiful lobby. Magnificent. Made out of stone. It looks beautiful. It's big. It has a really high ceiling. Guess what? If you have challenges hearing or you are sensitive to sound. Yikes.
- [24:04]
Julia Campbell
Yes.
- [24:05]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
That's not like a great place to be. And so as we think about how would we want to renovate or something like that, we are already thinking about what is the sound quality that would be most helpful to all of us. The fact is, I find it too loud, Right?
- [24:24]
Julia Campbell
Yes.
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Rabbi Joanna Samuels
And so, like, it's one of these things where I think when we make things, quote, unquote, accessible, we're actually making them usually much better for everybody.
- [24:34]
Julia Campbell
For much better for everybody. That is such an important point. It's also a really important leadership skill to look at things through this lens, but also to be able to question the way things have been done for. Forgive me, I don't know how long the JCC has been around.
- [24:53]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Well, the building has been here for 23 and a half years.
- [24:57]
Julia Campbell
Yeah. I mean, it's just simply questioning, like, okay, 23 and a half years ago, people were not maybe thinking through these questions, but it doesn't even matter. It could be a year ago. And it's just being curious and asking questions and always centering community and the people that we serve at the center of these questions, I think is so important.
- [25:19]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Yeah. Just to that, like, also having amazing staff. Like, yes, it would have come up with none of this were it not for the really passionate colleagues that I am so privileged to work with who are thinking about these questions day in and day out and whose devotion and commitment to this kind of inclusivity is contagious. Right. Like, they're so passionate about it that it makes everyone else feel passionately about it. And I think part of leadership is also being open and playing chorus in that way and saying, like, you know, the sound problem in the lobby is not, like, the first thing that I would have thought of, even though I myself literally can't hear when I'm in there. But I'm working with these people who are sharing with me what this could look like if we made some changes and what that would feel like to the community to which they are closest. And I feel like, oh, good, I want to get on that train.
- [26:25]
Julia Campbell
Exactly.
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Rabbi Joanna Samuels
I want to do that.
- [26:26]
Julia Campbell
Exactly. Well, let's. Let's shift gears for a little bit because I wanted to talk to you about your viral essay in E. Jewish Philanthropy, which I thought was actually really interesting. Many of my listeners probably have read it, but you Describe, quote, unquote, a vibe shift in Jewish women's leadership. What does this mean for other nonprofit leaders or fundraisers? What should we be paying attention to?
- [26:51]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Yeah. So to take a step back, I was struck by the difference in engagement after the presidential election of Jewish women. I think the first Trump election brought Jewish women to the fore in many, many ways. Women's marches, all of the advocacy around the travel ban and reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights, and all of these values that much of the Jewish community holds as core values to our identity as Jewish Americans. And I found after this election that in the aftermath of October 7th, in the aftermath, many Jews feeling that issues and causes that we have supported year over year in so many different ways, that there was an uncomfortable silence and lack of allyship when the Jewish community was and continues actually to be attacked. And that, understandably, I think, tragically leads people away from some of their core commitments because they might identify, and in some ways they're correct, those core commitments as being aligned with certain leaders of most organizations that said or didn't say or made this statement or made that statement or, you know, whatever. And so I feel sympathetic to that. I feel much of that disappointment, much of that partisan behavior. I cannot believe the level of antisemitism that is filling our world right now. But I think there are a few things that we have to keep in mind. The first, as a sector, as a nonprofit sector sector, we are at our best when we speak and advocate passionately for the issues that are our issues.
- [29:13]
Julia Campbell
Yes.
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Rabbi Joanna Samuels
And so if you are doing the work, and please God, it should continue for many years of helping women to get reproductive care, whether that care is abortion or birth control or prenatal care or whatever. I want to hear your voice about those issues. Yes.
- [29:38]
Julia Campbell
Sorry, people can't see me nodding.
- [29:41]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
I want you to be speaking out from your place of expertise and your values. I think where nonprofits have gotten confused in these last five to 10 years is this idea that all of us are supposed to be speaking out on everything and that I'm supposed to have a take, for instance, on issues that I don't actually know anything about are not core issues to the JCC and mean that I am just parroting, like, other kind of rhetoric that's out there because I'm afraid not to say anything and to be called out for lack of, you know, lack of commenting on something. And I think it is a slippery slope that leads us to nowhere. Right. Because we are at our most effective as nonprofit organizations when we are all in on these issues, which are, by the way, many of which are under huge attack right now. And we need each other. We need each other to be operating at full throttle and not getting distracted by what your take is on this issue or that issue or the next issue that are not your issues. That's. Number one. That's a course correction for nonprofits that I think is necessary. Number two is that we can't forget. Actually, we cannot forget that the organizations whose leaders we might think are overstepping or who have this belief or that belief or whatever are nonetheless overseeing organizations that care for people who are enormously vulnerable. And we are not permitted. I would say this as a Jew, and I think probably any other religion or secular person would also feel this. We are not permitted to avert our eyes from the vulnerability and suffering of other people just because we feel like their leader made a big misstep in posting something on Instagram. So we have to live in the real world, and we have to say, oh, my goodness, I am a human being who cares passionately that women should have access to reproductive health care. I have to get over myself. Right. I need to make sure that I am supporting that work in a way that aligns with my values. I need to make sure that if I'm not happy with one organization that's doing that work because they're involved in all kinds of issues and speaking out about issues that are unrelated, which is probably a huge waste of their time, I need to find the organization that's doing that work that I can agree with. Because my responsibility is not to the rhetoric that's up here and who's on my team and who's not on my team. My responsibility is to the person who needs reproductive health care, period. Or any other issue that people might, you know, housing or advocacy for immigration. Any issue. Just slot it in there. Right? Let's not forget that the world of Instagram and statements and politics and all of this is different from the work.
- [33:03]
Julia Campbell
Yes.
- [33:04]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
And if organizations have forgotten that, we need to remind them, but we also need to remind ourselves that we have to support the world that we want to live in.
- [33:15]
Julia Campbell
I wrote two things down that I underlined and wrote 20 exclamation points. We are not allowed to avert our eyes. We are not allowed to avert our eyes. And my responsibility is not to the rhetoric or the rhetoric. Rhetoric, rhetoric. Tomato, tomato. My responsibility is not to the rhetoric. My responsibility is to the people that I serve and the vision that I see and the world that I want to Create. And that is just so important for us to remember. Oh my gosh. Well, we're at time. I have like 20 more questions. But my last question, I guess is what would your advice be? One small thing that a very overwhelmed non profit leader can do today. Trying to absorb all this information that we talked about, trying to lead the way, trying to be an example, but feeling sort of either overwhelmed or stifled or overburdened. What's one shift we can take today to sort of get in a better.
- [34:17]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Mindset, get off of social media.
- [34:21]
Julia Campbell
Yeah, well, and I'm a social media.
- [34:23]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Consultant, but I agree we're all over social media. If you want to take swim lessons here, like, we're going to follow you with our ads, you know, to like, you know, the end of the earth. But like what I mean is more like the pernicious, like hot takes. This one thinks that this one's a racist, that's an anti Semite, this one hates. It's like it is noise. And we have to be able to find, focus on the work that is in front of us and live in it fully. Live in it fully without all of that hot air around us. And then I would say do something kind for somebody else. That's always possible.
- [35:01]
Julia Campbell
These are just so such fantastic quotes. Do something kind for somebody else. Because that's always possible. Where can people connect with you, Joanna? Where can they learn more about your work, your writing and connect with your organization?
- [35:15]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Oh, thank you so much. So our website is mmjccm.org and lots of my writing comes on that. And if you sign up for our newsletter, you will hear from me at least monthly and follow the JCC's Instagram, even though I just told you to stay off of.
- [35:35]
Julia Campbell
But it sounds like a positive one. Sounds like a very positive place.
- [35:39]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Like, it is a positive place full of like adorable children, you know, pictures of people getting healthy. So hopefully it's a little bit of a pallet cleanser in the midst of lots of really divisive rhetoric.
- [35:53]
Julia Campbell
I love it. Thank you so much for being here. Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram. Juliacampbell77 Keep changing the world, you non profit unicorn.