I first heard about the Boston-based Jewish Arts Collaborative (JArts) in Los Angeles. I was at the Keith Haring show at the Broad Museum, talking to an older couple about art and philanthropy.
“You have to check out the Jewish Arts Collaborative,” they said. “It’s the most interesting thing happening in Jewish arts. It’s totally innovative and new.”
What made a local arts organization in New England so interesting as to get word-of-mouth support 3,000 miles away? For starters, the couple I met was inspired by the group’s range of offerings, which have included food events and at least one drag show.
From a philanthropy perspective, however, the big story is the role of Boston’s funder community in creating this new arts and culture organization, which knit together existing, successful programs, and has expanded to have an increasingly national footprint.
Many Jewish arts organizations and artists faced a shrinking funding pool before the pandemic, as we’ve written. JArts is a hopeful sign of a growing resurgence. Indeed, the Jewish Funders Network, the top funder affinity group in the world of Jewish giving, grew by more than 30% in the past three years. JArts is also the latest example of place-based arts funders supporting creative ecosystems in ways that challenge old funding paradigms, critical at a time when so many artists and institutions are still reeling post-COVID.
Local philanthropists unite to support Jewish arts — and get confounded
JArts began in 2015 as the merger of two existing Boston-based arts organizations, the New Center for Arts and Culture and the Jewish Music Festival. But its evolution into its current form did not happen organically, or easily.
The New Center for Arts and Culture, founded in 2005, was largely backed by Ed Sidman and the Sidman Family Foundation, strong supporters of Jewish causes, as we’ve written before. The Sidmans were part of a group of funders who wanted a performance hall in downtown Boston for Jewish-related content. They helped form a strong board of local philanthropists and raised some $80 million by 2007. They proceeded to spend millions on architects, plans and studies — then discovered that the land the city had allocated for the space couldn’t support a building.
Under then-executive director Francine Achbar, the New Center pivoted to become a virtual organization offering Jewish cultural programming around the Boston area. Local philanthropist Ronald Druker, who, like the Sidmans came from the real estate world, threw his financial and creative support behind this vision. But the programming piece failed to fully rise, too.
The board held strategic planning meetings to establish a programming vision, and spent more money on “a fancy consultant who came up with some equally fancy, complicated ideas,” according to funder Howard Cohen, another local philanthropist who joined the board.
So now they had neither a building nor a truly sustainable, clear programming vision.
There was a lot of frustration and anger, said Cohen. “The money was not the challenge. It was the vision.” Everyone had different ideas of what should be done and how. “These were the best people in town, the backbone of the federation [Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, or CJP], people who made philanthropy an important part of their life. But they couldn’t get the business going.”
Cohen, who had made his money in affordable housing, had a track record of giving to organizations in that field, or to those addressing poverty or teenage violence. The New Center was Cohen’s first foray into arts funding. “I had the opportunity to join the board and saw, in the classic ‘the king’s got no clothes’ way, from the outside, that something different needed to happen.”
The power of an outside perspective
What Cohen saw was that the New Center already had a thriving cultural program, one called NOW, which focused on bringing programming to young adults in locations around town. The board just wasn’t seeing its potential. NOW was run somewhat independently by a 30-something woman named Laura Mandel. It was small and Mandel was young, but she was succeeding at attracting the young people who Jewish organizations often struggle to reach.
Meanwhile, another local institution, the Boston Jewish Music Festival, was also drawing big crowds—again, including a lot of young adults. It was run by a man who, as Cohen put it, “was one of those guys who knew how to throw a band party.” Cohen’s suggestion: Why not scrap the building idea, unite and fund these two thriving programs and put the existing leaders in charge?
Some members of the board balked. They envisioned hiring a national figure with a big name to lead this new organization. Cohen helped convince them to build on what was already working. Then, “several members of the board and two foundations agreed to continue their contributions to give it an opportunity to grow,” said Cohen, who became board chair, a role he held for three years. As chair, he helped tighten the budget to match the funding. When the leader of the music festival moved on, Mandel stayed as the executive director, a role she continues to hold today.
I was intrigued by Cohen’s ability to see the local talent that others missed.
To me, this story offers a couple of potential lessons for other aspiring funders and nonprofits. For one thing, it shows that key insights can come from those far from the problem. Second, while advice from the uninitiated can be a form of unhelpful donor meddling, the skills that helped funders succeed in business may come in handy for the nonprofits they support. Cohen agreed. “That’s how I survived in business, seeing value that other people don’t see, buying real estate that other people didn’t see as valuable. It’s an eye, seeing something that someone else is missing, a market opportunity at a point in time.
Mandel credits Boston’s funding community with the group’s unique approach. “JArts is totally different from what else exists in the Jewish world currently, and that’s thanks to our funders,” she said.
Jewish arts and culture in Boston
JArts today is dedicated to curating, celebrating, and building community around Jewish arts, culture, and creative expression, and taking a pretty broad view of what that means. JArts has four main offerings, including an annual Hanukkah party at the MFA Boston, which highlights the museum’s substantial Judaica collection. “The Hanukkah party was the first, visible, most ‘out there’ Jewish thing the museum had done. It had been what we call a ‘Brahman’ institution,” said Mandel. “In part, they realized they needed to broaden their reach to different cultural communities.”
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