Funding

I have always been aware one of the most difficult tasks in this feasibility study will be coming up with a model of funding to support and sustain our new organisation. As I've already mentioned, in the very best case scenario, we'll still be operating on a much smaller budget than our American cousins, who have a full office of staff and four houses in four different cities.

Two days ago I met with Rashid Iqbal of The Children's Society, who advised me on a number of funding-related issues, drawing on his organisation's own experience.

• We're taking an organisational concept from the US but funding markets and therefore models are different. We'll have to explore what translates and what doesn't.
• Sustainability and scalability are often used as benchmarks for projects, but the key is to find a funding model which is adaptable enough to allow the organisation to maintain its essential mission while bringing in enough money as existing grants expire and need replacing.
• We need to be able to articulate our core mission in different - but honest - ways, so as to appeal to funders and their priorities. For example, AVODAH USA seem to put a large emphasis on the impact of their program on the individual participant, but many donors, particularly in the wider (i.e. non-Jewish) social action sector may well be resistant to investing in individuals rather than directly in social issues. In the case of Jewish funding organisations, the impact on the participant and their lifelong commitment to social action in a Jewish framework may attract strong interest, but it will be important we can also emphasise the direct impact on poverty when necessary.
• Articulating the programme's impact on social issues and poverty might be challenging. How will be able to evaluate and quantify this, when effectively we are providing existing projects and organisations with a worker for a year? If the placement organisations pay something (but not as much as a full worker's salary) for their AVODAH corps members, would they have hired someone else had the placement partnership not taken place? (We certainly wouldn't want incumbent staff to feel we're about to take their jobs.)
• To help us fundraise, we'll need to design our evaluation systems so they return quick results as well as long-term indicators (e.g. one year in plus). Presumably we'll be fund-raising for the next annual cycle just a couple of months into the first cohort's year. It will be important to point at evidence that the programme is starting to achieve what we claim it will.
• The 'Big Society', including initiatives like London Citizens, is big news at the moment, and our funding efforts may well be aided if we can frame our work in terms of community organising and the benefits to the wider society. The connections are there and I'll be meeting with representatives of London Citizens in the next few weeks.
• It may also help to ring-fence funding. For example, some funders might be willing to fund evaluation but not the project itself.
• We also might fundraise to give each participant a personal social action seed-fund, to invest directly in a social action cause or project around their placement, thereby generating more evidencible impact.
• AVODAH US have been going for 12 years, building up and investing in a strong alumni network, especially through the Pursue program. While we'll necessarily concentrate on existing corps members at first, we'll want to harness our alumni network as we move forward. Should we be instilling a sense of responsibility not only to social justice in general but also to the AVODAH programme that provided them with the experience?
• The Charity Commission has said government spending cuts will hit charities hard, costing them billions of pounds. Will potential placements and funders be reluctant to invest in our programme by the time we come round to setting it up? This feasibility study must involve a fair amount of risk assessment around the political and economic climate and the organisation's contextual environment.

Education

One central element of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps is its education component, its learning curriculum Corps Members get to experience throughout their year. According to their website:

You will gather weekly to learn with other Corps members, and attend weekend retreats throughout the year. During these sessions, you will meet with a wide variety of top-level activists, trainers and educators to learn more about the dynamics of urban poverty. You will also learn how to become an effective agent for social change, and the way that Jewish history, culture and religion connect to your work to combat poverty and strengthen community.

In our project proposal, Andrew and I stated the education element would comprise 15-20% of the programme's overall emphasis (I guess this could equivalent to how a typical participant shares out his or her time on the programme) and would include:

• Jewish learning and Torah;
• Skills training; and
• Leadership and personal development

Questions for us are:

• Who will design or manage the educational curriculum?
• Will it run evenings (as with AVODAH in the USA, who have say four educational evenings per month) or daytimes, say one day a week? If the latter, will we be able to ask for the same amount of investment from our placement organisations?
• Who will teach? There is no lack of educators and speakers from social action organisations (Jewish and otherwise) in the UK.
• How much peer education do we ask for and encourage? AVODAH USA Corps Members visit the work-place of one participant per month, where they also take part in an educational session written and delivered by that participant.
• Are we hoping for any significant improvement over the course of the year in the participants' Jewish literacy? Rabbi Ruskay, National Education Director, firmly states this is not the goal of AVODAH, that the program can simply show Corps Members how Judaism and social justice intersect, while there are other options if your primary goal is to become a more literate Jewish learner.
• What would we identify as the key skills for AVODAH UK participants to learn, as regards their social work, for use on the programme but also equipping them for a future life of social action? AVODAH USA have chosen to cover fund-raising (before the programme begins actually, so they can raise something to go towards their year), public speaking, philanthropy, and mapping the Jewish community ('Who is speaking in my name?').
• Can we outsource some of the education element? AVODAH USA are building a database of curricula and lesson plans. The organization is used to asking, what is the social action component of the next Jewish festival? I know Tzedek, for one, have a good deal of materials on social justice and the Jewish calendar.

Stakeholders

Who are the stakeholders I need to be speaking to about this new organisation? With thanks to Marilyn Sneiderman, Executive Director of AVODAH in the US, I'd guess the list looks something like this:

• participants
• other Jewish social justice organisations
• placement organisations
• staff
• donors
• board members
• advisory councils
• city/neighbourhood officials
• the broader social justice sector/community
• socially progressive Jews

Partnerships, Moishe House, scalability and reach

Interestingly - certainly from my point of view as founder-resident of Moishe House London - there are lots of anecdotal links between AVODAH and various Moishe Houses across the USA. Conceptually this makes a lot of sense. Both programs provide Jews in their 20s with an opportunity to form a community in a house together and reach out to affect other people. A number of AVODAH Corps Members, having tasted vibrant Jewish community, have graduated and moved into Moishe Houses to help create Jewish community for their friends and peers.

There are of course some important differences between the two programs. AVODAH is more of a program in a traditional sense, lasting one year, with mandatory learning and activities (two nights per week, most weeks). Corps Members have some say in programming, in dialogue with their program manager, but not nearly as much autonomy as Moishe House residents in designing the shape and content of their community. And they obviously exist for different purposes. Moishe House is first and foremost about creating Jewish community, and reaching out to other Jews. AVODAH is, I think, about the intersection of social change and Jewish life - providing participants with a chance to explore "justice issues in a Jewish framework" (Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, AVODAH Education Director) - and an intense experience working with social poverty.

One of the most attractive aspects of Moishe House to potential funders is its enormous reach and, therefore, value for money. One house of say four residents reaches hundreds if not thousands of young Jews per year. The work performed by the placement organizations served by AVODAH Corps Members may touch the lives of thousands of clients, but it is not possible to say AVODAH creates this reach. Rather AVODAH provides each placement organization with one staff member.

In the staff brainstorming session I attended at the AVODAH offices we spoke about innovative potential partnerships between AVODAH and other Jewish organizations, such as Hillel and Moishe House. To what extent could AVODAH benefit from a partnership with Moishe House, forming, let's say, a hybrid Moishe-AVODAH House by which participants work for social justice organizations during the day and create outward-looking Jewish community at home? How much further might AVODAH's message of social justice in a Jewish framework spread, serving as an inspiration to all who visit the house?

I'm asking these questions not to challenge AVODAH's staff in America - they are already deeply involved in thinking about a wide range of possible future directions - but rather to consider the extent of the parameters of our proposed organisation and programme. We probably need to identify the core of AVODAH UK's operations before breaking out into innovative partnerships and hybrid programmes. Nevertheless, could AVODAH UK's core focus incorporate some of Moishe House's best elements? To what extent could our corps members create events for others in their house, as a major part of the programme? How much time and energy would they have to do so?

AVODAH houses in the USA are always a short distance from existing centers of Jewish community, so Corps Members can experience Jewish life relatively easily. If we, as AVODAH UK, established our first house in say Hackney residents would be close to the communities in Stamford Hill, but these are mostly ultra-Orthodox... One of the house's tasks might be to bring more Jewish community to the area, to revive a vibrant sense of Jewish community in places it used to thrive. This might require more facilitation and help from a central coordinator and educators, depending on the Jewish experience and skill-set in the group. And these questions tie in strongly with the local/city-wide focus issue raised below (8th bullet-point, 'Placements', 21 September).

In starting a new organisation we have the luxury of a blank canvas, the opportunity to take elements from a wide range of organisations and programmes, to tweak our own programme's focus to perfectly suit societal and communal needs, participant and placement demand, and the funding landscape. I am now reaching the stage in my feasibility study where I will be meeting representatives from relevant organisations across London and the UK - bringing further opportunities to consider just what AVODAH UK might do.