Excerpted from awards article by Chanan Tigay in 2007 GA Magazine
Last fall, the New Orleans Saints returned to the Louisiana Superdome, the stadium that was burned into our collective memory as a nightmarish refuge for desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Saints’ return brought joy to the city and people across the country. After so much destruction, here was a symbol of rebirth.

We of the North American federation system can rejoice over another post-Katrina rebirth, that of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. After Katrina swept through, the New Orleans federation was literally unable to run its 2006 annual campaign. In 2007, it was a different story. Despite a major departure of community members – and some 40 percent fewer gifts – the federation managed to restore its campaign to the 2005 level. That year, the group raised $2.874 million from 2,300 donors. In 2007, despite a thousand fewer donors, New Orleans raised $2.673 million.

“The big test of whether the federation system works is whether it’s there in the time of  need,” says Michael Weil, the New Orleans federation executive director. “Clearly the federation was there. They were a lighthouse in the dark.”

In special recognition of its extraordinary rebirth, the New Orleans Federation will receive a Sapir Award for Campaign Excellence during this year’s GA.

Besides New Orleans, a dozen of North America’s 155 Jewish federations and 400 independent Jewish communities will win the prestigious Sapir Award this year. “It’s important to recognize best-in-class, and that’s what the Sapir Award does,” says Vicki Agron, senior vice president of development for UJC. “It recognizes those communities that have demonstrated significant achievement in Annual Campaign in comparison with the prior year.

“UJC and the federations are really the leaders in North American Jewish philanthropy when it comes to unrestricted campaigns,” Agron says, “and the Annual Campaign retains its primacy among all of the income streams through which we raise money.”

The criteria for the Sapir Award, conferred on the basis of the 2006 campaign, have been altered somewhat this year in response to what some have seen as a trend toward more local allocations. In the past, the awards committee has not distinguished between local and overseas giving. But this year, to be considered for a Sapir, communities must have made allocations abroad equal to or greater than the average overseas allocation by other cities their size. Also considered were the Israel Emergency Campaigns run over the summer of 2006 as Israel battled Hezbollah in Lebanon.

UJC has “two principle overseas partners – The Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee,” Benjamin Warren, chair of the 2007 Sapir Award Committee, says, explaining the change. “North American Jewish support of UJC and the Jewish federations makes much of the social, humanitarian and educational work of the Jewish Agency and JDC possible. The Sapir Awards place some additional focus on this issue and encourage communities do their share.”

The winning communities of this year’s Sapir Award come from each of the federation system’s city-size groups: Chicago, New York and Toronto (Large Communities), Cincinnati, Kansas City and Minneapolis (Large Intermediate), Ann Arbor and Memphis (Intermediate), Chattanooga, TN, and Grand Rapids, MI (Small), and Tacoma, WA, and Winston-Salem, NC (Network).

Needless to say, the communities appreciate the recognition.

“When we run a community campaign, we recognize the community in a global fashion,” says Jeffrey Feld, executive director of the Memphis Jewish Federation. “For a federation and a community of our size to receive this recognition is very special.”

Jeffrey L. Cohen, senior vice president for development at the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, says the award broadens the circle of those recognizing the organization’s work and gives a shot in the arm to both staff and volunteers.

“I think it says to lay leadership that all the time they’ve spent working and volunteering is being recognized on a national level,” says Cohen, whose federation is receiving the award for the third year in a row. “And to the professional staff it says something similar. It’s nice to be recognized for it. It shows that we’ve done a good job.”

And in Grand Rapids, Karen Padnos, chair of that city’s federation, says her community was spurred to rally around Israel during its war with Hezbollah last summer in Lebanon. “We had a record annual campaign – and we had an extremely successful Israel Emergency Campaign,” she says. “We believe that is really what encouraged people to give gifts that were either equal to or greater than their past gifts. The IEC put Israel into the forefront for people. They became concerned and more aware.”

Indeed, Israel’s difficult engagement in Lebanon sparked giving throughout the federation system. In New York, for example, the Israel Emergency Campaign raised some $45 million in about 45 days, says Paul Kane, senior vice president of UJA-Federation of New York. “Do people give to us more when they feel Israel is in trouble?” he says. “My impression is yes. We don’t emphasize it any more than normal, but I do think that when people see Israel is at risk, they look to us as a stalwart of support for Israel and they contribute to us. We’ve seen it over and over again – they trust us, and they know their money is going to be leveraged, to be used wisely.”

While New York’s 2006 campaign was award-winning, “we have just surpassed that with the best year UJA has ever had in 2007,” Kane is happy to add. There’s another important area of achievement we will honor at this year’s GA, and that is outstanding work in the field of building endowments. The Community Endowment Excellence Awards look at a combination of lifetime gifts and investment returns, taking them as a percentage of a federation’s year-end asset balance. The winners are those who have grown the most.

This year the award goes to: the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties (Large Communities); the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston (Large Intermediate); and the Jewish Community Center of Tampa/Tampa Jewish Federation(Intermediate and Small).

“There are two major areas in building endowments assets, the ability to solicit gifts, and the ability to invest what you’re holding effectively,” says Joel Demby, UJC’s senior director for Planned Giving & Endowments. “The combination of these two elements is a measurement of how effectively a federation operated its program in 2006. It’s an attempt to quantify their performance.”

Phyllis Cook, executive director of San Francisco’s Jewish Community Endowment Fund, says donors to that city’s endowment fund are “helping to guarantee that the Jewish community will be more secure, more vibrant, and more able to adapt to change in the years ahead. On their behalf, we thank the national system for recognition of this achievement.”

It’s important to recognize best-in-class, and that’s what the Sapir Award does.