United Jewish Communities is undertaking a series of initiatives to help the Jewish federation system deal with the ongoing global economic crisis.

With the economic upheaval affecting federation activities across the board -- including fundraising, allocations, service delivery and marketing and communications -- UJC is developing contingency plans for the local and continental level that would involve all federation functions.

An interdisciplinary UJC work group is monitoring the economy and its impact on federations, developing those contingency plans and providing support services for federations. The group involves areas across UJC including:

• The Center for Jewish Philanthropy/Development
• Strategic Marketing & Communications
• UJC Washington
• Global Operations: Israel & Overseas

On Monday of this week, UJC convened federation executives and presidents, chaired by UJC Chair Joe Kanfer, to discuss these UJC initiatives and to allow several communities including Northern New Jersey and St. Louis to detail their own economic response strategies.

The call, which drew 130 participants, was also intended to help federations understand how they can rely on and best utilize the continental UJC system during tough economic times, said UJC's President and CEO, Howard Rieger.

"This is a time to take advantage of the economies of scale and leveraging that can take place through a [continental] organization," Rieger said.

To help communities, UJC's development group is convening a series of teleconferences with campaign directors to discuss the situation and has provided campaign chairs and directors with fundraising tactics for economic downturns. The group is also coordinating the efforts to draft contigency plans for the system.

Adam Smolyar, senior vice-president of UJC's Strategic Marketing & Communications group, said UJC has created an economic crisis resource area on the UJC interoffice site that offers federations a range of marketing and communications tools and federation best practices to deal with fundraising during the economic downturn.

The page (at http://www.ujcinteroffice.org/page.aspx?ID=185719) includes UJC materials such as template letters to donors and talking points on the crisis, federation-developed materials including print ads, videos and Web content, and press coverage in the Jewish and mainstream media of the economic downturn's impact on philanthropy.

Smolyar urged federations to continue to submit materials for the site, so that the entire system can benefit from these local efforts. UJC has also distributed a series of communications on the situation, including a recent "Howard's View" column, and will continue to update the system about new initiatives.

In his column, Rieger noted that some communities such as New York have seen major donors respond in force to the economic crisis, by actually increasing gifts to the Annual Campaign. UJC's National Campaign Chair David Fisher warned that if history is any indication, communities can expect a dip in donations in the coming few years.

Fisher said he and other former campaign chairs, meanwhile, are ready to visit communities to help support Annual Campaign efforts in these troubled economic times.

Meanwhile, UJC's Washington office is redoubling efforts to advocate for the domestic support services that are taking a hit due to the economy. UJC Washington is surveying Jewish Family Services, Jewish Vocational Services, JCCs and other communal agencies to assess the economy's impact on their activities so far.

William Daroff, vice-president for public policy and director of UJC's Washington office, said the economy is already impacting these services. Agencies tell UJC of greater demand for counseling services and kosher food programs, and also say they face higher service-delivery costs due to such factors as higher fuel prices.

UJC Washington also expects to see federal cuts to key healthcare and social-service programs such as Medicare, in the wake of the economic stimulus package, as well as cutbacks on the state level to social services.

UJC has and will continue to advocate for protecting and increasing such funding in the coming months. UJC helped secure inclusion in the economic stimulus bill of the IRA Charitable Rollover provision, which boosts donations to communities, helped win an additional $53 million to provide economic aid to individuals, and helped double funding to $5.1 billion for this year's Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

UJC is at "the front lines of seeing the impact of this economic crisis," said Daroff. "You have an increase in demand for services while you have a decrease in the supply of services we’re able to provide."

With the economic crisis reaching across the globe, UJC's Global Operations: Israel & Overseas office has been seeing the effects of a weakening dollar on UJC-supported overseas programs for some time, said Toni Young, chair of the Global Operations Coordinating Council.

UJC's chief overseas partners, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Israel, have been forced to cut their budgets -- and key programs -- as the dollar's buying power declines against local currencies such as Russian Rubles, Israeli Shekels and the Euro, she said.

Federations can help JAFI and JDC by ensuring that Annual Campaign pledges get collected and sent to UJC, she added, since those agencies must borrow against annual pledges to meet global needs.

"Our local federation clients need us now, but so do millions of people overseas," said Young.

This year's 2008 UJC General Assembly in Jerusalem will also deal with the economic crisis, with plans in place to devote one of the plenary sessions to the global economic situation.