Leveraging Expertise to Advance Partners
The Leveraging Expertise to Advance Partners Initiative (LEAP) is a partnership between CJP professionals, volunteer leaders, and community organizations to strengthen collaboration and organizational capabilities across the Greater Boston Jewish community. Through LEAP, community professionals and board leaders can access knowledge and advice through best practice seminars, targeted breakout discussions, and brainstorming sessions. We are accessing the best talent in our community and leveraging it to advance our communal vision and strengthen our organizations.
Featured topics are generated from interest in the community. Have an idea for a LEAP session topic, or have questions about this program? Let us know.
For more resources for your organization visit our partner org resource page.
2022-2023 LEAP series:
Starting on the Right Foot: Keys to Running a Successful Board Orientation
Tuesday, September 20, 2022 | 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. | with CJP's Marni Allen and Joanna Feldman
See below for a summary and recording of this session.
Shifting the Focus from Problems to Possibilities
Thursday, February 16, 2023 | 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. | With Deborah Grayson Riegel
Every organization has successes, opportunities, and strengths. Yet, leaders and teams typically focus on asking: What’s wrong? What’s not working? What’s missing? Instead of asking: What do we do best? What’s our core strength? What do we want more of? In this interactive webinar, you will learn a user-friendly approach called Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which offers a collaborative, strengths-based approach to managing change and challenges — organizationally and personally.
Deborah Grayson Riegel is a coach and consultant who teaches leadership communication for Wharton Business School and Columbia Business School. She is a regular contributor for Harvard Business Review, Inc., Psychology Today, Forbes, and Fast Company. Deb is the author of Overcoming Overthinking: 36 Ways to Tame Anxiety for Work, School, and Life, and she consults and speaks for clients including Amazon, BlackRock, KraftHeinz, and The United States Army. Her work has been featured in worldwide media, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Oprah Magazine, and The New York Times.
Future LEAP sessions TBD
2022-2023 Synagogue LEAP Series,
With Nanette Fridman
Building on the success of our previous LEAP sessions, we offer a series that is specifically for synagogue leaders. Topics are subject to change based on FY23 Synagogue Health results.
Please note that space for this series is very limited. Priority is given to those who have completed the Synagogue Health Questionnaire. (Please contact Sandy with any questions).
Hot Topics in Synagogue Governance
Thursday, February 9, 2023 | 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. | with Nanette Fridman
Is your board too big or too small to govern? Are you overly relying on your executive committee? Do you have the right committees? Are your committees empowered? Does your board meet too much or not enough? Are board meetings well-designed and facilitated? Does your board govern or manage? We will address these and answer all your burning governance questions at this session. Bring your governance questions to this session.
Taking Off Your Rose Colored Glasses: Assess and Improve Your Board to Attract New Board Members.
Thursday, March 9, 2023 | 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. | with Nanette Fridman
Is your board itself preventing you from recruiting new board members? What changes might be necessary for your board to make to be attractive to new board members? How do you create a pipeline for new board members? We will discuss how governance structure, culture, policies, procedures, and functionality impact board attractiveness and how to identify and cultivate potential board members. This session is useful for professionals and lay leaders.
Beyond Soliciting: How to Engage Your Board in Financial Resource Development
Monday, April 3, 2023 | 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. | with Nanette Fridman
Does your board understand financial resource development? Are board members engaged in developing and nurturing relationships? We will talk about all the ways your board can help with fundraising without asking for money. Bring your development professionals and development chairs to this session.
Nanette Fridman is a catalyst for values-driven organizations and leaders. She founded Fridman Strategies, Inc. in 2006 to help leaders advance their missions and maximize their impact. Nanette works with clients across North America from small start-up organizations to large international organizations to plan for success and solve challenges. Nanette’s practice focuses on strategic planning, governance and board development, financial resource development, and coaching.
2022-2023
LEAP: Starting on the Right Foot: Keys to Running a Successful Board Orientation
September 2022
2021-2022
LEAP: Strengthening our Organizations through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Governance Practices
May 2022
Marni Allen, CJP's Vice President of Volunteer Mobilization and Leadership and co-chair of CJP's Equity Task Force, hosts a panel of leaders from Mayyim Hayyim, JVS Boston, and Hebrew SeniorLife, who are involving their boards in critical DEI work.
LEAP: Organizational Health and Cyber Risks: How Cyber Secure Are You?
March 2022
In this LEAP session with CJP Board member Nancy Viner and CJP’s Cybersecurity team discuss how our Communal Cybersecurity Program can help bolster your organization’s cyber posture and reduce cyber-related risks.
Synagogue LEAP:
Vitalize Your Synagogue’s Impact Through Robust Fundraising
March 2022
Fundraising and philanthropy expert, Andrea B. Wasserman, President of ABW Partners, inspires you to view synagogue-based fundraising through a new lens. Empowered with fresh perspectives and strategies, you will be ready to strengthen a culture of philanthropy and fundraising to vitalize your synagogue’s impact.
Leading with Intention: Thriving in Times of Uncertainty
January 2022
Inspiring and actionable, this workshop offered leaders a reminder that they have what it takes to thrive during tough times. Our speaker, Joan Garry, offered practical steps you can take to set priorities, engage board members and volunteers, and rally stakeholders around a vision for the future. Recording is available upon request.
Synagogue LEAP:
Building a Volunteer Pipeline: Ideas for Identifying, Growing, and Investing in Leadership for Your Community
January 2022
Investing in current volunteers, as well as identifying and preparing the next generation of leaders, is critical work for any nonprofit organization – but especially true for synagogues, where lay leaders regularly provide important strategic advice and extra hands for their professional partners. Kim Creem and CJP’s Marni Allen share their strategies for creating a strong pipeline of leaders.
Synagogue LEAP:
Dues Structures That Represent Your Community
November 2021
Finding the right dues model for your congregation is one of the central challenges of today's synagogue. Together with Caroline Dorn and Ellie Goldman of Real Time Strategy Group, we explored concrete ways to determine and evaluate membership models in context to your community’s goals, thoughtful transition planning, and effective ways to communicate changes to your members and the community.
Preventing Nonprofit Burnout Starts at the Top: A Roadmap for Using Your Leadership to Support Your Professional Team
October 2021
This interactive workshop will provide you with tools to prevent employee burnout, including a roadmap for supporting your team in an ever-changing work environment. Faun Zarge, an employee burnout and resilience expert, provides key strategies for addressing common (yet often overlooked) contributors to employee burnout.
Slides and handouts are available upon request — please contact Sandy.
2020-2021
Values-Driven Executive Succession Planning for Healthy Organizations
June 2021
Featuring a fireside chat with Aron Ain, Chairman and CEO of UKG and CJP board member and Gali Cooks, President and CEO of Leading Edge. In this interactive session, participants will come away with an understanding of how to structure a successful, values-driven executive search and position your new leader for success.
Innovation & Leading Through COVID
January 2021
View a special joint leadership session presented in partnership with CJP, Catholic Charities of Boston, and United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, featuring keynote speaker, Professor Dutch Leonard, of Harvard Business School.
Professor Dutch Leonard is George F. Baker Jr. Professor of Public Management at the Kennedy School and Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration and Co-chair of the Social Enterprise Initiative at Harvard Business School. He teaches leadership, organizational strategy, crisis management, and financial management. His current research concentrates on crisis management, corporate social responsibility, and performance management.
Leaders should think of themselves as the architects of the conditions for innovation. In this interactive session, Professor Leonard helps us reflect on what conditions led to rapid innovations during COVID and how we can sustain the conditions for the long term.
Launching Sustained Collaborations and Mergers
October 2020
Based on the phenomenal attendance of our prior LEAP panel discussion on mergers and collaborations where CJP Board Member Ed Shapiro gave the keynote, we held another LEAP session “Launching Sustained Collaborations and Mergers”, on this topic to offer you more resources and supports. With an introduction by Ed Shapiro and panel moderated by Laurene Sperling, Co-chairs of CJP’s Optimizing the Ecosystem Through Formal Collaborations Taskforce, you will want to watch this.
This panel also featured:
- John MacIntosh, Managing Partner at SeaChange Capital Partners. SeaChange champions nonprofits facing complex challenges, and is the partner of choice for funders seeking to help.
- Makiyah Moody, Senior Manager at La Piana Consulting. La Piana Consulting helps nonprofit organizations navigate change, so they can be more effective at delivering on their mission.
- Neil Stevenson, Senior Staff Attorney at Lawyers Alliance For New York. Lawyers Alliance is the leading provider of business and transactional legal services for nonprofit organizations and social enterprises that are improving the quality of life in New York City neighborhoods.
In the face of recovery, when nonprofits will be called on to do more — likely with fewer resources — mergers, joint ventures, programmatic and administrative partnerships, and other types of “sustained collaborations” can be tools to preserve, sustain, and grow impact. In this session, we discussed why nonprofits pursue sustained collaboration, how they approach the process, and what lessons they have learned along the way with much time for Q&A.
As we mentioned in the program, we are providing an avenue for organizations to have exploratory follow up conversations regarding sustained collaborations. You can contact Kimberlee Schumacher, CJP’s Vice President of Partnerships and Services at kimberlees@cjp.org
Engaging Your Board to Further Your Mission
August 2020
What successes and challenges arise when volunteers and professionals tackle the biggest obstacles facing your organization? Learn how to onboard and inspire your directors so you can lead together with purpose.
Key speakers include:
- Amy S. Cahners, Principal at Cahners & Donahue Associates LLC
- Scott Cohen, Founding Partner and former Chair, Gann Academy Board of Trustees
- Annie Knickman Plancher, VP Staff and Strategy, Social Finance
- Susan Musinsky, Executive Director, Social Innovation Forum
- Steven G. Segal, Executive-in-Residence/Lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and Inaugural Board Chair of Courageous Parents Network
- Laurene M. Sperling, Managing Trustee of the Sperling Family Charitable Foundation, Vice Chair, Duke University Board of Directors, and Member, CJP Board of Directors
- Neil A. Wallack, former Chair, CJP Board of Directors
WATCH ORIENTATION ESSENTIALS VIDEO SAMPLE MATERIALS
2019-2020
Strategic Partnerships
January 2020
We invite you to come together with other Jewish communal leaders at the next LEAP session on Strategic Partnerships: How can coordination and collaboration make us stronger?
Learn how organizations in our community have partnered effectively to further their missions and increase impact. What successes and challenges arise when organizations with shared visions and goals come together? Through our featured speakers we will discuss a variety of strategic collaboration efforts including: strategic partnerships, programmatic collaborations, and mergers.
Cybersecurity Awareness, Advice, and Resources
December 2019
Is your organization’s network and digital information well-protected? Does wondering about your organization’s cyber vulnerabilities keep you up at night? Read this SlideDeck to strengthen your cybersecurity smarts and explore strategies and best practices that will help your organization improve its security posture:
- Address vulnerabilities, both internal and external
- Train your employees to be your cyber partners in protecting your organization
- Protect your organization and digital assets without breaking your budget
Financial Health
September 2019
Do you believe sustaining strong financial management is critical to your organization’s success? Have you wondered about your organization’s fiscal vulnerabilities? Come together with Jewish communal leaders across Greater Boston for the inaugural CJP LEAP seminar on Strengthening Organizational Financial Health
Building and sustaining strong financial management practices is a critical leadership responsibility at organizations of all sizes.
As an organizational leader, do you think about…
- How to balance oversight responsibilities and decision-making power between volunteer and professional leadership?
- How to prepare effective Board conversations about your organization’s finances?
- How to organize limited human resources to deter and protect against fraud?
As a Board leader, do you ask…
- Whether your organizational leaders are taking the appropriate steps to mitigate financial risk and exposure?
- What the long-term financial outlook is for your organization?
- Whether the right systems are in place to prevent fraud?