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.
2021-2022 LEAP series:
Adaptive Leadership, Sustainability, and Impact
Preventing Nonprofit Burnout Starts at the Top: A Roadmap for Using Your Leadership to Support Your Professional Team
Tuesday, October 26, 2021 | 9:00 – 10:30 a.m. | with Faun Zarge
The challenges of the past 18 months have been extraordinary for each of us personally, and for the teams and organizations that we lead. As nonprofit leaders, it is critically important that we understand how to intentionally prevent burnout and create a culture where employees can thrive. This interactive workshop will provide you with tools to use at individual and organizational levels, including a roadmap for supporting your team in an ever-changing work environment. You will learn:
- Key strategies for addressing common (yet often overlooked) contributors to employee burnout
- How to approach burnout as a shared responsibility between employee and employer
- Realistic ways to recharge and stay energized—and how to model this for your team
- How to identify and support a struggling colleague
- Best practices for setting boundaries that will sustain the long-term health of your team and organization
Faun Zarge is an employee burnout and resilience expert who teaches clients how to reduce burnout and build a culture where employees are pumped to go to work every day. With 20+ years as a trainer and coach, she works with clients to help navigate a multitude of work/life issues and bring their A-game to every personal and professional role they play.
Leading with Intention: Thriving in Times of Uncertainty
Tuesday, January 25, 2022 | 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | with Joan Garry
Inspiring and actionable, this workshop offers leaders a reminder that they have what it takes to thrive during tough times. Joan Garry will offer practical steps you can take to set priorities, engage board members and volunteers, and rally stakeholders around a vision for the future.
Joan Garry is an internationally recognized champion for the nonprofit sector and a highly sought-after executive coach for CEOs at some of the nation’s largest organizations. She is called upon by large organizations to tackle substantial change management, crisis management, and leadership transitions requiring a hands-on strategist, a messaging expert, and a compassionate truth teller.
Innovative Collaborations to Increase Revenue and Impact
March 2022
Strengthening the Board: Ensuring Your Board Practices Reflect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Goals
May 2022
2021-2022 Synagogue LEAP Series
Building on the success of our previous LEAP sessions, we offer a series that is specifically for synagogue leaders.
Building a Volunteer Pipeline: Ideas for Identifying, Growing, and Investing in Leadership for Your Community
Thursday, January 13, 2022 | 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. | with Kimberly Slabin Creem and CJP’s Marni Allen
Investing in current volunteers, as well as identifying and preparing the next generation of leaders, is critical work for any nonprofit organization. This is especially true for synagogues, where lay leaders regularly provide important strategic advice and extra hands for their professional partners. Kim Creem and Marni Allen are both leaders at CJP and within their synagogue’s volunteer governance structures who will share their strategies for creating a strong pipeline of leaders.
Kimberly Slabin Creem is a long-time volunteer with CJP, Temple Emanuel in Newton, Jewish Family & Children’s Service, Jewish Vocational Service, and the Massachusetts Parkinson’s Disease Association. Kim currently holds and has held many different roles throughout her time as a volunteer at these organizations including board positions and chairing and serving on several key committees.
Marni Allen leads CJP’s Volunteer Mobilization and Leadership team. She focuses on creating high-quality volunteer experiences throughout CJP, as well as building intentional pathways for volunteer leaders throughout a long-term cycle of engagement. Marni is also the Vice President, Governance on the Temple Beth Elohim Board, where she works to identify and nurture lay leaders to serve as active partners in the work of the congregation.
Vitalize Your Synagogue’s Impact Through Robust Fundraising
Thursday, March 3, 2022 | 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. | With Andrea B. Wasserman and Jennifer Weinstock
As synagogues throughout Greater Boston endeavor to build vibrant, resonant, and sustainable 21st century Jewish communities, this is an opportune time to strengthen conventional funding models, and reimagine the ways in which donor relationship development and fundraising is viewed, pursued, and nurtured.
Join fundraising and philanthropy experts, Andrea Wasserman, President of ABW Partners, and Jennifer Weinstock, Senior Vice President of Philanthropy at CJP, for an engaging session that will inspire you to view synagogue-based fundraising through a new lens. Empowered with new perspectives, strategies, and tactics, you will be ready to strengthen a culture of philanthropy and fundraising to vitalize your synagogue’s impact.
Andrea B. Wasserman is an innovative leader, effective strategist, and philanthropy expert. As Founder and President of ABW Partners (formerly Social Profit Ventures), Andrea has partnered with nearly 50 clients on customized engagements around the design and execution of exceptional advancement and fundraising programs. Before launching her firm in 2012, Andrea was the catalyst behind fundraising at various high-performing nonprofits like UJA Federation of New York and BBYO International.
Jennifer Weinstock has been applying her expertise as a development professional for more than 25 years with an emphasis on relationship-building strategies between donors and organizations. She is currently the Senior Vice President of Philanthropy at CJP where she oversees the Annual Campaign, endowment and planned giving, supplementary giving, as well as governance and donor relations. Jennifer was also member of the pilot class of the Wexner Field Fellowship, a national fellowship for mid-career Jewish professional leaders.
Past LEAPs
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?