What are the implications of the nonprofit funding model?

Yesterday afternoon, I spent two hours on the phone for Brown/RISD Hillel’s fund drive.  We asked parents and alums for donations ranging from $20 to $1000.  About half of the funding for our Hillel comes from board members, and the rest from other donors like the ones we were calling.  The implications of funding an organization this way are complicated.  Do we become beholden to our largest donors in any more significant way than do most companies to their supporters?  To what extent do the views of those donors and the interactions between them and the Hillel governing bodies determine institutional stances and policies?

From personal experience, I know that the Brown / RISD Hillel is incredibly open to student opinions and ideas.  The student committees function independently and efficiently, and I see the results of their decisions every day in what programs we offer and how they’re assembled.  But there are larger institutional policies that are accepted as universals within the Hillel community, and are applied consistently across all programs.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s absolutely worth examining.

Israel policies are the foremost example.  From Hillel International’s website:

Hillel helps students find a balance in being distinctively Jewish and universally human by encouraging them to pursue tzedek (social justice), tikkun olam (repairing the world) and Jewish learning, and to support Israel and global Jewish peoplehood.

“Supporting Israel” is rather vague, and that appears to be a deliberate choice.  I know there to be a wide array of opinions on Israel within the Brown / RISD Hillel, and the student and adult leaders are very supportive of discussion of the issue.  I’ve never seen any attempt to quash opinions seen as “too radical”.  Notably, Hillel international mentions Israel in the context of “global Jewish peoplehood”, implying that Israel is just one component of a world-wide system.  This fits well with a pluralistic approach to Jewish community.

On the other hand, there are Jews who do not feel comfortable having a relationship with Israel, or do not wish to “support” it, in any sense of the term.  I am neither of these, but my feelings towards Israel are a good deal more complicated than just “supporting it”.  Although I, like many politically active Jewish students, don’t have a problem engaging in issues related to Israel, there are absolutely people who do.  There are people who feel that they don’t want their faith defined by a land, and that were they to cultivate a cultural or political connection to Israel, they would come to be religiously defined by it.  This is a matter of personal preference.  The core issue is that were I, for example, not politically involved, I might feel uncomfortable in a setting (such as Hillel) that assumes a connection by virtue of my Jewishness. My perspective is that since people tend to assume that Jews have a connection to Israel, it’s incumbent on us to define that relationship for ourselves, whether or not that means becoming politically, religiously, or otherwise involved with Israel.  Ultimately, however, it’s absolutely not my or anyone else’s place to force political activism on someone else.

Thus, we have a dilemma.  Could Hillel international’s assumption that all Jewish students will have a connection to Israel potentially exclude some from its otherwise pluralistic community?  While it’s not a given that this will occur (I have friends at the Brown / RISD Hillel who have no personal connection to Israel and are still quite involved in the community), is it still a possibility?  These are hard questions to answer, and I think they depend greatly on the people involved at the organizational and participatory levels.  Brown / RISD Hillel, for example, has an incredible staff who do a phenomenal job of making many different kinds of people feel at home.  I credit them with the inclusiveness and openness of the Hillel community on Israel and many other subjects.  So for us, it’s effectively a non-issue.

How does this tie in to the question of funding?  It seems quite apparent that Hillel international would lose a lot of its funding if it removed the mention of “supporting Israel” from its mission statement.  I don’t doubt that those responsible for the implementation of Hillel policies at all levels would continue to advocate for Israel in much the same way as they already do, though, so if we see the current wording as Hillel’s attempt to come to terms with the implied Jewish connection to Israel, we open the door to a wide variety of activities that could fall under the description of “supporting Israel”.  Thus, I argue that it is incumbent on individual students who are uncomfortable with an association with Israel to come to terms with why they feel that way.  It would be inappropriate for Hillel to try to pressure such students into adopting a certain stance on Israel matters, but I see no evidence that they’ve ever even attempted to do so.

Obviously, funding is not the only reason that “support for Israel” is part of Hillel international’s mission statement.  It’s not as though it’s just in there to appease donors.  Yet I believe that the larger questions about funding and policy should not be separated from the actions of the individual people involved in promoting and enforcing those policies, and especially given the organization’s commitment to pluralism, it would be unwise and overzealous to, based purely on this one excerpt of the mission statement, write off Hillel (at least at Brown) as biased against those who don’t relate to Israel.  All the evidence I’ve encountered speaks otherwise.