WINNIPEG – Combined Jewish Appeal campaign organizers and volunteers are all smiles after a down year last year.
For 16 years in a row, the Winnipeg campaign had annually reached or exceeded ever-higher fundraising targets. The 2014-2015 campaign ended the streak, but this year’s campaign has once again been full steam ahead.
“To this point [as of Jan. 5], we have raised $5,646,537,” said Elaine Goldstine, longtime CJA campaign director and newly appointed CEO of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg. “We are up over $200,000 from where we were at the same time last year. We are also up 6.1 per cent card for card and have enlisted 181 new donors.”
The 2013-2014 campaign raised $5.8 million, an increase of about $150,000 over the year before. The goal for last year was $5,950,000. The final tally, however, was $5,647,806 – more than $300,000 short of the goal and almost $150,000 less than the year before.
Goldstine attributed the shortfall in part in large part to the loss of several major donors who died.
READ: WINNIPEG CJA CAMPAIGN SHORTFALL BAD NEWS FOR JEWISH AGENCIES
“We are hopeful that last year was just a blip in our upward trend,” she said. “This year, our target is $5.8 million and, at the present rate, we should surpass that figure. [The campaign officially closes at the end of March.] We are cautiously optimistic. We are keeping our fingers crossed.”
She attributes the rosier outlook this year to a number of factors, including many more telethons and much more help in fundraising from CJA beneficiary agencies, who saw their allocations from the federation cut last year because of the campaign shortfall.
“Our beneficiary agencies really stepped up this year in helping with our canvassing,” she said.
The 2015-16 campaign was chaired by lawyer Bryan Klein, a longtime CJA canvasser, while the women’s philanthropy campaign chair was Elana Schultz who, Goldstine said, has been a CJA canvasser since she was a teenager and has been very much involved in the women’s campaign for the last few years. Both will be back for a second year.
“Bryan, Elana and their team of canvassers did a great job,” Goldstine said. “They reached out to a lot of people. The personal phone calls and frequent meetings made a difference.”
As well as funds raised from the campaign, Goldstine said last fall’s Words and Deeds Leadership Awards dinner in honour of the Asper family and the Asper Foundation was attended by 850 people and raised $450,000. Half of the total went to the community’s endowment fund, with the remainder going to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs – the dinner’s co-sponsor – for a project of the Asper family’s choosing.
“Our ‘Leave More Than Memories’ endowment fund is at $3.7 million,” she added. “We are working closely with the Jewish Foundation to develop short- and long-term strategies to increase the endowment.”
Goldstine said that about 20 per cent of the funds raised by CJA are earmarked for overseas initiatives such as Birthright Israel trips, March of the Living, Israel advocacy and support for programs in Israel and countries of the former Soviet Union. The campaign itself and the federation account for nine per cent each of funds raised, with the remainder designated for local beneficiary agencies.
“We have a very generous community,” she said.
She said one of the first orders of business in the new year will be finding a new CJA campaign director. Goldstine had been the director for the past 11 years.
“I have been juggling both jobs [campaign director and federation CEO] for the past seven months,” she said. “It has been challenging.”
