Assess and decide · Guide
Who chairs the partnership
In a Jewish community abroad, whoever chairs the committee that decides about the partnership is almost always a volunteer — a businesswoman, a physician, someone giving their own time and their own money. Facing them, on the Israeli side, sits a staff member doing their job. Two excellent people, in two entirely different positions. One speaks for a community that chose them. The other speaks for an employer.
This is not a technicality, and it is not a criticism of anyone. It is simply a structure — and a structure can be changed in a single meeting.
The professional coordinator is not surplus — they are essential, and they are the one who holds the continuity. They simply should not be the only one at the head of the table.
The mapping: where your relationship actually lives
After the question of the chair comes the question of the foundation. A partnership with a community overseas was almost never built as a system. It was built out of acquaintance, and most of what is known about it sits with two or three people. The mapping is ninety minutes in a meeting room, not a strategic exercise.
- People. Who here talks to whom there. Name against name, not "the committee and the federation".
- Channels. How many channels of contact genuinely exist — not how many you would like to exist.
- History. How it began, when, and why these two communities in particular. If nobody in the room can tell that story, that is the first finding.
- Agreements. What was agreed in writing, and what was agreed aloud and now behaves as though it were written.
- Money. What came, what it was designated for, who reported and to whom. And also: what we invested ourselves.
- People who touched this and are not in the room. Anyone who came back from a delegation, served as a shaliach, or hosted a family. These are the partnershi’ invisible assets.
How to run it — one meeting
"The relationship is excellent, there is nothing to map" — usually said by precisely the person the relationship depends on
Draw the lines and look. If the picture comes out broad, you spent ninety minutes. If it does not, you gained years
Where this comes from
The volunteer-chair policy and the joint steering committee model — the Jewish Agenc’ Partnership2Gether network. Equity as one of the three partnering principles — The Partnering Initiative. The idea that knowledge of a partnership must live in the organization rather than in one person — the city-partnership literature, which calls it alliance capability.
Tomorrow morning
Two questions. Who chairs this partnership on our side, and in what capacity? And if an email arrived from our partners tomorrow, who would receive it, and who else would know it had arrived? Continue with the Partnership Mirror.
כלי אחד בשבוע, ישירות אליכם
כל יום שלישי בבוקר נפתח כאן כלי אחד מהמטע לשבעה ימים. משאירים מספר, ומקבלים הודעה אחת בשבוע - בלי קבוצה ובלי רעש.