Right now, some parts of the country sit under a blanket of snow several feet deep, while in other places students stare out classroom windows at grey skies or rain-soaked streets. And even in warmer locales across the United States, it’s still February, it’s still winter, and everyone—teachers and students alike—is getting a little stir crazy.

“Being outdoors is really important, in terms of learning research,” offers Rabbi Owen Gottlieb, Founder and Director of ConverJent, an organization that develops Jewish games for learning, Assistant Professor of Interactive Games and Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a faculty affiliate at the RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction, and Creativity (MAGIC). “When you’re outdoors, and moving your body around, the level of student engagement is tremendously high.” In this case, Gottlieb is speaking specifically about the benefits of engaging students via a mobile GPS game—one that he’s created—as they explore a city and learn about Jewish history. “Part of what a mobile GPS-based game allows for,” he clarifies, “is to literally use motion and movement and bodies as part of learning.”

Motion, movement, bodies, iPhones and iPads, to be exact. Jewish Time Jump: New York is a location-based, mobile GPS game created with the help of a Covenant Foundation Signature grant in 2011, and intended for use on specifically those same devices that students today are glued to, for better or for worse. “This game uses tool sets that our young people are already attached to,” Gottlieb acknowledges, and we’ve seen how using the game has really helped students pay attention.”

And pay attention they undoubtedly will, for unlike the sedentary classroom environment, when students play the game they are immersed—on foot—into the fantastically rich history of Jews and other immigrants who came to New York in the early 20^thcentury by taking them on a tour through parts of New York City where the story of Jewish immigration and activism unfolds.

“But right now, it’s winter,” Gottlieb continues, “and the game is focused on New York City, where there’s snow on the ground, making it a challenge for students to play this [outdoor] game.” So instead, for the time being, Gottlieb and his partners at the Jewish Women’s Archive have been focused on the release of a curriculum they’ve developed to accompany the game. A second Covenant Grant awarded to ConverJent in 2013 supported the creation of the curriculum, as well as a teacher training workshops last summer. The lesson plans are all currently available on the JWA website.

A commitment to acts of social justice has always been at the heart of the work of the Jewish Women’s Archive, which is why this partnership was particularly well-designed. “It’s clear that issues of social justice and activism offer a real opportunity for kids who need an entry point but might not otherwise have a Jewish framework for that connection,” explains Judith Rosenbaum, Executive Director of JWA. “What was really great about this partnership with ConverJent,” she adds, “is that we know the best way for material to get out there into educational settings is for it to be woven into the kinds of experiences that young people are having today—like using mobile devices and digital games to learn. Although we have a really rich and exciting collection of resources on our website,” she continues, “we need partners to help us get this material out into the community.”

Rosenbaum adds that at JWA, history is an essential part of any contemporary Jewish communal story, and whenever JWA sees an opportunity to make connections and find partners willing to weave the historical piece into what they’re doing, the endeavor becomes a fruitful opportunity for everyone involved. “We’re all working towards the same goals and visions for the Jewish community,” she says. “A partnership like this is mutually supportive, and strengthens all of our work.”

What’s more, the partnership yielded a robust curriculum, complete with four modular lesson plans as well as a parent’s guide. Aimed at students in grades 5-7, the lessons focus on Jewish workers, employers and labor activists in the early 20^th century, and directly complements the game but may also be used without the game component. Supplementary materials include traditional Jewish texts as well as stories about contemporary labor issues.

“The lesson plans are incredibly deep and are meant to support educators as they dive into the content,” explains Etta King, Education Programs Manager at JWA and a lead author of the curriculum. “We aren’t just looking at who these people were, but also, what was at stake for them, and what the connection was between the Jewish textual tradition that they might have encountered in their synagogues at the time, on a Saturday, versus what their lives looked like when they went back to work in the factories on a Monday.”

King adds that the lesson plans provide “scaffolding” for teachers, so that they may adapt the material as it fits their educational goals. “I think that teachers who are doing a project-based learning unit about immigration or social justice projects with their students will find a plethora of resources here,” she asserts. King adds that the audience for this material is “everywhere.” Since it’s all online, people from all over the world can find their way to these resources and put them to use in their educational settings.

“I don’t know if students will experience one of these lesson plans and then decide to become a union organizer,” King adds, “but I do think that an encounter with this material helps them become critical thinkers, build a relationship with the idea of justice activism, and gives them a framework for understanding labor issues today.”

Labor issues, citizen journalism, issues-based advocacy, the tango between power and organization—these timely topics are all explored through Jewish Time Jump and its related curriculum, and the pedagogy is inquiry-based learning at its best.

As Rabbi Gottlieb attests, the overarching goal of Jewish Time Jump is an attempt to build good leaders for the Jewish community of the future. “This game is at the heart of the intersection between tikkun olam and democracy, he offers, “and it’s about our commitment as Jews to acts of social justice and to what it means to be a good citizen.”

But perhaps most importantly, playing Jewish Time Jump and then exploring the related texts and stories gives kids a chance to reach a hand back through the dusty annals of time to try and touch some of their history, if only once they’ve lifted their heads from the screen and engaged in a conversation about what they’ve just learned. Perhaps they’ll be prompted to ask questions about their great-grandparents, who might have owned a shop, or at some point, been members of a union. And then, perhaps, they’ll take that very immediate connection to their own family history, and through twin lenses of compassion and multiple perspectives, begin to consider and reconsider the world around them, and their place in it.

By Adina Kay-Gross, for The Covenant Foundation

The staff of a Jewish summer camp finds itself under tremendous pressure to buy local, organic food. But to do so would mean placing a significant financial strain on the camp and potentially reduce its ability to offer scholarships. What should the camp do?

Educators don’t often get to play with clay, Silly Putty, and glitter. But at Summer Sandbox they do, all in a purposeful way as they reimagine their classrooms as centers of passionate and creative education.

So it was that Jewish educators from around the country gathered for Summer Sandbox last July to brainstorm on using project-based learning (PBL) and other out-of-box pedagogies to change their schools.

That explains why facilitators presented participants with a Frisbee, a stuffed bear, a paddleball set, a costume, and other objects and challenged them to imaginatively develop interdisciplinary lessons to cultivate creativity.

One group planned a curriculum that looked at Jewish history through the lens of fashion and what it reveals about culture. It included a debate about modern standards of dress and Jewish notions of modesty.

Another group – leveraging the stuffed bear – explored the sensory-laden story of Jacob and Esau. The group designed an interdisciplinary lesson including a charge to students to design a gift for a visually impaired person.

Summer Sandbox is filled with such PBL components. Funded in part by The Covenant Foundation and hosted last summer at Yeshivat Noam in Paramus, NJ, it is a remarkably innovative professional development program for Jewish educators from a variety of settings.

Participants come to instigate culture change, to dream expansively, and to walk away with the tools, ideas, and connections that enable them to be change makers in their schools.

In one exercise, titled “The Ten Billion Dollar Challenge” attendees were asked to determine how to allocate significant dollars towards programs they considered most critical to Jewish schools.  

Ideas included a super bus to take students on any field trip imaginable; a department to create apps as needed for all disciplines; flexible learning spaces; quiet learning spaces; interdisciplinary learning; soundproof rooms to record and video; fully-equipped Maker, science, and Fab labs; and, gaming rooms.

Game-based learning – a current topic among 21st century Jewish educators – also entered the mix as a key creative teaching and learning tactic. Barry Joseph, Associate Director of Digital Learning at the American Museum of Natural History, led participants in a workshop that taught them about game mechanics and how games can enhance student engagement.

Another session examined the different types of learning labs that schools have established. Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island Head of School Adam Tilove described the school’s Design Lab, a place where students in grades K-5 use design thinking to ideate, prototype, and collaborate. Magen David Chief Academic Officer and Summer Sandbox organizer, Tikvah Wiener, described RealSchool, an inquiry-based learning program at The Frisch School.

To keep the conversation active, Summer Sandbox launched the I.D.E.A. Schools Network for Jewish and independent schools interested in implementing PBL and sparking creativity in students.

The Network, founded by Eliezer Jones, Ph.D., of Valley Torah High School in Los Angeles, and Tikvah Wiener, involves continuous follow up with Sandbox participants. For more information about the I.D.E.A. Schools Network, visit http://ideaschoolsnetwork.com.

Jewish educators explored the ways that project-based learning can unleash creativity in the classroom and beyond at Summer Sandbox, a professional development program that took place in July with funding from The Covenant Foundation.

By Glenn Rosenkrantz, for The Covenant Foundation

These days, the word “technology” is synonymous with education. But at one point, not too long ago, the connection between education—and in particular, Jewish education—and technology wasn’t all that clear.

Think back just a moment, and you can likely conjure up dusty images of classrooms with malfunctioning VCR’s and faintly printed Ditto sheets. Even younger generations—those who probably don’t know what a “Ditto” is—likely didn’t find much intersection between the information superhighway and the Day School classroom when they were students.

That is, until now. Over the last few years, technological innovations that have been implemented in secular classrooms for some time have driven Jewish education forward in a profound way, thanks to visionaries across the country.

“There was a big hole in Jewish education,” says Fraidy Aber, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) in San Francisco. The CJM is an institution known for its focus on “participatory technology” and exhibits that blend Jewish subjects with new media forms, including robotics and sound and projection technology. “Teachers should have access to the possibilities that using technology in the classroom offers them,” she continues. “And the more we can provide opportunities for training educators in using technology, the more we’ll be able to see technology’s impact when integrated into the teaching of Jewish subjects.”

Aber has already seen this impact first hand, starting with the technology-based curriculum that she and her colleague Dan Schifrin, a former writer in residence at the CJM, developed at the Museum with the support of a Covenant Foundation Ignition grant they received in 2009. That small grant ultimately funded LINK, a Jewish Art and Technology initiative that turned the museum space into a lab where educators could explore practical ways of applying technology toward Jewish education. LINK had a number of components, including a monthly speaker series, a year-long educator fellowship and an original exhibit called Are We There Yet?: 5000 Years of Answering Questions with Questions, which combined classroom, gallery and web-based elements.

According to Aber, the one-year LINK program was just the beginning. “From that experience,” she shares, “we moved forward intentionally toward the goal of merging Jewish education with 21^st century learning.” She adds that this was due in no small part to timing. When the CJM received their Ignition grant, the Museum was still a relatively young institution, which meant this small grant had an even greater impact. “We were a budding organization,” she recalls. “And this support helped to truly invigorate our work.”

“Sometimes you need to be able to test an idea with lower stakes,” she continues, and she uses west coast lingo to explain further: “In Silicon Valley they call it a ‘minimal viable product.’ Basically, you need to take small seed funding to try out an idea in the early stages. You don’t want to go out there with a $150k product that you haven’t tested. You need to first determine an approach, test it out, and make connections in the field. Then you can then say, ‘we iterated,’ we set up a prototype.”

Aber adds that when it comes to nonprofit organizations, this is generally a luxury, not a given. “With nonprofits,” she reflects, “you often have to just follow what’s been done before, and it’s much harder to prototype. If no one has the time or money to invent, or if there isn’t someone out there who is interested in the results of a test product or program, then this kind of experimentation doesn’t get on your to-do list in the same way.”

And it wasn’t just the experimentation process that made a small grant so effective, Aber explains. Rather, with the Ignition grant also came the opportunity for CJM to “get to know the Covenant Foundation, and become familiar with their skills and contacts.” Because of those contacts and that network into which the CJM was welcomed, they became embedded much more deeply into the field. “When you’re in the Ignition grant stage,” she attests, “this is particularly helpful.”

As events unfolded at the CJM following the positive results of LINK, museum staff pushed ahead, exploring new ideas and concepts in re-thinking the Jewish education classroom. In 2011, they received a mini grant to work on the development of an interactive iPad game that accompanied a CJM exhibit called Cali-fornia Dreaming.

“It was pretty powerful for us to play that way and work with teachers that way,” Aber recalls.

The development of the iPad game gave Aber and her colleagues another launching point from which to dive deeper into working with different modes of interaction with teachers and students in a non-traditional teaching setting, which, she explains, ultimately informs what could work in a more traditional classroom setting, too.

The CJM story illustrates an ideal trajectory: small grant leads to big changes. But there’s more. In 2012, the Museum was awarded a Covenant Foundation Signature grant to support the development of a Jewish Education and Technology (JET) Institute to take place for a week, over two consecutive summers. JET brought together Jewish day school educators, technology coaches and other visionaries looking to enhance Jewish learning through the use of digital technology. “A project of the size and scope worthy of a Signature grant,” Aber says, “takes a different kind of planning and intentionality, and an understanding of the subject matter that could only have developed so significantly after working on a much smaller scale.”

Aber emphasizes that there aren’t many networks of support for Jewish educators to witness this kind of integration as it happens, and so the collaboration between JET participants and presenters was especially important. “The secular field of this understanding is exploding,” she acknowledges. “Maybe a little bit faster than in Jewish education. And the secular field is a model for sure, but the realm of Jewish education has its own nuances, and there are different needs.”

Now, as the two-year Signature grant for JET comes to a close, the CJM is on to something new. The Creative Classroom series, inspired by the research that Aber and her colleagues undertook during the development of JET, is a public dialogue that invites two innovators into a conversation that explores how the classroom and the museum intersect, and how ideas of curiosity, creativity and engagement can affect learners of all ages.

Aber speaks excitedly about how these days, initiatives are constantly popping up, all across the country, focused on the training and professional development of educators interested in bridging the divide between 21^st century innovations and the traditional classrooms of yore. “They’re all new, they’re all good, they’re all focused on that integration,” she says.

And the CJM is right in step with that wave. “That first grant really helped change our practice,” Aber confirms. “When we started, we were just putting new ideas out there in the world. And now, we are helping to drive innovation in the field of Jewish education…and beyond.”

By Adina Kay-Gross, for The Covenant Foundation

Sometimes, a small amount of seed funding drives education forward. Sometimes, small funds lead to iterations that signal big changes in recruitment efforts. And sometimes, just a nugget of support changes cultural practices, community relations, and lives.

For an institution that had long since focused its efforts on catering to a population of senior citizens in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, a community known for its high concentration of immigrants, changing lives wasn’t always on the menu of goals. In fact, less than 10 years ago, the Kings Bay Y was really just focused on one thing: keeping its lights on.

“Around 2006, we found ourselves undergoing major transitions,” explains Daniel Zeltser, Assistant Executive Director at the Y. Leonard Petlakh had just become Executive Director, and the agency was, in Petlakh’s words, “on the verge of extinction.” In addition to the inherent financial strains the Y was facing, the issue of stale programming that didn’t meet the needs of a rapidly changing community caused the administration, under the guidance and with the support of the UJA Federation, to make major strategic changes. “We really needed to refocus our efforts,” Zeltser says.

Yozma Mentor engaging KBY Youth

And so, a robust new vision had the Kings Bay Y double down and commit to the growth and engagement of those Jewish communities in its catchment area that had previously been underserved, including a major push to connect with the sizable Russian-Jewish teen population.

“We came up with this idea of combing the American and Russian Jewish community to try and find role models for the Russian teens in our area,” Zeltser explains, “and then, to create a program around mentorship.”

Many evolutions of this idea eventually resulted in YOZMA: Initiative and Leadership for the Next Generation of Russian-Jewish Teens, a program funded by a Covenant Foundation Ignition grant in 2010, that offered Russian-Jewish teens an opportunity for mentorship and professional development through internships.

“We quickly became very successful in the teen market,” Zeltser recalls. But, as he explains, while Y staff found that Russian-Jewish teens and adults in the community had some cultural identification with Judaism, and they were highly committed to education, they weren’t necessarily invested in the idea of philanthropy and volunteerism.

To this end, in addition to the goal of providing quality programming for the teen population, YOZMA (which means “initiative” in Hebrew) focused on creating a cultural change in the community, and staff worked hard to make successful matches between teens and mentors, and to identify philanthropic projects the pairs could work on together. The teens selected for the program also had the opportunity to travel to work and board meetings with their mentors.

“We needed to create an experience they would value,” Zeltser says. “And we did.”

“Showing off Family Trees”

In an interview conducted at the end of his grant period, Zeltser expanded on the ingredients that led to the “systemic change” amongst the target population; namely, cultivating the ideals of volunteerism and community. “The experience with this grant…really impressed upon us the enormous opportunity we have to serve as an incubator for leadership for mentors and teens,” he said at the time. “We see tremendous potential for the program to be expanded and replicated in any large, urban environment with a critical mass of teens and potential mentors.”

And at the Kings Bay Y, expand it has. Today, the Y has one of the largest—if not the single largest—teen departments of all of the Federation agencies. And what’s more, alumni from that first cohort of teens who participated in YOZMA are now coming back to give back and remain involved.

Alla Leventhul is one such alum. Leventhul, now in her early 20’s, directs the Y’s Young Peace Builders Program, launched five years ago with the intention of building positive relationships between Jewish and Muslim teens in Y neighborhood by bringing them together to work on social action projects. “We are the sole partner of the Turkish community in our area,” Zeltser proudly shares. “And the idea for this program evolved directly from YOZMA and all that we learned.”

“For us, YOZMA’s success signaled a very big development,” he continues. “We learned so much. That first mentorship program provided just the spark we needed to set off so many other positive developments that have already had truly long-lasting effects.”

By Adina Kay-Gross, for The Covenant Foundation

Amy Skopp Cooper knows young adults have magic. “They’re cool. They have charisma,” she gushes. “They’re passionate, and kids respond to them.”

She’s not just talking about any young adults; in this case, Skopp Cooper’s talking about the special group of fellows in the Ramah Service Corps (RSC). “They’re future rabbis, or Jewish educators, or maybe they’re on their way to medical school,” she says. “These are well-rounded young people. They are so grateful for what they’ve gotten from their own Ramah experiences, they want to give back.”

And thanks to the Ramah Service Corps, they can, by working in local conservative synagogues across the country to bring Ramah-style ruach (spirit) and chinuch (education) to communities where future Ramah campers might reside and simultaneously creating a network of young Jewish educators across the country.

Tzadik Katamar Gimel with Andrew Stesis

But getting the RSC off the ground wasn’t easy. “We had many painful realizations as we thought through our initial plan,” Skopp Cooper shares.

Budding visionaries take note: an eight-month-long planning process, which involved meetings with practitioners and camping staff, led Skopp Cooper, Ramah’s National Associate Director and Director of Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, NY and Rabbi Mitchell Cohen, Ramah’s National Director, to the realization that even with a large grant, they really couldn’t afford or sustain the kind of program they dreamed of.

But they didn’t give up. Instead, they kept talking.

“And through talking to our mentors at The Covenant Foundation, we realized what we needed to do,” Skopp Cooper shares. “While initially we envisioned a program modeled after Teach for America, where fellows would work full-time, embedded within communities across the country, we had to modify our dream based on the learning we did—our initial plan just wasn’t possible. So instead, with the funding we received from an Ignition grant, we conceived of and created a program where our young people would work very part time in the various communities, infusing those communities with Ramah-style learning and spirit.”

As any visionary knows, it’s not easy to give up on a dream. But with clear eyes and a revised mission, Skopp Cooper and Cohen applied to the Foundation for Jewish Camp for seed money, and in 2010 they had the funding to launch the first Ramah Service Corps intern cohort, which would ultimately support 25-30 interns in various communities nationwide.

During that first run of the program, Skopp Cooper learned that the magic, charisma and enthusiasm of the post-college Ramah alumni was translating directly into an increase in enrollment in Ramah camps across the board. “Synagogues and schools were asking for more and more time from the fellows,” Skopp Cooper adds. “So we knew our idea was resonating.”

And they learned other things, too. Namely, that they needed to install some form of mentorship into the program. “We were sending 20-year-olds out on their own, into synagogues and communities, and that’s complicated. We needed to have better local mentorship support.” So with that information and with funding from another foundation that would allow for three more years of programming, Skopp Cooper re-imagined the Corps yet again. Fellows now work for five hours a week within their assigned community, with the expectation that they will run various programs and have access to both local and national mentoring time.

Today, five years since the first Ramah Service Corps cohort first went out into the world, there are 30 young adults working part-time in communities across North America, and many aspects of the program Skopp Cooper and her colleagues initially only dreamed of have been put into place. “The fellows meet with local mentors weekly, they check in with national mentors every week or week and a half, they attend staff training sessions and webinars, and there is an existing program bank accessible to all fellows,” Skopp Cooper explains. Fellows are also in direct contact with regional Ramah camp staff, who assist with recruitment efforts on the ground in the communities where the fellows work.

It’s more than Skopp Cooper could have ever imagined. “With our one grant, we thought dayeinu,” she admits. “But what started small—an Ignition grant and an idea—has had a huge impact on our program.” And that impact keeps growing: two years ago, the Davidson Foundation in Detroit contacted Ramah about bringing fellows to work full-time in the metro Detroit area, and all of a sudden, “we were dusting off that original idea of having full-time Ramah alumni working in communities,” she says. Sure enough, in 2013, Skopp Cooper and Cohen’s original brainchild came to fruition when three full-time fellows moved into a shared Ramah bayit in metro Detroit (bringing the total number of Ramah fellows to 33). In its second year, full-time Detroit fellows now work with local synagogues and two area Jewish Day Schools, partner with local Jewish organizations and run programs with adults.

As for next steps, Skopp Cooper says the Ramah Camping Movement is beginning to look into how they could continue to grow their Detroit model in other communities. Without a doubt, it’ll take some magic, but Skopp Cooper now knows it can be done.

“Our mentors at Covenant said, ‘don’t settle,’” she shares. “So we didn’t. They told us, ‘don’t stop dreaming big and thinking big,’” she adds. “And we didn’t.”

By Adina Kay-Gross, for The Covenant Foundation

Steve Jobs once said, “to turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years requires a lot of discipline.” But, as any innovator knows, it’s not just discipline that’s required for game-changing organizations to succeed. Rather, it takes discipline plus solid mentorship. And, of course, a spark.

So let’s say a Jewish entrepreneur has the discipline and the vision—but perhaps they’ve reached the “proof of concept” stage with their startup and they’re looking for guidance as they grow their organization further. Where do they turn?

UpStart would be a good place to begin. “People who come to UpStart are committed to seeing their project succeed. It is the focus of their life,” says Toby Rubin, UpStart’s CEO and founder. “We have a strategy—which is reflected in our mission and work—to accelerate the best ideas that will contribute to vibrant Jewish living.”

“The word ‘accelerate’ is really jargon,” Rubin adds quickly. “What we’re doing is creating the opportunity for something to happen more quickly than it might otherwise without support. A supported idea can move from point A to point B faster, and point B is a place where we can determine if an idea is sustainable, or if it’s not.”

A multitude of sustainable ideas have already been proven through UpStart’s accelerator program since the nonprofit first launched in 2008. With alumni including G-dcast, Urban Adamah, Mishkan Chicago, Wilderness Torah and many others, the UpStart team has cultivated ventures that are changing the face of 21^st century Jewish life.

So what’s the secret? To begin, each startup accepted into the UpStart accelerator is treated to four central benefits: product development, networking, community of practice, and funding. These benefits translate into training in practices tested and proven in the for-profit sector, a 2-day immersive retreat and several free full-day workshops, one-on-one coaching sessions with UpStart consultants who have expertise in areas including education, fundraising and organizational development, as well as access to the entire UpStart mentorship team for what Rubin calls “411/911 support.”

If an accelerator is struggling to set up a marketing plan, or has reached a fundraising roadblock, or isn’t sure how to manage the business infrastructure of their developing organization, the UpStart team is available to coach and guide members through that sometimes sticky morass of growing a venture. “Everybody has the number to call,” Rubin says. “We’ve got their back.”

In addition, being accepted into the accelerator program means access to a network of colleagues from current and former cohorts, which affords each member the benefits of peer coaching and the delivery of expertise, and ultimately serves to “accelerate” everybody’s project.

There’s that word again. Accelerate. And even if it’s jargon, it’s central to UpStart’s recipe for success. But ultimately, there’s another word that comes up just as often when talking to Rubin and others about UpStart’s work. That word is “impact,” and it’s what the UpStart team is tracking when they select each cohort for the accelerator program.

Quite often, says Rubin, it’s clear from the start whether a venture has the capacity to make an impact in the Jewish world. “There are certain indicators that an organization might not be successful,” Rubin explains. “Perhaps when reading an application we see that a startup hasn’t spent enough time figuring out why they should be funded, and has focused instead on just getting the funding itself. When this happens, it’s clear that they don’t understand what their own work is.”

Rubin knows that looking for funding is an integral part of any startup’s growth process, and she echoes the idea that a small amount of funding can yield great change for an organization. “But small or big,” she cautions, “the funding is misplaced if the organization doesn’t have the capacity to create an impact.”

In a recent blog post on their website, Maya Bernstein, an UpStart associate and Covenant Foundation Pomegranate Prize recipient likens the idea of making an impact and creating change to the debate about the mitzvah of lighting Chanukah candles. Namely, she writes, there’s a question in the Talmud about whether the mitzvah of hadlakah (lighting) is linked to the actual lighting or to the placement of the lit Chanukah candles—where they can be widely seen.

“If the candles are lit but not seen and shared, what is actually being accomplished?” Bernstein poses.

“This debate can be understood as a metaphor at the core of any program…attempting to create change,” Bernstein continues. “If the program is successful in inspiring or changing individuals, but is not effective in creating change within an organization or network as a whole, is it enough? Is it worth it?”

Bernstein doesn’t keep readers hanging. Ultimately, she shares, the Gemara concludes that “that the core of the mitzvah is the lighting. This is why we recite lehadlik ner shel Chanukah (to light the Chanukah candles) and not lehaniach ner Chanukah (to place the Chanukah candles).

“The first step, which is the most critical, is to create the light,” she concludes. “Once the light is shining, if it is a true light, it will inevitably be placed, and will inspire and ignite others.”

It seems that no matter which words one uses to describe the process of nurturing innovators toward making great changes in the Jewish world, one thing is irrefutable: it all starts with a spark.

By Adina Kay-Gross, for The Covenant Foundation

• Bigger isn’t always better. In fact, small can be pretty great too, especially when you’re trying to grow an idea from the roots up. This is a process Ariel Beery knows a thing or two about. As the cofounder of PresenTense, an incubator for social ventures launched in 2005, and now the CEO of MobileOCT, a biophotonics startup enabling mobile phones to detect cancer, Beery has been through the process of launching a new venture quite a few times and he intimately understands the challenges.

  

  “I think there’s a misconception that a venture must depend on large grants from big donors,” Beery explains. “But it makes more sense and it’s more sustainable to test out an idea first and see whether it has the opportunity to make an impact on people’s lives.”

  A commitment to starting small and doing multiple rounds of testing is central to the curriculum that Beery and his partner Aharon Horwitz built while at PresenTense, where they successfully taught hundreds of social entrepreneurs how to start their own companies. Today, Naomi Korb-Weiss and Guy Spigelman serve as the CEOs of the PresenTense Group and PresenTense Israel, respectively, but Beery and Horwitz remain active as board members. The curriculum they developed still applies and its core principals may be boiled down to three key points which Beery explains in a PresenTense blog post from March 2013: “Time before money (to access mentors and subject matter experts…so they can spend their money wisely), practice before theory (to try things out before they can dig deeper into any one approach) and a supportive community (to leverage social capital for the introductions, ideas and investments required).”

  Horwitz likens this to the process by which the Covenant Foundation selects, mentors and supports Ignition grantees to explore new and untested ideas. “The Foundation intimately understands the space in which they’re working,” he emphasizes, “which lends a unique legitimacy to their decisions about investments.”

  Investors who know the market in which an entrepreneur seeks to develop an idea are called “smart money” investors, “and they generally have a personal stake in your idea,” Beery adds.

  But where does one begin? How does one determine whether an idea is relevant and sustainable? How does one locate those smart money investors? “First, get really close to people who are smarter than you about what you’re trying to do,” Horwitz advises. “Customers, experts—spend a lot of time showing them your concept, and while they’re becoming familiar with it, take note: understand how they’re experiencing it. Get a sense of how to best engage them. Amass tons of data.”

  As one might imagine, both Beery and Horwitz amassed tons of data during their tenure at PresenTense. And then, in a very Meta turn of events, after almost eight years helping others actualize their entrepreneurial dreams, both founders took their own wisdom and started companies themselves.

  

  “[At PresenTense], my role was to support others in starting their own companies,” Beery reflects. “Then, when I found myself coaching my childhood friend who had an idea to make a cancer-detecting device for a smartphone, I fell in love with the concept,” he explains.

  Beery and his childhood friend—now his business partner, David Levitz—started MobileOCT with no external investment. Beery put in $5,000 of his own money, and his friend did the same. And for the first three years that was all the funding they had. But in that early phase, Beery explains, that’s all it took to build a community around their idea.

  “This is an important lesson,” he urges. “We started out chasing money left and right. But as it turns out, we knew better than anyone else how to build a customer base for our product.”

  Horwitz concurs. He now runs 40Nuggets, a company that helps small-medium businesses better engage online consumers by giving them the right digital tools—which might have previously been outside their reach. “I think being willing to try something and fail at it and then moving on to something else is a really important philosophy to convey,” he emphasizes. “And,” he adds, “A lot of money before you know what to do with it can be a real challenge to an entrepreneur.”

  Beery and Horwitz have been promoting these same ideas since PresenTense first got off the ground, and clearly, the ideas have resonance. Since 2007, they have helped to launch over 400 startups in 46 countries by seeking small seed investments, doing multiple rounds of testing, and encouraging “value over image.”

  As they wrote in an Op-Ed in Ha’aretz in October of 2007, “The Jewish people can create their own global golden age if they replace the current system of image-driven philanthropy with one based on value-creation and sustainable entrepreneurship.”

  The technology and the times have changed much since then, but the powerful core of wisdom remains the same: Start small. Ignite something big.

  By Adina Kay-Gross, for The Covenant Foundation

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talked about the powerful relationships between creative thinking and play – and offered many examples you can try at home (And one that maybe you shouldn’t).

Executive Summary

Covenant Foundation “Ignition Grants,” small-scale grants introduced in 2007, provide seed funding of up to $20,000 for a single year. Created with the idea that a small seed might spark big innovation, Ignition Grants allow organizations to explore new and exciting ideas that are still in the planning stages.

And over the past seven years, Ignition Grants have done just that. Awarded to 46 organizations in nearly every area of Jewish education, recipients of Ignition Grants have developed pioneering and inventive ideas in the field of Jewish education, producing online Torah study and Hebrew apps, environmental and outdoor education programs, films, visual arts projects, special needs education curricula, teen leadership development programs and much, much more.

Now, with seven years of research and experience under our collective belts, our goal is to understand the impact of a small-scale funding approach. To do so, we’ve commissioned a study to explore questions including:

• What is the current status of the programs funded by Ignition Grants?
• How have these programs changed or expanded in the years since the grant ended?
• What kinds of interactions did Ignition Grantees have with others in their cohort, and would they have benefitted from additional opportunities for interaction during the grant period?
• What can we learn from exit interviews about the effects of receiving an Ignition Grant beyond the immediate financial impact of additional funds?
• Have any themes and patterns emerged across organizations, which might imply that the Ignition Grants have achieved even broader goals beyond the impacts on individual program participants?

What We’ve Found, in Brief

Based on exit interviews of Ignition Grantees that received funding between 2007-2012, as well answers those grantees provided to a web-based survey, we’ve discovered that the selection strategy used by The Covenant Foundation for Ignition Grants has been highly effective at identifying organizations and ideas with the capacity for long-term success.

In fact, of the 27 grantees that completed our survey, 24 reported that their program is still in existence and is central to the mission of their organization. In addition, almost two-thirds reported that their work had not only continued since the time of the grant, but had also evolved and expanded. Five Ignition grantees - IKAR, The Paradigm Project, The Institute for Jewish Spirituality, MoEd, and Reimagining Jewish Education through Art - subsequently received Signature Grants from the Foundation to continue and expand the work of their Ignition Grants. What’s more, other grantees have also successfully grown their initial pilot programs into larger projects often across multiple sites, and have expanded beyond their local communities to offer programming and curricula on a national scale.

Ultimately, it’s clear from both survey response and results in the field that small-scale funding can spark big accomplishments and impacts.

The Importance of Grantee Connections

For many Ignition Grantees, the small size of their organizations and their local focus makes it difficult to feel connected to the larger field of Jewish education and to participate in broader, forward-thinking conversations. To this end, we’ve found that the Covenant connection that’s established once an organization is awarded a grant has helped many grantees transcend organizational barriers. For some, the sense of connection came from the knowledge that there were others across the country engaged in similar work. In fact, a number of grantees developed relationships and connections with other organizations, some directly facilitated by the Foundation, others as a result of the funded projects that put the organization on the national stage.

From conference calls to webinars and networking at conferences, when multiple grantees were present, The Covenant Foundation has made networking and peer learning a central goal of the Ignition Grant experience. Based on our survey, 14 of the 24 survey respondents reported that they had interacted with other grantees during the time of their Ignition Grant. We also learned that half or more of our respondents would have appreciated conference calls or webinars for all Ignition Grantees (56%), in-person conferences for all Ignition Grantees (50%), and gatherings for grantees doing similar kinds of work (68%).

Impacts and Benefits for Ignition Grantees

For most of our grantee organizations, receiving a Covenant Ignition Grant provides both tangible and intangible benefits beyond the impact of the funding itself.

First, many grantees confirmed that their funding had allowed them the freedom to experiment and think “outside the box,” which expanded their capabilities as an organization. They also described how the Ignition Grant sparked a process of reflection and learning, and for some, created a “proving ground” for an idea or approach that ultimately impacted the entire organization. In addition, a few grantees made the point that the Ignition Grants provided just the right amount of funding for a process of experimentation and learning - enough to have a meaningful impact, but not so much that it creates pressure to accomplish more than an organization is ready to do.

Further, when asked to describe the impact of receiving a Covenant Ignition Grant, the most common response from grantees was gratitude for the ways in which the Covenant “stamp of approval” elevated the status and visibility of their organization. Grantees went on to describe how the prestige of being awarded a Covenant grant enhanced their sustainability by helping them secure additional funding and making their organizations and programs more attractive to potential partners. A number of grantees also reported that by receiving an Ignition Grant, their organization’s visibility increased both in their local communities as well as on a national level. In turn, this increased visibility helped their organization demonstrate that its work is significant and valuable.

Further, we’ve found that being chosen as a Covenant Grantee can have an impact on an organization’s own identity. To this end, a number of grantees spoke about how being awarded a grant gave them and their organization a new sense of purpose for their work, pride in their accomplishments, and a commitment to live up to the confidence that the Foundation had shown in them.

And finally, many grantees greatly valued their new (in most cases) relationship with The Covenant Foundation itself, citing both the knowledge, perspective, and insight of Foundation professionals as well as the accessibility, supportiveness, and guidance from staff members throughout the entire grant year.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The sustainability statistics described here, along with current program status reports and the multiple impacts described by our grantees, all speak to the success of the Covenant Ignition Grant program in achieving the Foundation’s goals.

The vast majority of programs funded by Ignition Grants have firmly taken root in their organizations, and more than half have secured additional funding (including Signature Grants), expanded their scope, and/or been adapted in other communities. Looking at cross-grant experiences and themes, it is clear that limited funding can have a profound impact on organizations.

The Covenant Foundation can both work to enhance these impacts for current and future grantees, and formulate frameworks for assessing which organizations might benefit most from the experience of receiving an Ignition Grant.

To accomplish these goals, we’ve come up with a number of suggested steps, including:

• Create more opportunities for in-person and web/phone-based grantee networking, possibly including both Ignition and Signature Grantees involved in similar kinds of work.
• Help Ignition Grantees think creatively about how to leverage the visibility and prestige of the Covenant Grant with their communities, the larger field, and potential funders.
• Structure grant reports and exit interviews to explicitly encourage reflection and identify lessons learned through the grant experience so that they might lead to broader organizational changes and enhancements.
• Continue to provide meaningful interaction between Covenant Foundation professionals and Ignition Grantees, both during the application stage and throughout the grant year.
• Assess potential Ignition Grantees both on the merit of their ideas and on how they might benefit from an Ignition Grant along multiple dimensions, by asking questions like:
  • Are they at a stage in their growth where they could benefit from national visibility? Do they seem to have the capacity to (with guidance) take advantage of this visibility?
  • Does their work fit with that of other grantees such that they might form useful connections and relationships?
  • Do they exhibit the potential to be a reflective “learning organization” which can leverage the experimentation sparked by the Ignition Grant?
  • Are the professionals involved with the program at a place where a “vote of confidence” from the Foundation regarding their work might have a significant impact on their career trajectories?

Ultimately, our research shows above all that a small-scale granting strategy deserves to be and should remain a core approach of the Foundation. The words of Leon Morris, former Director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning, express it best: “I think it's wonderful. Keep funding out of the box projects that might not otherwise be funded. Keep investing in people and projects you believe in. This project was transformative for me, for the artists, and for Skirball.”