Maximizing a Golden Opportunity

Client: The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati
Project: The Board of Trustees of The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati engaged Rosov Consulting to develop its vision, strategy, and goals as its assets increased and it looked for more opportunities to leverage impact and create meaningful community relationships.
Year: 2011

Challenge

In 2010, the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati seized an extraordinary opportunity. Through the sale of the community’s Jewish hospital, the Foundation realized $200M in additional assets, to enable $10M per year of new grantmaking. Despite their collective grantmaking experience, the Foundation’s trustees realized that these dramatically increased resources would require a completely new way of thinking about the Foundation’s role in the community, what its mission and vision were, and how it would carry out its work on an ongoing basis.

Approach

Rosov Consulting supported the Foundation through a long-range planning process, which included reaffirming its mission to serve the Cincinnati Jewish community, identifying the interests and needs of community stakeholders, and developing clear objectives for each new funding area in terms of desired impact. This was accomplished through a series of facilitated retreats, interviews and focus groups, and expert presentations on areas of interest.

Results

As a result of the Foundation’s work with Rosov Consulting, it has developed:

  1. A vision for strategic philanthropic giving beyond simple grantmaking;
  2. Guiding principles for how the Foundation, now staffed by a professional team, should operate;
  3. Five clearly articulated funding areas, accompanied by specific objectives the Foundation accomplishes through an array of new initiatives; and
  4. A strong sense of identity for the Foundation as a trusted, high impact investor and partner in the community

Today the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati has a reinforced commitment to evaluation, and it more deeply understands how evaluation can be leveraged with key stakeholders and inform grant monitoring and organizational learning. The Foundation also has entered numerous grantmaking cycles with its newly articulated priorities.

As a result of its work with Rosov Consulting, the Foundation has become even more creative in using its increased resources and incorporated a rich mix of philanthropic approaches to benefit the community going forward. Executive Director Brian Jaffee notes, “The discipline of Rosov’s approach will serve us in the long run and has given us a great foundation to build on.”

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From the Client

The process that the Rosov team led has changed the way we have conversations with community partners and has given us the confidence to see our role at the table in setting priorities and finding solutions.

We definitely benefited from Rosov Consulting’s ability to marshal national experts in the areas that were of interest to us.

Wendy and her team were assiduous in their approach to getting the strategy right first, before making decisions [about specific grant making]. Wendy did a great job of connecting on a personal level with the trustees. Her warmth, and her passion for this work, really shine through which made the process a lot more satisfying and fulfilling for us.

Rosov Consulting continues to teach us about the value of evaluation, what questions to ask, and overall how to do it properly. They show us how we can use data effectively.