September 1, 2025 • 34 mins
Reuben D. Rotman is the founding President and CEO of the Network of Jewish Human
Service Agencies. The Network was established in 2017 following the merger of two
predecessor associations, as an international membership association, with the mission
of strengthening and advancing the Jewish human service sector. Today, The Network
serves as the leading voice for the sector; the go-to for best practice research,
innovation, and partnerships. Supporting its 180+ member organizations, The
Network’s goal is to strengthen the capacities of its member agencies and to advance
the scope and impact of the Jewish human service sector
Service Agencies. The Network was established in 2017 following the merger of two
predecessor associations, as an international membership association, with the mission
of strengthening and advancing the Jewish human service sector. Today, The Network
serves as the leading voice for the sector; the go-to for best practice research,
innovation, and partnerships. Supporting its 180+ member organizations, The
Network’s goal is to strengthen the capacities of its member agencies and to advance
the scope and impact of the Jewish human service sector
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Columbus and Central Ohio have a rich history of companies
being headquartered here, everything from technology, manufacturing, retail, insurance, and more.
But what about the leaders behind these companies? What makes
them tick? How do they get their start? This is
where you get to meet the captain of the ship.
Welcome the CEOs you should know at iHeartMedia Columbus Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm from the Greater Boston area outside of Boston, Massachusetts,
and I grew up there and I went to Brandeis
University for my undergraduate degree and two separate graduate degrees
as well.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Outstanding and when you were coming out of school, what
did you want to do?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So initially I thought I was interested in the field
of community relations, and I was looking for a position
that put me in a role that would facilitate some
programmatic and advocacy efforts between the Jewish community and the
(01:00):
non Jewish community. And I also was very interested in
the role of helping nonprofits access funding from government. And
I ended up right out of undergraduate having a position
(01:20):
with a new startup nonprofit that grew out of an
internship that I held when I was working when I
was a student, and the internship that I enjoyed was
with the State's Office of Affirmative Action, and that internship,
which I held for about three different semesters, morphed into
(01:44):
an invitation to join a new startup nonprofit that was
being established at the time to help minority in women
own businesses and nonprofits secure a contracts from state government.
And I did that for a year. It was a
fascinating learning experience. I did a lot of training and
(02:07):
consulting with small nonprofits and small for profit corporations, helping
them to figure out contracts that made sense for them,
how to position themselves, how to write grants. It was
it was, you know, I was the only white male
(02:31):
on the team, I was the only Jewish individual on
the team, and for lots of different reasons, it felt
like a great beginning, but it didn't feel like the
right spot where I wanted to grow and go further,
and it ended up happening. Turns out that about three
(02:53):
years later the nonprofit closed, So so I got out
before it ended up, you know, needing to get out,
you know, purposely. So anyway, that's how I began, and
that led me to a graduate program one in Jewish
(03:15):
communal service, a master's degree in Jewish communal service and
the other a master's degree in the management of human services.
And I really learned through that first job that the
place where I felt most comfortable was working in an
organization that was in the human service space, working in
(03:40):
an organization rooted in the Jewish community, but one that
did work beyond the Jewish community, outside of the Jewish community.
And so that's the career that I developed. And you know,
I've held positions since then in Jewish federal systems as
(04:01):
well as in direct service agencies under the Jewish community auspices,
but always with the human serve as focus. Even when
I worked at Federation, I worked in agency planning and
relations and the focus was on the social service agencies
(04:22):
in the community.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Well, it's an not standing resume, if you don't mind
me saying. And it also leads to my next question.
And we always love to hear the story of the
origin about why you join an organization. And with your
resume and all the incredible things that you've done, Rubin,
I can see why they were interested in you to
join the network, but why were you interested in joining them?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So the network is first, You've got to understand the
origin story of the network itself. The network is right
now and it's eighth year, and it's the result of
a merger that happened in twenty seventeen between what was
the National Association that supported Jewish Family Service Agencies. There's
a network of about one hundred and twenty Jewish Family
(05:04):
service agencies throughout the US and Canada, and that association
merged with the Association that supported the Jewish Vocational Service Agencies.
That was a smaller association, but again they operated in
the US and Canada and supported a network of vocational
(05:27):
service providers that provided workforce development and employment services. And
they were supporting organizations in the US, Canada and in Israel.
And the vision for the network really grew out of
your recognition that in many, many, many local communities there
(05:48):
had been either a merger locally of the Jewish Family
Service and the Jewish Vocational Service already, or there were
Jewish family service agencies delivering vocational services, or there were
vocational service agencies feeling that they needed to expand their
service offerings to include things that would typically take place
(06:13):
in a family service agency. So the seeds of the
need were bubbling from the local communities. And then beyond that,
there was also a recognition that there were other nonprofits
that were operating under Jewish community auspices that were identified
(06:35):
as human service providers but were neither a family service
or a vocational So these are agencies that are, for example,
disability providers, elder care providers, food and security providers, refugee
resettlement providers, addictions domestic violence, and they were never part
(06:59):
of either of the two predecessor associations. So all of
these conversations were like bubbling for a few years, and
there were the time came where the right people were
sitting at the right table at the right time, where
(07:20):
everybody felt, you know what, We've got to have this conversation.
These two associations aren't meeting the needs necessarily of their
own members, and they're also not meeting the needs of
the broader sector. Is it time for something different? What
is that time? So when all this was happening, I
(07:40):
was serving on the board of the Family Service Association,
and I was serving as the CEO of the Jewish
Family Service Agency, and I myself was asked to serve
on the steering committee that led to the group that
had these conversations. And as these conversations continued, and it
(08:04):
was they took place over a series of about three years.
Actually it didn't happen in ten minutes, and the vision
for what this new entity was beginning to gel and
think about.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I thought, well, wait a minute, I think i'd like
to leave that new entity. And so I resigned from
serving on the steering committee, and I said, you know what,
I don't think I should be on this committee. You're
about to launch a search for CEO. I shouldn't be
sitting at the table where they're deciding the job description
(08:38):
and what they want to do and who they want
to hire, because I think I might be interested in applying.
And that's what happened. I removed myself. I let that
committee continue meeting on their own for a few a
year or so and until they they announced the search
(08:59):
for a CEO. And then I went through the interview
process and I was hired and asked to lead the
new entity.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And so we're both a combination of a startup and
all the fun and excitement and scary stuff that comes
with being a startup, and we're also the result of
a merger and all the legacy and the issues and
the drama and the whatever that come with a merger.
(09:30):
And so that's where we are. And it's been eight
years of both building something new while at the same
time delivering services and content and responding to issues. And
our sector has lived through a tremendous amount of issues
and challenges in those eight years, and we've evolved as
(09:53):
an organization to address them.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Stanning, Well, thank you for all that. It's a great story.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
And before I ask you about what do you exactly do,
because I think that's really important to give context everybody.
It sounds like you know in your situation, not only
the timing part of it, but you had intimate knowledge
about what was going on as this would be created.
And I only have enough to be dangerous as you're
telling the story, but this was a very large umbrella
of a lot of different entities, yeah, trying to be
pulled together. But you had knowledge about what was going on,
(10:19):
which made you a really good fit and why you
saw this could be the gig for me.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I was ready for a change.
I had been in my previous organization for twenty one
years and I was serving as the CEO for fourteen
of those twenty one years, and I was ready for
a change, and I was beginning to think, you know,
I'm not ready to be retiring in this role. What
(10:48):
would be the next logical step for me? Where do
I want to go? And you know, I thought about
do I go to a larger agency? And then I thought, well,
I'm going to pick up and move my family to
another city, a different zip code, same set of issues,
but maybe different issues.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I didn't know if that was going to be the
right fit or not. And this opportunity felt new and
different and a significant challenge, but still in the focus
that I was passionate about working in, still in my
field of practice. And yeah, and it came down to,
(11:30):
you know, you may choose to leave this in the
interview or not. It came down to me and another
candidate who was outside of the network, outside of our world.
And you know, ultimately this search committee needed to decide
did they want somebody who was perceived as internal but
(11:54):
only partly internal. I didn't come from the vocational service world.
Is a perception that perhaps I was too family service oriented,
so I needed to address that perception, or do they
want somebody completely different on the outside. Anyway, I'm glad
that the committee shows.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Bain right, and I've seen that in my industry too,
where you always wonder as a hiring manager, do you
get a fresh set of eyes that really don't know
the industry well or do you need somebody that knows
it intimately, And that's always the wrestling back and forth
that we go through too. You kind of talked about
mission and vision, and I think we should do this
for everybody, because I know a lot of people are
being introduced to the Network for the first time that
(12:34):
they're listening to this fantastic interview. So if you were
to give Rubin kind of a thirty thousand foot view
about what the Network is, what would you say that
you do?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The Network is a capacity building organization. Our focus is
to help our member organizations elevate the work that they do.
We help them solve the challenges that they encounter, and
we work on bringing them capacity building resources so they
could do their jobs better, easier, more efficiently, and serve
(13:05):
the communities that they serve. We also, though simultaneously, serve
as the thought leader and the voice, the Jewish voice
of the human service sector, and so we care about
organizations in our sector that are not members of our
network because we believe that we have a strong role
(13:26):
to play to adjucate for and elevate the scope of
the impact of the sector.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Well, let's talk about advocation. I think this is a
great segue because this is really big on your list
among other things that you do with your almost team
of twenty people there at the network, when it comes
to advocation.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
What does it look like? What does it sound like?
Speaker 4 (13:44):
What's either a week or a month look like for you,
whether you're doing Capitol Hill or you're in your region
with people there or different agencies. What does it look
like when you advocate?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, well, you know, the nonprofit sector right now is
under tremendous, tremendous scrutiny and tremendous pressure. Right now, we're
living through a stage where the federal government in the
US is revisiting its historic partnership with nonprofit social service
(14:17):
providers and rethinking to what degree do they believe it's
the federal government's role to support those services or is
it the local state role to support those services? And
in many ways, social services and human services at large
are becoming bifurcated, so that in one state you might
(14:39):
have a certain array of resources and they're completely different
or not as extensive in a different state. So our
role at the national level is to advocate on behalf
of the entire sector and to speak to members of Congress,
the administration, Federal Department meents about what are the issues
(15:01):
that we're navigating, what are the needs not only nationally,
but what are the needs locally, and we provide we
provide access to federal decision makers with a deep understanding
of local needs. We also, at the same time help
to educate our member agencies locally about how they could
(15:24):
communicate the impact of what they do with their local constituents,
with their elected officials, with their local media, with other
coalition partners. They need to be able to tell the
community who they are and what they do. And so
we view advocacy not only in terms of elected officials
(15:45):
and government. We view advocacy in terms of promoting the
scope and the impact and the resources of the Jewish
human service sector to any potential user. The local community
needs to know what the agency does, The local community
needs to know who to reach out to when they
(16:06):
need help, and other organizations need to know who to
partner with. You know, when you're looking to help an
individual or a family in need, Chances are those needs
are complex, they're multi layered, and in order to deliver response,
it's often the role of an agency to help an
(16:29):
individual put a patchwork of supports together. And sometimes those
supports come from one organization, but oftentimes they come from
multiple organizations and it's super complicated. And until you run
into a challenge you yourself as a community member, you
(16:50):
often don't realize how hard it is. If you have
an aging parent, or if you have a child that's
struggling in school, if you're dealing with the difficulty situation
at work, if you're having issues with navigating resources for
a friend or a neighbor, you often need some help
(17:12):
without navigation. Our agencies excel at that role of helping
people navigate resources in the community and finding ways to
strengthen and support individual and family life. We also focus
on supporting people throughout the life cycle because it's often
(17:34):
that you know as individual. As children grow at different stages,
they have different needs. As adults grow and get older
at different stages, they also have different needs, and so
our agencies often will see clients coming in and out
(17:55):
of their organizations over the course of ten, fifteen, twenty years,
and that's very important. And the last piece I'll share
is that there is a perception that the agencies that
deliver services only serve the most low income, the most
(18:15):
at risk, the most vulnerable, and that is very, very true,
but they also serve people at any income level. At
any stage. We are serving six figure you know, way
journers who are having difficulties navigating support for our aging parents,
(18:36):
as well as people who are having a hard time,
you know, keeping food on their table. So it's important
to really lay that distinction out because I think that
community members often don't.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Realize that, well, that's amazing stuff, and I know you're
only hitting the tip of the iceberg. But I think
it's also another great segue, Ruben to talk about funding
and how you are funded, because there are a lot
of balls in the air and it takes money.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
So how does that work for you?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, yes, So first of all, I want to answer
that question in two ways, because, like any nonprofit, the
best practice is to have diversified revenue sources, and so
we do receive grants from private foundations, from corporate foundations,
from government, but we also receive donations from individuals, from
(19:31):
the members of our board, from individuals who have used
the services and participated in the offerings that we provide,
and from others who just care about the sector. And
we also receive revenue from fees that we charge for
different services that we provide. First, as a membership association,
(19:54):
we charge membership dues or investment contributions that we call them,
where organizations that are part of the network agree to
pay some type of a fee to participate in what
we do. When we have a whole formula that we
use to apply and determine what that fee is. And
(20:14):
we charge fees to participate in offerings, not all of
the offerings, but some of the offerings we host an
the annual conference every year, there's a registration fee, etc.
Beyond that, and we provide some trainings that come with
continuing education units that we provide that we charge fees for.
(20:37):
And then we also do consulting and we help organizations
in our network with challenges that they're encountering where they're
asking us to lean in and work with them in
a meaningful way. For an extended period of time, and
we serve as consultants and we'll engage with the organizations
(20:58):
as consultants to help them navigate a challenge, strategic planning,
a consideration of a merger, succession planning, you know, whatever
the project is. Local organizations, though, require the same diversification
of funding. So they depend on grants, they depend on fundraising,
(21:24):
they depend on fees, and they're delivering services to individuals.
So they're billing insurance, they're billing medicare, you know, they're
billing long term care insurance, they're billing medicaid. So there's
a wide range of fees, of different revenue sources. And
(21:46):
what I would say is that our organization today, when
we opened our doors eight years ago, we had basically
one main revenue source, which were the membership dues, and
now we probably have about twenty revenue sources.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And the same thing with our local member agencies. The
typical nonprofit is tends to have, you know, a range
of twenty to thirty different revenue sources because they all
have their own you know, stream of funding and their
own requirements. And you know, when you have a grant,
(22:27):
for example, each grant has its own focus, its own
term meaning its own year period, its own reporting requirements,
its own payment structure. It becomes the whole thing. Yeah,
so we're managing about twenty of those.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I also remind people you never know when it's going
to dry up. And part of your job is a
salesperson for the network, and here's what we're doing, and
here's how you can help, And that's its own job
in itself. I did want to talk about maybe a
great and I imagine over the eight years, you've got
some wonderful ones. And I realized that everybody else rubined
that the world is on fire right now and all
the heck is breaking loose out there. But I imagine
(23:08):
there's also some great things that you and your small
team are doing out there. And I know team is everything.
And I do want to talk about leadership in just
a moment. But I always ask people about this is
why we get up stories, this is why we get
up in the morning. You have something you can share
with us that was memorable to you and meaningful that
you'd like to share with with the audience.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yes, absolutely, I'm going to talk with you about the dynamic,
which has really become part of the fabric of the
network and part of the fabric of every local agency
that constitutes the network, and we're supporting about over one
hundred and seventy organizations today. And that dynamic is the
dynamic of crisis response. So the network launched on May first,
(23:51):
twenty seventeen, and about three months later, at the end
of August was Hurricane Hervey. Houston, and we have a
member agency in Houston, the JFS of Houston, and that
organization found itself literally overnight in the epicenter, not only
(24:13):
of needing to become instantly a crisis responder for their
local community, but in need needing to navigate the impact
of what it meant to have your staff and your
board and your volunteers and your donors also be impacted
by the crisis, so much so that there were staff
who lost their homes, there were clients who lost their lives,
(24:38):
and there were donors who today don't live where they
used to live and completely change the way they live
because of the impact of that devastating hurricane. It was
generational and life altering for Houston, and as you know
what's going on now in Central Texas, this is a
(25:02):
major dynamic impacting this country and I would argue around
the globe the impact of climate change and crisis response.
And so what happened when Hurricane Harvey hit was that
we realized within like a minute that we needed to
support that agency, and we needed to do it as
(25:24):
a network. And so what that meant was we at
a network office. We got other members of our network
lined up to help our member in Houston to be
able to do the work that they did. We had
somebody who did their back office data processing. That agency
was in Philadelphia. We had another agency We put together
(25:48):
a Google line to be able to help them to
take intake calls. And we had social workers from throughout
the country who answered the phone on the Google line
to be able to address community needs.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
It all it was all had fun deck, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
All hands on deck?
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
We had our agency in Chicago providing support groups for
people living in Houston. We had our agency like it
was everybody. And I took from that example a realization that,
wait a minute, Prior to the network, we never operated
that way. We never had a structure and a system
(26:27):
and a philosophy of care to be able to do that.
We've morphed that into a bunch of different areas. One
is in the employment domain. When COVID launched, there was
a recognition that there were thousands of layoffs happening all
across the country, and we have agencies scattered throughout the country,
(26:51):
and people started reaching out to those agencies that didn't
live in those communities because they agencies started to deliver
services online instead of only in person, and so the
client would say, yeah, I need help finding a job. Oh,
by the way, I don't live in your city. Does
that matter? Like, I see what you do online, I
(27:12):
need help. And so we took that concept, and we
took that recognition of what was happening again bubbling up
from community members who were asking, and we convene the
agencies and we said, we think there's a there there.
We think that we have an opportunity to restructure how
we deliver employment services and to do it as a
(27:34):
collective system. Fast forward, we now have a program, a
National Workforce program that we have a network are administering
with nineteen agencies delivering services as a integrated continuum, all online.
They're connecting people with individual career counselors. They're offering workshops
(27:56):
and training every month, we are helping thousands of people
throughout the country fund jobs, and this is continuing that.
You know, there are always people in need for help
with jobs, and those job searches are happening at all
income levels, entry level, minimum wage and six figure earners
(28:17):
and everything in between. And so I think what I
take from this is weave position a network not only
as a capacity building resource for individual organizations, but the
network is a capacity building resource for national challenges. And
we're helping agencies navigate things that like a local crisis response,
(28:41):
a hurricane, a shooting, an anti submitting and you know,
an anti submitic incident that happens in a community. We
just rolled out an online emergency response toolkit to TELP agencies
to become better at preparedness because like it or not,
these crises that are happening in every city right right.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Well, listen, I appreciate you sharing that story. It's extraordinary
and it also comes down to communication and leadership, and
that's something I want to ask you, if you don't
mind indulging me just for a second, Ruben, because we
have a lot of CEOs and presidents and entrepreneurs who
listen to the series but we also have a lot
of future entrepreneurs and presidents, and he listen about leadership
(29:24):
and what it takes to be a good leader. Now
it's documented that you have a small team, but you
have a very wide net. So communication, leadership, culture, your passion,
a lot of things come into place. So when I
talk about leadership and it's specifically why you do what
does it mean?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So for me, it means first and foremost understanding that
no individual, and I would argue no leader could do
their job alone. You need to surround yourself with a team.
You need to have resources, people that you could turn
to for guidance and support, and people that you could
turn to for inspiration and information. And so I am
(30:02):
constantly making sure that I am surrounding myself not only
with the staff who I work with and my team,
but my broader team, which means the colleagues that I
have within our network and the colleagues that I have
outside of our network. That's the first thing. The second
thing is transparency and honesty. Again, our sector, and I
(30:25):
would argue any industry that a CEO works in the
world today is way more complicated than it used to be.
Things are just intense on any level, from an economic perspective,
from a workforce recruitment and retention perspective, from a crisis
(30:48):
response perspective, from a view of government and intergroup relations,
and how people live and connect with others in their community,
in their family, and so I would argue that being
able to listen first to what people are saying without
(31:09):
speaking quickly, but listen, try to hear them, and being open,
honest and transparent about how you feel you're hearing them
and how you feel you could support and advance whatever
the challenge is that you're trying to address. We go
in our sector from challenge to challenge. We are living
(31:32):
through some intensely complicated times right now, and there's no
way I could navigate them alone without being open, honest, transparent,
and without having my own network to complement the network.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Well, that's really well said, and I know it's not
going to surprise you. A lot of the words that
you used are used by our other guests in this program,
but team is always used every single time. And about it,
ahowing people that are smarter than you and trusting them
and all the things that you had talked about. I
do want to get some final thoughts from you, Rubin,
and we also want to give the website to everybody.
It's gorgeous, it is easy to navigate on them. There's
(32:10):
lots of information, but before we do that, maybe just
recap what we've talked about.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Sir, the floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Sure, so I would I would say to you that
the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies is a capacity
building resource that works to elevate the impact and scope
of the Jewish human service sector. We help organizations navigate
challenges and we help them thrive to become the high
(32:37):
impact efficient providers of service that they are in their
local communities and nationally, we have a group of national
agencies in our network as well. I would also say
that living today in the world is intense, it's complicated,
it could be very very challenging. Organizations exist in the
(33:01):
community to help people navigate challenges. So if someone is
listening to this that is running into a personal challenge,
a family challenge, or professional challenge, there are organizations in
the community to help you. Our website network JHSA dot
org has a list of our member agencies or directory,
(33:25):
but it also has sort of a description of who
we are and what we do again, we're operating in
a time of great uncertainty and volatility, and it's my
honor and privilege to lead this organization every day.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Out standing in Once again, the passion come through Rubin
and I love that. And this was a great interview,
and please continue to do all the great work that
you and your team are doing. Give my best to
your team, and thank you so much. I'm glad we
could feature you on CEOs you Should Know.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Thank you, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
CEOs you Should Know is host it and produced by
Brandon Boxer, a production of I Art Media, Columbus
Columbus and Central Ohio have a rich history of companies
being headquartered here, everything from technology, manufacturing, retail, insurance, and more.
But what about the leaders behind these companies? What makes
them tick? How do they get their start? This is
where you get to meet the captain of the ship.
Welcome the CEOs you should know at iHeartMedia Columbus Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm from the Greater Boston area outside of Boston, Massachusetts,
and I grew up there and I went to Brandeis
University for my undergraduate degree and two separate graduate degrees
as well.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Outstanding and when you were coming out of school, what
did you want to do?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So initially I thought I was interested in the field
of community relations, and I was looking for a position
that put me in a role that would facilitate some
programmatic and advocacy efforts between the Jewish community and the
(01:00):
non Jewish community. And I also was very interested in
the role of helping nonprofits access funding from government. And
I ended up right out of undergraduate having a position
(01:20):
with a new startup nonprofit that grew out of an
internship that I held when I was working when I
was a student, and the internship that I enjoyed was
with the State's Office of Affirmative Action, and that internship,
which I held for about three different semesters, morphed into
(01:44):
an invitation to join a new startup nonprofit that was
being established at the time to help minority in women
own businesses and nonprofits secure a contracts from state government.
And I did that for a year. It was a
fascinating learning experience. I did a lot of training and
(02:07):
consulting with small nonprofits and small for profit corporations, helping
them to figure out contracts that made sense for them,
how to position themselves, how to write grants. It was
it was, you know, I was the only white male
(02:31):
on the team, I was the only Jewish individual on
the team, and for lots of different reasons, it felt
like a great beginning, but it didn't feel like the
right spot where I wanted to grow and go further,
and it ended up happening. Turns out that about three
(02:53):
years later the nonprofit closed, So so I got out
before it ended up, you know, needing to get out,
you know, purposely. So anyway, that's how I began, and
that led me to a graduate program one in Jewish
(03:15):
communal service, a master's degree in Jewish communal service and
the other a master's degree in the management of human services.
And I really learned through that first job that the
place where I felt most comfortable was working in an
organization that was in the human service space, working in
(03:40):
an organization rooted in the Jewish community, but one that
did work beyond the Jewish community, outside of the Jewish community.
And so that's the career that I developed. And you know,
I've held positions since then in Jewish federal systems as
(04:01):
well as in direct service agencies under the Jewish community auspices,
but always with the human serve as focus. Even when
I worked at Federation, I worked in agency planning and
relations and the focus was on the social service agencies
(04:22):
in the community.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Well, it's an not standing resume, if you don't mind
me saying. And it also leads to my next question.
And we always love to hear the story of the
origin about why you join an organization. And with your
resume and all the incredible things that you've done, Rubin,
I can see why they were interested in you to
join the network, but why were you interested in joining them?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So the network is first, You've got to understand the
origin story of the network itself. The network is right
now and it's eighth year, and it's the result of
a merger that happened in twenty seventeen between what was
the National Association that supported Jewish Family Service Agencies. There's
a network of about one hundred and twenty Jewish Family
(05:04):
service agencies throughout the US and Canada, and that association
merged with the Association that supported the Jewish Vocational Service Agencies.
That was a smaller association, but again they operated in
the US and Canada and supported a network of vocational
(05:27):
service providers that provided workforce development and employment services. And
they were supporting organizations in the US, Canada and in Israel.
And the vision for the network really grew out of
your recognition that in many, many, many local communities there
(05:48):
had been either a merger locally of the Jewish Family
Service and the Jewish Vocational Service already, or there were
Jewish family service agencies delivering vocational services, or there were
vocational service agencies feeling that they needed to expand their
service offerings to include things that would typically take place
(06:13):
in a family service agency. So the seeds of the
need were bubbling from the local communities. And then beyond that,
there was also a recognition that there were other nonprofits
that were operating under Jewish community auspices that were identified
(06:35):
as human service providers but were neither a family service
or a vocational So these are agencies that are, for example,
disability providers, elder care providers, food and security providers, refugee
resettlement providers, addictions domestic violence, and they were never part
(06:59):
of either of the two predecessor associations. So all of
these conversations were like bubbling for a few years, and
there were the time came where the right people were
sitting at the right table at the right time, where
(07:20):
everybody felt, you know what, We've got to have this conversation.
These two associations aren't meeting the needs necessarily of their
own members, and they're also not meeting the needs of
the broader sector. Is it time for something different? What
is that time? So when all this was happening, I
(07:40):
was serving on the board of the Family Service Association,
and I was serving as the CEO of the Jewish
Family Service Agency, and I myself was asked to serve
on the steering committee that led to the group that
had these conversations. And as these conversations continued, and it
(08:04):
was they took place over a series of about three years.
Actually it didn't happen in ten minutes, and the vision
for what this new entity was beginning to gel and
think about.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I thought, well, wait a minute, I think i'd like
to leave that new entity. And so I resigned from
serving on the steering committee, and I said, you know what,
I don't think I should be on this committee. You're
about to launch a search for CEO. I shouldn't be
sitting at the table where they're deciding the job description
(08:38):
and what they want to do and who they want
to hire, because I think I might be interested in applying.
And that's what happened. I removed myself. I let that
committee continue meeting on their own for a few a
year or so and until they they announced the search
(08:59):
for a CEO. And then I went through the interview
process and I was hired and asked to lead the
new entity.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And so we're both a combination of a startup and
all the fun and excitement and scary stuff that comes
with being a startup, and we're also the result of
a merger and all the legacy and the issues and
the drama and the whatever that come with a merger.
(09:30):
And so that's where we are. And it's been eight
years of both building something new while at the same
time delivering services and content and responding to issues. And
our sector has lived through a tremendous amount of issues
and challenges in those eight years, and we've evolved as
(09:53):
an organization to address them.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Stanning, Well, thank you for all that. It's a great story.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
And before I ask you about what do you exactly do,
because I think that's really important to give context everybody.
It sounds like you know in your situation, not only
the timing part of it, but you had intimate knowledge
about what was going on as this would be created.
And I only have enough to be dangerous as you're
telling the story, but this was a very large umbrella
of a lot of different entities, yeah, trying to be
pulled together. But you had knowledge about what was going on,
(10:19):
which made you a really good fit and why you
saw this could be the gig for me.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I was ready for a change.
I had been in my previous organization for twenty one
years and I was serving as the CEO for fourteen
of those twenty one years, and I was ready for
a change, and I was beginning to think, you know,
I'm not ready to be retiring in this role. What
(10:48):
would be the next logical step for me? Where do
I want to go? And you know, I thought about
do I go to a larger agency? And then I thought, well,
I'm going to pick up and move my family to
another city, a different zip code, same set of issues,
but maybe different issues.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I didn't know if that was going to be the
right fit or not. And this opportunity felt new and
different and a significant challenge, but still in the focus
that I was passionate about working in, still in my
field of practice. And yeah, and it came down to,
(11:30):
you know, you may choose to leave this in the
interview or not. It came down to me and another
candidate who was outside of the network, outside of our world.
And you know, ultimately this search committee needed to decide
did they want somebody who was perceived as internal but
(11:54):
only partly internal. I didn't come from the vocational service world.
Is a perception that perhaps I was too family service oriented,
so I needed to address that perception, or do they
want somebody completely different on the outside. Anyway, I'm glad
that the committee shows.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Bain right, and I've seen that in my industry too,
where you always wonder as a hiring manager, do you
get a fresh set of eyes that really don't know
the industry well or do you need somebody that knows
it intimately, And that's always the wrestling back and forth
that we go through too. You kind of talked about
mission and vision, and I think we should do this
for everybody, because I know a lot of people are
being introduced to the Network for the first time that
(12:34):
they're listening to this fantastic interview. So if you were
to give Rubin kind of a thirty thousand foot view
about what the Network is, what would you say that
you do?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The Network is a capacity building organization. Our focus is
to help our member organizations elevate the work that they do.
We help them solve the challenges that they encounter, and
we work on bringing them capacity building resources so they
could do their jobs better, easier, more efficiently, and serve
(13:05):
the communities that they serve. We also, though simultaneously, serve
as the thought leader and the voice, the Jewish voice
of the human service sector, and so we care about
organizations in our sector that are not members of our
network because we believe that we have a strong role
(13:26):
to play to adjucate for and elevate the scope of
the impact of the sector.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Well, let's talk about advocation. I think this is a
great segue because this is really big on your list
among other things that you do with your almost team
of twenty people there at the network, when it comes
to advocation.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
What does it look like? What does it sound like?
Speaker 4 (13:44):
What's either a week or a month look like for you,
whether you're doing Capitol Hill or you're in your region
with people there or different agencies. What does it look
like when you advocate?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, well, you know, the nonprofit sector right now is
under tremendous, tremendous scrutiny and tremendous pressure. Right now, we're
living through a stage where the federal government in the
US is revisiting its historic partnership with nonprofit social service
(14:17):
providers and rethinking to what degree do they believe it's
the federal government's role to support those services or is
it the local state role to support those services? And
in many ways, social services and human services at large
are becoming bifurcated, so that in one state you might
(14:39):
have a certain array of resources and they're completely different
or not as extensive in a different state. So our
role at the national level is to advocate on behalf
of the entire sector and to speak to members of Congress,
the administration, Federal Department meents about what are the issues
(15:01):
that we're navigating, what are the needs not only nationally,
but what are the needs locally, and we provide we
provide access to federal decision makers with a deep understanding
of local needs. We also, at the same time help
to educate our member agencies locally about how they could
(15:24):
communicate the impact of what they do with their local constituents,
with their elected officials, with their local media, with other
coalition partners. They need to be able to tell the
community who they are and what they do. And so
we view advocacy not only in terms of elected officials
(15:45):
and government. We view advocacy in terms of promoting the
scope and the impact and the resources of the Jewish
human service sector to any potential user. The local community
needs to know what the agency does, The local community
needs to know who to reach out to when they
(16:06):
need help, and other organizations need to know who to
partner with. You know, when you're looking to help an
individual or a family in need, Chances are those needs
are complex, they're multi layered, and in order to deliver response,
it's often the role of an agency to help an
(16:29):
individual put a patchwork of supports together. And sometimes those
supports come from one organization, but oftentimes they come from
multiple organizations and it's super complicated. And until you run
into a challenge you yourself as a community member, you
(16:50):
often don't realize how hard it is. If you have
an aging parent, or if you have a child that's
struggling in school, if you're dealing with the difficulty situation
at work, if you're having issues with navigating resources for
a friend or a neighbor, you often need some help
(17:12):
without navigation. Our agencies excel at that role of helping
people navigate resources in the community and finding ways to
strengthen and support individual and family life. We also focus
on supporting people throughout the life cycle because it's often
(17:34):
that you know as individual. As children grow at different stages,
they have different needs. As adults grow and get older
at different stages, they also have different needs, and so
our agencies often will see clients coming in and out
(17:55):
of their organizations over the course of ten, fifteen, twenty years,
and that's very important. And the last piece I'll share
is that there is a perception that the agencies that
deliver services only serve the most low income, the most
(18:15):
at risk, the most vulnerable, and that is very, very true,
but they also serve people at any income level. At
any stage. We are serving six figure you know, way
journers who are having difficulties navigating support for our aging parents,
(18:36):
as well as people who are having a hard time,
you know, keeping food on their table. So it's important
to really lay that distinction out because I think that
community members often don't.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Realize that, well, that's amazing stuff, and I know you're
only hitting the tip of the iceberg. But I think
it's also another great segue, Ruben to talk about funding
and how you are funded, because there are a lot
of balls in the air and it takes money.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
So how does that work for you?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, yes, So first of all, I want to answer
that question in two ways, because, like any nonprofit, the
best practice is to have diversified revenue sources, and so
we do receive grants from private foundations, from corporate foundations,
from government, but we also receive donations from individuals, from
(19:31):
the members of our board, from individuals who have used
the services and participated in the offerings that we provide,
and from others who just care about the sector. And
we also receive revenue from fees that we charge for
different services that we provide. First, as a membership association,
(19:54):
we charge membership dues or investment contributions that we call them,
where organizations that are part of the network agree to
pay some type of a fee to participate in what
we do. When we have a whole formula that we
use to apply and determine what that fee is. And
(20:14):
we charge fees to participate in offerings, not all of
the offerings, but some of the offerings we host an
the annual conference every year, there's a registration fee, etc.
Beyond that, and we provide some trainings that come with
continuing education units that we provide that we charge fees for.
(20:37):
And then we also do consulting and we help organizations
in our network with challenges that they're encountering where they're
asking us to lean in and work with them in
a meaningful way. For an extended period of time, and
we serve as consultants and we'll engage with the organizations
(20:58):
as consultants to help them navigate a challenge, strategic planning,
a consideration of a merger, succession planning, you know, whatever
the project is. Local organizations, though, require the same diversification
of funding. So they depend on grants, they depend on fundraising,
(21:24):
they depend on fees, and they're delivering services to individuals.
So they're billing insurance, they're billing medicare, you know, they're
billing long term care insurance, they're billing medicaid. So there's
a wide range of fees, of different revenue sources. And
(21:46):
what I would say is that our organization today, when
we opened our doors eight years ago, we had basically
one main revenue source, which were the membership dues, and
now we probably have about twenty revenue sources.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And the same thing with our local member agencies. The
typical nonprofit is tends to have, you know, a range
of twenty to thirty different revenue sources because they all
have their own you know, stream of funding and their
own requirements. And you know, when you have a grant,
(22:27):
for example, each grant has its own focus, its own
term meaning its own year period, its own reporting requirements,
its own payment structure. It becomes the whole thing. Yeah,
so we're managing about twenty of those.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I also remind people you never know when it's going
to dry up. And part of your job is a
salesperson for the network, and here's what we're doing, and
here's how you can help, And that's its own job
in itself. I did want to talk about maybe a
great and I imagine over the eight years, you've got
some wonderful ones. And I realized that everybody else rubined
that the world is on fire right now and all
the heck is breaking loose out there. But I imagine
(23:08):
there's also some great things that you and your small
team are doing out there. And I know team is everything.
And I do want to talk about leadership in just
a moment. But I always ask people about this is
why we get up stories, this is why we get
up in the morning. You have something you can share
with us that was memorable to you and meaningful that
you'd like to share with with the audience.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yes, absolutely, I'm going to talk with you about the dynamic,
which has really become part of the fabric of the
network and part of the fabric of every local agency
that constitutes the network, and we're supporting about over one
hundred and seventy organizations today. And that dynamic is the
dynamic of crisis response. So the network launched on May first,
(23:51):
twenty seventeen, and about three months later, at the end
of August was Hurricane Hervey. Houston, and we have a
member agency in Houston, the JFS of Houston, and that
organization found itself literally overnight in the epicenter, not only
(24:13):
of needing to become instantly a crisis responder for their
local community, but in need needing to navigate the impact
of what it meant to have your staff and your
board and your volunteers and your donors also be impacted
by the crisis, so much so that there were staff
who lost their homes, there were clients who lost their lives,
(24:38):
and there were donors who today don't live where they
used to live and completely change the way they live
because of the impact of that devastating hurricane. It was
generational and life altering for Houston, and as you know
what's going on now in Central Texas, this is a
(25:02):
major dynamic impacting this country and I would argue around
the globe the impact of climate change and crisis response.
And so what happened when Hurricane Harvey hit was that
we realized within like a minute that we needed to
support that agency, and we needed to do it as
(25:24):
a network. And so what that meant was we at
a network office. We got other members of our network
lined up to help our member in Houston to be
able to do the work that they did. We had
somebody who did their back office data processing. That agency
was in Philadelphia. We had another agency We put together
(25:48):
a Google line to be able to help them to
take intake calls. And we had social workers from throughout
the country who answered the phone on the Google line
to be able to address community needs.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
It all it was all had fun deck, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
All hands on deck?
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
We had our agency in Chicago providing support groups for
people living in Houston. We had our agency like it
was everybody. And I took from that example a realization that,
wait a minute, Prior to the network, we never operated
that way. We never had a structure and a system
(26:27):
and a philosophy of care to be able to do that.
We've morphed that into a bunch of different areas. One
is in the employment domain. When COVID launched, there was
a recognition that there were thousands of layoffs happening all
across the country, and we have agencies scattered throughout the country,
(26:51):
and people started reaching out to those agencies that didn't
live in those communities because they agencies started to deliver
services online instead of only in person, and so the
client would say, yeah, I need help finding a job. Oh,
by the way, I don't live in your city. Does
that matter? Like, I see what you do online, I
(27:12):
need help. And so we took that concept, and we
took that recognition of what was happening again bubbling up
from community members who were asking, and we convene the
agencies and we said, we think there's a there there.
We think that we have an opportunity to restructure how
we deliver employment services and to do it as a
(27:34):
collective system. Fast forward, we now have a program, a
National Workforce program that we have a network are administering
with nineteen agencies delivering services as a integrated continuum, all online.
They're connecting people with individual career counselors. They're offering workshops
(27:56):
and training every month, we are helping thousands of people
throughout the country fund jobs, and this is continuing that.
You know, there are always people in need for help
with jobs, and those job searches are happening at all
income levels, entry level, minimum wage and six figure earners
(28:17):
and everything in between. And so I think what I
take from this is weave position a network not only
as a capacity building resource for individual organizations, but the
network is a capacity building resource for national challenges. And
we're helping agencies navigate things that like a local crisis response,
(28:41):
a hurricane, a shooting, an anti submitting and you know,
an anti submitic incident that happens in a community. We
just rolled out an online emergency response toolkit to TELP agencies
to become better at preparedness because like it or not,
these crises that are happening in every city right right.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
Well, listen, I appreciate you sharing that story. It's extraordinary
and it also comes down to communication and leadership, and
that's something I want to ask you, if you don't
mind indulging me just for a second, Ruben, because we
have a lot of CEOs and presidents and entrepreneurs who
listen to the series but we also have a lot
of future entrepreneurs and presidents, and he listen about leadership
(29:24):
and what it takes to be a good leader. Now
it's documented that you have a small team, but you
have a very wide net. So communication, leadership, culture, your passion,
a lot of things come into place. So when I
talk about leadership and it's specifically why you do what
does it mean?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So for me, it means first and foremost understanding that
no individual, and I would argue no leader could do
their job alone. You need to surround yourself with a team.
You need to have resources, people that you could turn
to for guidance and support, and people that you could
turn to for inspiration and information. And so I am
(30:02):
constantly making sure that I am surrounding myself not only
with the staff who I work with and my team,
but my broader team, which means the colleagues that I
have within our network and the colleagues that I have
outside of our network. That's the first thing. The second
thing is transparency and honesty. Again, our sector, and I
(30:25):
would argue any industry that a CEO works in the
world today is way more complicated than it used to be.
Things are just intense on any level, from an economic perspective,
from a workforce recruitment and retention perspective, from a crisis
(30:48):
response perspective, from a view of government and intergroup relations,
and how people live and connect with others in their community,
in their family, and so I would argue that being
able to listen first to what people are saying without
(31:09):
speaking quickly, but listen, try to hear them, and being open,
honest and transparent about how you feel you're hearing them
and how you feel you could support and advance whatever
the challenge is that you're trying to address. We go
in our sector from challenge to challenge. We are living
(31:32):
through some intensely complicated times right now, and there's no
way I could navigate them alone without being open, honest, transparent,
and without having my own network to complement the network.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Well, that's really well said, and I know it's not
going to surprise you. A lot of the words that
you used are used by our other guests in this program,
but team is always used every single time. And about it,
ahowing people that are smarter than you and trusting them
and all the things that you had talked about. I
do want to get some final thoughts from you, Rubin,
and we also want to give the website to everybody.
It's gorgeous, it is easy to navigate on them. There's
(32:10):
lots of information, but before we do that, maybe just
recap what we've talked about.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Sir, the floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Sure, so I would I would say to you that
the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies is a capacity
building resource that works to elevate the impact and scope
of the Jewish human service sector. We help organizations navigate
challenges and we help them thrive to become the high
(32:37):
impact efficient providers of service that they are in their
local communities and nationally, we have a group of national
agencies in our network as well. I would also say
that living today in the world is intense, it's complicated,
it could be very very challenging. Organizations exist in the
(33:01):
community to help people navigate challenges. So if someone is
listening to this that is running into a personal challenge,
a family challenge, or professional challenge, there are organizations in
the community to help you. Our website network JHSA dot
org has a list of our member agencies or directory,
(33:25):
but it also has sort of a description of who
we are and what we do again, we're operating in
a time of great uncertainty and volatility, and it's my
honor and privilege to lead this organization every day.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Out standing in Once again, the passion come through Rubin
and I love that. And this was a great interview,
and please continue to do all the great work that
you and your team are doing. Give my best to
your team, and thank you so much. I'm glad we
could feature you on CEOs you Should Know.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Thank you, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
CEOs you Should Know is host it and produced by
Brandon Boxer, a production of I Art Media, Columbus
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