Customer Reviews

Building a Successful Volunteer Culture: Finding Meaning in Service in the Jewish Community

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As a leader in the local Jewish community, it is refreshing to know that it is not only my community that deals with volunteer, board of director, rabbi, policy, etc. problems! Seeing how other people have dealt with prior issues within the Jewish board setting was incredibly insightful!

This book is basically a "how to" on dealing with congregational issues! I continually nodded my head and said out loud "yep, we have that problem" and subsequently learned how others had previously dealt with the issue!

As someone who for years has worked both sides of the aisle, both as professional staff in Jewish institutions and communal service organizations and as an active volunteer and lay leader in my synagogue in Northern New Jersey, I fully appreciate the multi-faceted perspective Rabbi Simon brings to this topic. I found valuable insights into how to navigate the sometimes challenging landscape of staff versus laity, as well as new understanding about how to effectively cultivate volunteer commitment. Thank you, Rabbi Simon, for all your practical advice and inspiration.

Jane Calem Rosen

Director of Communications, Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel

This book can serve as a training manual for all who lead (and aspire to lead) in volunteer-based organizations, whether as professional staff or as lay volunteers. A treasure trove of practical wisdom based on the author's almost four decades in the field, the style is casual and anecdotal, rather than systematic and academic - but underneath the deceptively simple presentation is a well thought-out and consistent approach to the basics of organizational life in the non-profit world. While written from the specific perspective of Jewish organizations, the book has much wider applicability.

Rabbi Simon offers a convincing case for creating values-based organizations, and demonstrates how to do so with engaging and apt examples. Chapters cover the key topics - understanding and shaping organizational culture, cultivating and supporting volunteers, the ins and outs of boards and committees, succession planning, and board-staff dynamics. Separate chapters treat issues of difficult volunteers and the wisdom of gender-based approaches.

The author's style is accessible and engaging. Even more, the values he espouses are evident in every anecdote and bit of advice: optimism, trust, a deep and lived commitment to inclusion, flexibility, creativity, empathy, and a belief that people can be empowered to be effective volunteers and leaders.

The book is a must for all who wants to help the organizations they care about become people-centered and effective, particularly necessary attributes in these days of an apparent scarcity of volunteers. I have already made sure that my successor as board chair of the organization I've been most devoted to for the past several years has a copy!

Rabbi Chuck Simon deals in a clear and reader-friendly fashion with a number of challenges we regularly face in most organizations but especially our non-profit organizations: the "care and feeding" of volunteers; organizational myths and over-coming the unproductive self-fulfilling prophecies; planning our programs for in-reach to our membership and/or out-reach to the community; and the how-to format to promote a renaissance of men as leaders and eager followers.

He demonstrates that the first step is to analyze the "culture" in which we live, what they share in common and how we distinguish the general community culture from that of the particular - our synagogue organizations on the local, regional and national arenas. He finds that the language of "relationships" is critical to the volunteer organization, supporting the key principle(s) and how we act to promote the values which concretize them.

He is amazingly honest in describing his own growth over time as a Rabbi, as a leader, and as a professional. He is candid in his criticisms and generous in his portrayal of those who have mentored him over the years.

Simon describes how the values of caring, compassion, engagement must become the visible characteristics of the organizational leadership if that is what they are promoting, and he personally has modeled those qualities in his professional role in developing an organization that has emerged as the sponsor not just programs but essential campaigns.

He proposes - to the careful reader - that embedded in his work is an implied scorecard for those who are leading organizations today or hope to emerge as leaders. He asks us in subtle fashion whether we consciously work to manifest the values we preach; do re consistently publicly and privately demonstrate our appreciation of our volunteers - at all levels of effort and participation; are we careful to support current leadership even as we take care to mentor those who may lead the group in the future; rather than quick-and-dirty activities - even if popular for the moment - do we envision long-range campaigns with long-term consequences of changing lives for the better, of enriching and deepening the search for community and meaning within the Jewish community. It is the latter that Simon holds out to us as a promise that can be achieved.