I was really pleased to have the opportunity to speak at Rodef Shalom Congregation at their Town Hall Meeting last night.  The main topic of discussion was centered around Rabbi Aaron Bisno's recent articles entitled "Courageous Conversations" (click here to read them).  My charge was to talk about some of the remarkable collaborative initiatives already taking place in the community.  Here is what I mentioned:
 
1.  The Jewish Community Health Plan - All Federation agencies and any synagogue/Jewish organization is invited to participate in this group for purchase of healthcare coverage.  We have done a remarkable job at controlling costs over the years and now have over 950 lives covered.
 
2.  Agewell Pittsburgh - This collaboration of the Jewish Association on Aging, Jewish Community Center and Jewish Family and Children's Service focuses on keeping our senior population living independently.  It focuses its attention on the seniors and not on the agencies.  It has received national and local recognition.
 
3.  Pittsburgh Day School Council – All three of our day schools are meeting to discuss how they can work together to provide the very best day school education and how to educate the community about the value of a day school education.

4.  Community Scorecard – This new initiative has the Federation with all 10 beneficiary agencies, setting longer term communal goals.  The only way to reach these goals is for all agencies to work collaboratively to achieve them.  That is because no one agency deals with any demographic like seniors, young adults, those in need, etc. 

Each of these four is mentioned in the order they developed.  It is interesting to note that the order shows a progression of sophistication of collaboration.  Following the mention of the above, I suggested three things I have learned from these collaborations:

1. We must focus on our vision.  We have to keep our eye on where we are heading and not allow distractions to take us off course.
2. It’s not about institutions.  It’s all about the clients.  If we focus on the needs of the customers, we will not only make a bigger impact, we will ultimately strengthen our institutions.
3. Courageous conversations and courageous collaborations take time and trust.  None of the examples I provided above happened overnight.  Each took time for the parties involved to get to know and trust each other. 

One other item I did not mention is that these collaborations do not happen from a top down approach.  They happen when all parties can come together to “hash” things out as equal partners.  I do not see our job at the Federation as one of “forcing” collaborations, but hopefully of promoting and inspiring everyone and every organization to think about how they can be involved, which in the end, has the potential to grow and strengthen our community.

Shabbat Shalom.

P.S.  Take a read of this week’s parsha, Va’eira.  It contains the story of the plagues and is getting me thinking about warmer weather and Passover.