With over 3000 synagogues in the United States touching more Jews than any other organization, many feel the synagogue is the most influential institution in Jewish life. Yet leaders of even some of the largest congregations are concerned that the current synagogue business model, largely unchanged for the past century, may not be sustainable financially or strategically in the 21st century. While some synagogues are growing, overall synagogue’ membership has been dropping consistently as patterns of “belonging” have changed. Yet synagogue pricing strategy (significant up-front membership fee, subsidizing the cost of other programs) and synagogue cost structure (heavy facilities cost, dozens of programs) has remained largely unchanged.

In 2009, Measuring Success was engaged by SYNERGY: UJA-Federation of New York and Synagogues Together for a pilot project that couples analytics tools with consulting services to help 6 pilot synagogues explore new alternatives to their current business and community building models. The synagogues span Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative affiliations, and each has assembled a top-notch project team consisting of key lay, clergy and professional leaders. The goal of the project is to enable congregations to foster a stronger community and greater participation, while at the same time becoming more financially sustainable. Our hypothesis is that by providing synagogue with high quality analytical data about their community members and financials, we can help them adapt their model to be more strategically and financially sustainable.

The pilot, which will be completed later this spring, has already yielded many important insights. We have identified key similarities and differences between the pilot synagogues and other community-building institutions with alternative pricing and cost structures such as those offered by Mega-Churches and Mega-Synagogues (large size models), Chabad (limited fees, heavy fundraising), and independent minyanim (low costs, low fees.

Each synagogue recently surveyed their members and others in their communities using a common tool they helped Measuring Success to develop. Together they achieved an astoundingly high 60% response rate. With nearly 2,000 responses from 6 synagogues, we anticipate that this survey will become a standard for synagogues around the country in order to consistently benchmark themselves and to create a large database for analytical purposes. In the coming month, we will share with each synagogue what this data reveals as which programs, relationships, vision, and strategies by have the greatest effect on community participants’ satisfaction, connection to community, and spiritual growth, as well as willingness to pay for membership and make voluntary contributions. By benchmarking each synagogue’s results across its program areas and demographic categories to peer synagogues in the region and local competitors, each synagogue leadership team will create a strategic plan for where to focus their energies.

Measuring Success will also use a financial modeling tool we designed to analyze all synagogue financials, professionals’ use of time, and flow of participants between programs to identify which programs and services are currently financially viable on their own. By combining the strategic insights from the survey with the financial insights from the financial tool, the synagogue leadership teams will design several alternative models they would like to explore. For example, the data may show that a synagogue’s Hebrew School program is perceived as weak (based on the survey), is losing money (after allocating costs and revenues in the financial model), and participants do not feel greater value for their membership dollars than other members despite the fact that Hebrew school is heavily subsidized. The synagogue may decide to stop subsidizing the program with membership fees, reduce membership fees, and charge higher program fees to break even and so that it can invest in improving the quality of the program by dedicating a higher percentage of the Rabbi’s time to teaching in the Hebrew school. Using a 3rd tool we have designed, a scenario planning tool, the synagogue leadership team will have the opportunity to test (as in a flight simulator) how this and other scenarios might play out financially and strategically over a 5 year horizon, or over a member’s lifetime.

What has been fascinating thus far is the degree to which lay leaders and professionals in the pilot synagogues have engaged actively with these analytics tools. Many of the lay leaders have skill sets from their business lives that lend themselves to the types of data-driven decision making synagogues need to adopt rather than relying on anecdotal information. Synagogues have a ton of data, but do not have the time to analyze and compile the data to use it effectively. Without tools like the survey, financial, and scenario planner to simplify and report the most salient data in a useful manner, lay leaders’ critical business skills go largely untapped and decision-making devolves easily back to anecdotal debates at board meetings and gridlock.

We look forward to sharing the general findings from the project, so look for a follow up in a subsequent newsletter, or contact us directly. To learn more about how Measuring Success can help your community or organization’s management team and board make smarter decisions using data instead of anecdotes to improve strategic and financial sustainability, please contact me at Sacha-newsletter@measuring-success.com

Sacha.