The following post was a coverstory in the Jweekly, written by Emma Silvers (j. staff)

On the sixth floor of an office building in San Franciscos Financial District, in a boardroom at the back of a bright, spacious office, Rabbi Noa Kushner is doing something most people dont generally think of rabbis doing: asking for guidance.

You talk, Ill type, a consultant from UpStart Bay Area says to her. Looking ahead six months, what are your main goals?

Kushner is the founding rabbi of The Kitchen, a 16-month-old group that describes itself as one part indie Shabbat community, one part San Francisco experiment, and one part tool kit for DIY Jewish practice. The rabbi has regular meetings at UpStart to talk about where her young organization is headed.

UpStart Bay Area bills itself as a social venture, consulting firm, and incubator for innovative Jewish organizations and entrepreneurs and Kushner is far from the only one who uses its services.

Since 2006, she and a select group of other local entrepreneurial Jews many of them young, all of them with innovative and often great ideas have been chosen to link with UpStart and learn how to translate those ideas into action. 

An article from eJewish Philanthropy.

Quick, what instrument do you associate with Passover? Matzah? Sorry, not an instrument. With Shavuot? What? Blintzes? Wrong again. You seem obsessed with food. With Sukkot? No, a lulav is not technically an instrument.

We dont normally associate our holidays with instruments, or sounds. And yet, if we were to free-associate about Rosh Hashanah, perhaps one of the most important times in the Jewish calendar, we would immediately think of the blasts of the shofar. In fact, the Torah refers to this holiday not as the Jewish New Year, but as a day of trumpeting (Numbers 29:1). Why does this little rams horn, play such a significant role on this major holiday? And what does it have to do with the overarching theme of the holiday, renewal and growth?

The shofar can be perceived as an auditory metaphor for the elements involved in any change, renewal, or innovation process. Its various sounds, legato and staccato, a constant presence in the month leading up to the holiday, and during the services on the holiday itself, are reminders of the steps involved when we seek to make meaningful change in our personal, communal, and professional lives.

An article from eJewish Philanthropy 

Christiane Montouri, writing on the Cambridge Leadership Associate’s Blog, makes an analogy between species adaptation and organizational change. She writes: “When a species adapts, it gives up a small portion of its DNA, usually only about 5%. However, giving up the DNA that is hindering adaptation and survival not only gets rid of what is getting in the way, but also makes room for new DNA than can survive in the changing reality… Which finger would you sacrifice to make progress?” When we engage in a change process, we often must let go of certain perspectives to make room for the new. This can be a traumatic process. That is why it is so critical, in the face of change, to acknowledge what it is we are afraid to lose, and what it is we hope to gain. This clarity is so important because it may help alleviate the pain of the inevitable sacrifices in the process.

An article from eJewish Philanthropy.

My 4-year-old daughter has been suffering terribly from seasonal allergies. Her normally bright, eager eyes have been all but shut closed by red itchiness, tears, and crust. For the past three months, we have taken her back and forth to the allergist, who has tried a variety of anti-histamine eye-drops. Nothing has helped. We accepted her new normal more cranky, less playful, and constantly rubbing her eyes. We finally saw an ophthalmologist, who declared that our daughters was one of the worst allergic reactions she had ever seen, and put her on an intense course of eye drop steroids. In just a couple of days, our clear-eyed daughter was back to her joyous, mischievous self.

But theres a catch.The medication shes on is so strong that she cannot stay on it for more than two weeks. We have been given a short respite from a chronic state. We do not know what will happen after this two-week period. Perhaps the pollen will disappear from the air. Perhaps the alleviation of the symptoms will allow less strong medications to work. And perhaps shell be itchy and teary and crusty all over again, and well be back at square one. If that is the case, as it likely is, we will need to do the work we have been unable to do in all these months: identify the cause of the problem, and discover a sustainable solution for it.

I share this story because it illustrates a core concept related to the challenge of orchestrating meaningful change a distinction, introduced by Ronald Heifetz, between technical and adaptive work.

An article from eJewish Philanthropy

Though the term innovation has become an overused buzzword in both the Jewish and general worlds, it nonetheless has become apparent that, like people, organizations need to continually progress in order to survive and thrive. What remains elusive, though, is how to focus resources and energy on growth and change initiatives in order to render them successful.

In a recent article entitled Managing your Innovation Portfolio in the Harvard Business Review, authors Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff present a formula for allocating resources towards innovation, which they argue is necessary for those companies that wish to flourish in the long term. They explain that, for most companies, innovation is most successful when 70% of resources are allocated to innovations related to the companys core business; 20% to adjacent, related areas; and 10% to transformational initiatives. In the first two realms, it is critical to have talent with good analytical skills, so as to interpret and translate customer data into specific offering enhancements. In the third realm, it is necessary to have talent that can creatively uncover and analyze changing social needs, market trends, and technological changes. They then reveal a startling statistic; the ratio of distribution of return on investment is the exact inverse of the resource allocation ratio: there is a 70% return on investment in transformational innovations; 20% return on investment in adjacent innovations; and 10% return on investment in innovations to the core.

An article from eJewish Philanthropy
April 27, 2012 
by Helen Chernikoff

G-dcast.com is a poster child of the Jewish startup sector, the grass-roots movement that aims to reach the disinterested and unaffiliated by offering new ways – such as record labels, bike rides and online Shabbat services – to connect with Judaism. Over 3,000 educators around the world use G-dcast’s funky parsha-of-the-week videos, which have been viewed over a million times on the web, the group says.

Why, then, is G-dcast about to find itself out on the street?

Article from eJewish Philanthropy
March 26, 2012 

Kevah, a Bay Area-based organization that engages Jewish identity and builds Jewish community through study of classical Jewish texts, has received a $250,000 grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation for the Kevah Teaching Fellowship. The Fellowship will provide participating educators with a fully funded professional development opportunity in facilitating Jewish small group learning for young adults.

The Fellowship includes three in-person workshops over the course of the year, a supervising mentor, personalized guidance in curriculum development, participation in ongoing Jewish learning with other Kevah Fellows, and access to carefully selected curricular resources. Ideal candidates for the program will have at least a BA, basic to advanced Hebrew literacy, experience learning Jewish texts, and a strong desire to become a great educator.

Love Birds ketubah
by artist Lisa Perrin An article from eJewish Philanthropy

UpStart, which cultivates the most promising ideas of Jewish social entrepreneurs, recently accepted two new UpStarters to its cohort of Jewish innovators- Ketuv, which provides couples with a fine art option in ketubahs, and creates an opportunity for artists, with dynamic careers outside of the commercial and Judaica spheres, to create fresh, quality ketubah art, and Edah, an after-school program with spring and summer-camp options that offers experiential, cutting-edge Jewish learning opportunities for children. They join current UpStarters Amir, A Wider Bridge, Fair Trade Judaica, G-dCast, Kevah, Moishe House, The Kitchen, Urban Adamah, and Wilderness Torah. UpStart helps these new organizations develop and implement their vision, business focus, content, and capacity to innovate so that they can make a lasting and profound impact on Jewish life.

Click here to read the entire article on eJewish Philanthropy.

3/20/12
Doing Well & Doing Good: Hybrid Models for Social Impact
Co-Sponsored by UpStart Bay Area, The Foundation Center, The Hub Bay Area, Social Enterprise Alliance San Francisco Bay Area Chapter and Stanford Social Innovation Review

 
Doing Well & Doing Good: Hybrid Models for Social Impact from UpStart Bay Area and Foundation Center - San Francisco on FORA.tv