The Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York

Mission: Founded in 1910, The Board of Jewish Education of Greater
New York (BJE), www.bjeny.org motivates, strengthens and increases Jewish identity and commitment to the Jewish people through educational services and acculturation programs in New York. BJE serves the entire metropolitan area, Nassau/Queens and Westchester County, and every denomination - Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist and unaffiliated - with sensitivity to each. We provide comprehensive services to more than 700 Jewish day, congregational and nursery schools, serving 176,000 youngsters, as well as group leaders from community centers and camps.

FINANCIAL EFFICIENCY EVALUATION:
According to Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org),
America’s leading charity evaluator, BJE has an overall
rating of two stars (four stars is the highest rating.)
Charity Navigator provides the following financial
breakdown of BJE based on 990 tax returns trough 2007:

Overall Rating: 2 stars **
Organizational Efficiency: Efficiency Rating 3 stars ***
Program Expenses: 81.2%
Administrative Expenses: 16.0%
Fundraising Expenses: 2.6%
Fundraising Efficiency: $0.04 (BJE spends $0.04 to raise $1)

Organizational Capacity: Capacity Rating 1 star *
Primary Revenue Growth: -6.9%
Program Expenses Growth: -1.1%
Working Capital Ratio (years) 1.02
(BJE can sustain itself for 1.02 years without
generating new revenue.)
Organizational capacity refers to an organization’s ability
to sustain itself over time. Charities that exhibit consistent
revenue and expenses growth are more like to sustain their
programs and services over the long haul.

BJE has net assets of $8,023,940. Compensation for its
Chief Executive Officer, Martin Schloss (no relation to the
author), was $199,919 which represents 3. 36% of expenses.
For comparison purposes, compensation for the President of
the American Jewish World Service, Ruth Messinger, was
$191,000 which represent 0.79% of expenses.

Recent News:
Based on twenty years of special education research, BJE's
Special Education Center in conjunction with BJE's Early Childhood Center and the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services (JBFCS) has initiated a reading disability prevention program aimed at kindergarten and pre-1A youngsters in Jewish day schools. The program will attempt to replicate the recent federally supported work of Drs. Frank Vellutino and Donna Scanlon. Vellutino and Scanlon developed both an assessment tool and intervention program geared to detect and correct potential reading problems in youngsters. In a recent article reviewing their research, Vellutino and Scanlon demonstrated that as many as 50% of students classified in fourth grade as having learning disabilities in the area of reading actually had no real disabilities other than, perhaps, poor instruction.

Recommendations:
In order to receive a higher overall rating from Charity Navigator, BJE needs to improve its organizational capacity. By improving its organizational capacity, BJE will look more attractive to grantmakers. BJE could also improve its efficiency rating by reducing administrative costs.

Next week’s blog: Haddash, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America