Synagogue Leadership Seminar
Tuesday, April 5
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm (EDT)
Disrupting the Synagogue Dues Marketplace
Looking for ways to restructure your synagogues outdated financial model? Join us for a conversation with the co-authors of the article “Synagogue Dues are Dead: What’s the Price Point at Which Quitting the Temple is Impossible?” for proven strategies you can apply at your own congregation.
Like most synagogues, Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, California understood that dues represented the largest portion of its budgeted income. Yet membership, once climbing, had been slowly declining. After years of a 14% resignation rate, the 2011-2014 data showed that 22-24% of households were leaving the synagogue each year. While they saw robust levels of new households joining, these did not ameliorate the losses. It was time to confront it head on.
With a new financial model, Or Ami grew from 312 in 2015 to its current 421 households, while increasing annually income in the former “dues” category. Moreover, this set up the congregation to maintain its membership through the pandemic. Discover how Or Ami disrupted its own financial model, ending its traditional dues and envisioning a new, successful way forward.
Questions? Please contact Sarah Diamond at sdiamond@jfedgmw.org.
Rabbi Paul Kipnes, spiritual leader of Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, is a synagogue disruptor, public speaker on spirituality, co-author of Jewish Spiritual Parenting, and a spoken word poet. His other synagogue disruption articles “Transform Your Synagogue’s High Holy Day Appeal (Then Finally Focus on the Important Stuff)” and “Disruptive Judaism: Will Your Synagogue Be Beit Blockbuster or Kehillat Netflix?” have gone viral.
David Weisz is a business leader with organizational transformation experience across a diverse set of industries. With a specialization in Organizational Change Management, he enjoys driving big, audacious ideas from concept to reality by taking a people-first approach to enable success.