For the next few months, your board will be concentrating on the budget process. Before you begin, consider stepping back and evaluating your knowledge of your temple programs and activities. What information do you as a board member need to know about specific areas of congregational life in order to make the required and most effective policy decisions and to help your temple realize its vision and mission? 

Consider the following exercise at your next board meeting.  Take ten minutes to jot down what you need to do and what you need to learn in order to become a better board member.  With what areas of temple life are you least familiar? Where are the gaps in your knowledge of temple matters?

For example: 

• You may be a past president with an immense knowledge of temple history and policy, but you realize that you have not seen the inside of a religious school classroom in years and you probably have to get up to speed on issues regarding the expansion and renovation of classroom space.

• Your board portfolio is Nursery School Chair, but as a parent of young children, you have found it difficult to attend regular Friday night services, and you are not really sure what the Ritual Committee does and what its impact on weekly worship and the High Holy Days is.

• You are a past president of WRJ and currently serve on the Social Action Committee, but you do not fully understand what impact the endowment funds have on the operations budget.

Encourage your president to respond to the gaps in your knowledge of synagogue life. Ask for -outside the box- responses. The president and vice presidents can work together to compile a list of the areas in which further board education is needed.  Consider inviting those who can provide such information to your next board meeting. Ask them to make pointed and cogent presentations to the entire board. If the board identifies several areas in which specific education is needed for at least one or two members, consider holding an educational -fair- for an hour at the next board meeting, to which each committee and auxiliary sends a representative and during which individual board members can speak directly to the appropriate person about any questions that need clarification.

Enlighten yourself so that you will feel that you are a competent and productive member of your board. Doing this exercise and taking an active role in your acquisition of knowledge regarding temple matters will enhance your skills both as a fiduciary, as you embark on the specifics of the budget process, and as a visionary, as you use that process to advance your temple's mission.

There is no more important fiduciary duty of board members than the wise and prudent investment of funds.  But temple board members have an added responsibility -- to perform the mitzvah of tikkun olam, repairing the world. By pursuing socially responsible investment practices, your board can adopt a double bottom line, the first being the rate of return and the second being the accord between the values of the investing organization and the entities in which it invests. 

 Socially responsible investing falls into three categories. The investor can: 

For Reform Jewish board members whose mission includes the practice of tikkun olam, engaging in socially responsible investment policies and practices is not an option but an obligation. Your board is undoubtedly already following the investment practices outlined in the first two categories above.

At the 1997 Biennial in Dallas, the UAHC established The Chai Investment Program (CHIP), with the goal of investing 1.8 percent of the UAHC endowment investment pool in community development vehicles, and called on member congregations to join that effort. CHIP, a project of the UAHC Social Action Department, offers congregations an opportunity to pursue the third method of socially responsible investing. Think about whether your board should consider this type of investment.

There are eight levels of tzedakah. . . .The greatest level . . . is to strengthen the hand of the poor by means of a gift or a loan or by going into partnership with such people, so that they can become self-sufficient.

Investing in economically distressed communities provides the best opportunities in recent years for those communities to move from dependence to self-sufficiency and thus brings the goal of repairing the world one step closer. When, as in the CHIP program, such funds are part of a balanced investment program and represent a small fraction of that portfolio, even a lower rate of return on funds invested in community development institutions will have a negligible impact on the total income earned from all investments, while at the same time achieving a higher social return.

Community investment is an efficient way to give tzedakah. Take into consideration that while the cost is the same whether you make a donation or -lose- the amount of the potential donation on a lower rate of return, the effects are vastly different. Consider the following example:

A congregation has a million dollar endowment. A portion of it is invested in Treasury bills with a 5 percent return. The community investment vehicle will return 3 percent. The net -loss- to the congregation of participating in CHIP is $360, but those $360 make $18,000 available to help rebuild and transform a community.

Debby Warren, the past vice president for Finance at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, North Carolina, supports The Chai Investment Program for its double bottom line:

Temple Beth Or has made significant deposits in the Self Help Credit Union, a statewide Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) focusing on lending to low-income, minority, rural, and women borrowers for housing and businesses.  I think that investing in Self Help is a wonderful way to mesh our mission to do tzedakah with our mission to engage in wise financial management. With Self Help we are earning market-rate returns and also insuring that critical loans reach the people not served by traditional financial institutions. This is important work, and I encourage other congregations to team up with a CDFI in their own communities or region. 

By making the decision to invest in community development vehicles, your temple through you, its board, has the opportunity to make a difference in the world and to follow the command of the prophet Micah: "Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."

________________________________________________________________________