Strategic Planning: Negotiating Partnerships with Israel

As you have read many times in this blog over the past few months, we are in the middle of developing a new strategic plan for the Baltimore-Ashkelon Partnership.  Strategic planning is an intense process, which requires many difficult questions to be asked.  Going through the process in two communities simultaneously with the end goal of creating one coherent plan is an even greater challenge, but one that has the ability to bring two groups closer together.


As our conversations developed before and during Baltimore's mission to Ashkelon, our two communities have become closer.  We have created deeper understandings of what we are collectively looking to get out of our Partnership, engaged new members of the community who are stakeholders, and continued the introspection as to what it means to be a Jew in Israel or the US and sharing that knowledge.  In a time where community dollars are increasingly more precious, the intangible value of sharing this knowledge is an important measure of the success of partnerships.


We are now in the phase of planning where we have broken into sub-groups each with a specific focus to develop action plans: governance & structure, funding policy & evaluation, marketing & communications, program development, creating the Baltimore-Ashkelon Volunteer Center, and economic development.  In Baltimore and Ashkelon, each of these groups will meet independently and then begin communicating across the ocean.  This is where the hardest work may occur- negotiating priorities of interests between two distinct communities.  We have to reconcile what is realistic in terms of human and financial resources, collective interest in both communities, and keeping those most invested in our Partnership engaged and interested.  This isn't always easy, but this is where partnership truly resides.


Old definitions of partnership between Israel and the global Jewish community often involved opening a check book, but that is not where we are today.  As the world becomes smaller, Israeli society becomes more sophisticated, and our understanding of the commonality of the needs of Jewish communities, our partnerships have adapted.  Although financial resources still generally flow from the global Jewish community toward Israel, these resources are being matched by the human power that Israel brings to the table.  Crating consensus on how we use these collective resources and what we invest them in make partnership work.  As partners there things that each side has to "sacrifice", but we create partnerships because there is much more to gain in the long run.


Next week I will share another update with you on the strategic planning process.  This is a constantly evolving process that we know will have ripple effects in both Baltimore and Ashkelon for years to come.