Currently, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) provides services similar to those of its members, for example Israel advocacy training, the creation of Israel advocacy resource guides, and campus leaders missions to Israel. This overlap derails the ICC from its potential to be the main campus hub because instead of serving its members, the ICC competes with its members over financial resources. The ICC is the natural candidate to become the campus hub for the Zionist network because of its connections with other Jewish agencies, but in order to become the campus hub the ICC will have to change its organizational structure from a coalition into a hub. A hub is not committed to the politics necessary to keep a coalition, instead it is committed to promote programs that support to the Jewish people’s right for self-determination.
As the campus hub of the Zionist network, the ICC's new core functions should be the following:
- To foster innovation in the field of Israel advocacy on campus
- To provide communication among the different nods of the Zionist network
- To provide information about best practice
In order to foster innovation the ICC should become a grant giving organization, providing grants to Israel advocacy on campus. ICC should provide grants to programs that spark positive change in Zionist programming, and grants should be given to successful programs according to predetermined and transparent criteria. The grants should be classified as macro grants and micro grants. Macro grants will be given to organizations and micro grants will be given individuals that promote Israel on campus. The grants should create the financial incentive to be part of this network.
Emulating Darwin's “survival of the fittest,” the core of the new ICC tools for program evaluation should lead to an evolutionary process of Zionist programs on campus. The ICC staff will be able to recognize the active ingredients of successful programs, the ICC website will provide information about best practices, while social media tools can be used to publicize current events. The ICC reputation for fostering innovation and evaluation will allow it to become a quality standards institution for Zionist programs, attracting independent philanthropists and foundation professionals to channel grants through the organization. The successful implementation of the ICC new core functions will position the organization as a hub, connecting nodes passionate about changing the way Israel is presented on campus.
Greetings from Washington!
ReplyDeleteHaving just returned from Jerusalem, where I moderated the campus working group for the global Strategic Consultation on Building Partnerships and Synergies in Countering the Assault on Israel's Legitimacy, I feel like I have returned home to find an unexpected and welcome holiday present in Tzvi's blog post. As the former Israel Fellow at the University of California at Irvine, Tzvi knows first-hand the challenges that the network of campus Israel supporters face. I commend him for his work as much as I applaud his insightful post, which accurately describes precisely the strategic shift that ICC undertook just this past summer.
In recognition of the needs of the campus Israel network, ICC has sharpened its focus on Israel advocacy and on providing the communications, information, research, training, and resource needs for the campus Israel network as a whole. Some of those changes were announced this November in a joint statement with Hillel, which can be found here:
http://www.hillel.org/about/news/2010/nov/16nov10_Hillelicc.htm
Still more description of ICC's strategic shift to supporting the campus Israel network is available on the ICC website, http://www.israelcc.org, and in our regular newsletter, to which readers can subscribe from the website as well.
ICC takes its mission of weaving and catalyzing the campus Israel network, as well as the notion of avoiding competing with or duplicating effort of campus organizational partners, very seriously. For example, for the past eight years ICC has provided Israel Advocacy Grants for pro-Israel programming directly to campus activists, including grants to campus activists at UCI during Tzvi's tenure, and two more just this academic year, as part of over $100,000 in advocacy grants ICC is distributing in 2010-11.
ICC has also taken seriously its role in collecting and disseminating best practices and increasing information-sharing among the campus Israel network, through its task forces on reinstating study abroad on campuses around the country (including Tzvi's former system, the University of California) and countering the delegitimization of Israel, and through such innovative interactive training programs as the Israel Intensive at Hillel Institute, which received widespead public acclaim just this past August. More, as Tzvi also accurately predicted, ICC has abandoned a formal coalition structure as part of its strategic plan and embraced a structure of "coalitions of the willing," reaching out to partners of relevance without regard to organizational politics. For example, I am pleased to say that Gidi Grinstein of the Reut Institute--those who authored the report Tzvi so presciently cites--opened ICC's Israel Intensive this past summer, and the Reut Institute staff regularly contributes to ongoing discussion with me, my staff, and the ICC countering delegitimization task force.
I am glad that Tzvi took the time and effort to provide this analysis that confirms these strategic moves for ICC, as much as I am conscious of the need to continually refine and improve our approach. Having visited Tzvi's former campus at UCI just two weeks ago--where ICC sponsored speaking engagements by David Makovsky and Ghaith al-Omari--I met with Tzvi's former Hillel director and the Orange County Federation heads, among others, and I am keenly aware that there is still much more for all of us to do. Only through constant refinement and critical self-analysis can we as a community continue to improve in our ability to strengthen the Israel campus network.
Steve Kuperberg
Executive Director
Israel on Campus Coalition