Preceded by a delicious breakfast, ESRA’s Annual General Meeting on May 19 was, for the first time, held together with a national Branches’ branch meeting. Following Merle Guttmann's presentation, giving us much food for thought, Adele Hunter and Nina Zuck, the two co-chairs, gave an overview of ESRA activities during the past year and plans for the next one. 

Roger Lavender, Chair of the Finance Committee, which ensures that ESRA’s financial accounting is of the highest standard, managed to transform the dry figures of the 2010 balance sheet into an upbeat, entertaining and entirely comprehensible account. Executive Director, Yonit Gurfinkel, spoke of her very great pleasure in working for ESRA, and the pride she has in the organization. 

The AGM ended with the reconfirmation of the chairpersons and vice-chairs and the election of members to the Executive. A sincere thank you was extended to the outgoing executive members: Annette Lavender, Debby Lieberman and Zmira Peled.

The branch meeting opened with a warm message of gratitude to Audrey Goodman who has been branch chair and mentor for many years. Audrey’s dedication and hard work have expanded and enriched the branches. The branches are now divided into three regions, each with its own coordinator, with Jane Krivine (North), Noah Margalit (Center) and Janet Keisari (South). The speakers for the branches of Caesarea (Jane), Kfar Saba (Phyllis Bloch) and Netanya (Denise Susman) showed us how diverse and unique each branch is in its activities. Gill Teicher, who runs the English for Schools project, spoke with enthusiasm and gratitude for the nearly 200 ESRA members who volunteer in more than 60 schools. A report from Modiin (Cynthia Barmor) described their new membership drive – a great concept of inviting businesses to join a program of discounts to ESRA members. Other branches are making similar progress, and the results are showing in new membership and in promoting the ESRA name.  

Address by Merle Guttmann, President and Founder

Before I start my address I’d like to thank and congratulate our co-chairwomen, Adele Hunter and Nina Zuck, on your outstanding joint job during the past year and very hard work and long hours you invested– indeed you are an exceptional team. And thank you too to the executive board for leading ESRA so well.

Welcome and good luck to our new executive director, Yonit Gurfinkel, and to our temporary magazine administrator, Caryn Ginsberg, who is replacing Naomi whist she is on maternity leave.

I’d like to share a few thoughts with you all.

There have been murmurings in the corridors (although ESRA has no corridors!) that some of our leaders are pushing for a strategic plan for ESRA, and others are against.

The question is, do we need a strategic plan?

And if so, why? And how to do it?

The obvious answers of those for it, whether said or unsaid, are:

• Every respectable organization has one today.
• ESRA has no long term planning.
• Where will we be in 5 years time?
• That is what is taught in management courses on nonprofits.
• We must get to the Hebrew speakers.
• We have to have financial planning.
• And so on ……

Those leaders who express resistance say:

• We have done several strategic plans, in-house and out-house by professionals.
• They don’t work for ESRA and go into the drawers.
• They waste our time.

I remember clearly, almost 20 years ago, an M.A. student in social work chose ESRA for her thesis – a unique, interesting organization. It was a few years after we had created our community fund and its projects. She interviewed key ESRA volunteers as well as making her observations. Her important conclusion was that the English-speaking side and corresponding activities would die out, and that the community side – our projects for the disadvantaged immigrants and others – would be the pivot of ESRA and take precedence. I maintain she did not really understand the dual make-up of ESRA, as so many outsiders and even insiders don’t fully grasp about us.

What is a strategic plan?

According to Wikipedia, it is an organization’s process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue strategy, including its capital resource of people. In effect, our annual budget does so for a particular year.

It is fine to do a strategic plan for ESRA, let’s say every five years, but it is how we do it that is important.

The process is more important often than the plan itself, and the participation of all our important players (or stakeholders) in the process and not just a chosen few, an “elite”. ESRA’s strategic plan should include our outgoing and incoming board members, our branch heads, our project heads, our social/cultural/support services volunteers, our magazine volunteers, special other volunteers, our members and readers, our staff. A lot of people – but it can be done by creating task forces, and there is no real urgency.

Richard Mittenthal, President of TCC, a group of strategic planners for nonprofits and governments, says that “a strategic plan should not become the exclusive responsibility of a small cadre of stakeholders. If the planning process is to succeed, it must incorporate the views of all the constituents that will be affected by the plan and have a role in its implementation.”

Mittenthal gives an example of an organization with a 150-year history of providing low-cost housing to poor women who were studying and working in New York City. The organization’s rising operational costs were draining the financial resources and overtaxing the board. They commissioned a strategic plan. The planning of many in the planning process led to a complete and radical change – selling the residences and providing stipends for the women (as does ESRA’s welfare fund). This was a brave, far-sighted and practical decision.

Why is it difficult to do a strategic plan in ESRA?

1.  We are an individualized, unique organization, not like any other organization. We are us, ESRA, an organization rooted in the English speaking community which we created.

2.  We are a grassroots organization, and by its very nature, grassroots denotes the ability of our English speakers to take part in ESRA’s doings and decision-making, as you are doing today. Also, grassroots by its very nature, according to Wikipedia, is natural and spontaneous, and should not be orchestrated by traditional power structures (like councils, management, finance committees etc.) And strategic planning might be an attempt to make us “like others, and do like others”, thus defying our very grassroots being.

To date our volunteers are free to do, so one can ask why, when we are so successful, when other organizations and professionals look at us in awe and ask how we do it, and have been doing so for 32 years, why should we want to change this, and regiment ourselves into boxes? Literature, by the way, says that staff usually welcome strategic planning because it gives them some control over the volunteers, and they can say “you can’t do it that way” because our mission, our goals don’t allow it.

ESRA’s dynamism is our diversity and vice versa, and our freedom.

3.  We are also a self-help organization with common interests and concerns, and we support each other and share experiences. 

Just look for a moment at the myriad of English-speaking support services, social and cultural events, courses, magazine – all well organized and implemented by volunteers. And they grow from strength to strength.

4.  We are a true volunteer organization. ESRA is rich in volunteers – over 1000 – and we are led by volunteers, with a minimal staff at our side to help us function, but not to rule.

5.  To complicate understanding ESRA, we have another unique dimension – we are a self-help organization that not only helps its own, but also the disadvantaged in the community, and we have been doing so for 22 years. I know of no other self-help organization that is also outer-oriented.

These five elements – our uniqueness, grassroots, self-help, volunteerism, helping the general community – mold together in an ESRA being and style.

We are multi-faceted, multi-focused – a free social volunteer organization, not a business that needs to make profits and ensure its future.

I dare to say this as its founder: ESRA does not have to exist ad-infinitum. If the English speakers don’t need us in the future, and you the English speakers are our true constituents, our focal point, our raison d’etre, then ESRA does not need to continue and to look for justifications and new population groups.

At any moment we can stop our community projects which we love so much, but expend so much money on – these projects are the essence of our being, they are an addendum. If the financial planning is aimed to ensure a financial future for these projects, and they are a drain on our financial resources and overtax our human resources, then I dare to say we can revert back to being a pure self-help and volunteer organization, using our volunteer resources and not financial resources. You, our volunteers, are our strength and our riches.

What I am positing is that we can continue to do community projects that do not cost money but use volunteers, and we can expand these projects and create new ones: English tutoring, knitting groups, secondhand shops, embroidery, welfare, and, of course, all our social, cultural and support services in English.

We are an organization of English speakers, and it is unimportant that the Hebrew speakers do not know about us – I have been saying this for 20 years, but many don’t agree with me. But face the facts – despite genuine efforts to get Hebrew speakers involved, particularly as donors or “friends of” and even a PR firm for six months that a generous donor paid for, we have not succeeded.

Please believe me, our English speakers are the crux of our being, not others. There are thousands of outstanding volunteer organizations doing brilliant community work, as does ESRA, but there is only one organization of English speakers and English speaking volunteers.

Don’t let us be lured into being like others, doing it their way.

Let us continue to do it our way, to be spontaneous, original, creative, off the cuff, free to do, responsive to needs, inspired and inspiring, a social English speaking network. And let us refrain from being regimented, boxed-in, planned like others.

You, our volunteers are our realm, our soul, our being, our creativity, our success.

Co-Chair Adele Hunter

I’d like to welcome you all to our 33^rd AGM.  Merle’s baby has certainly grown since its birth in her living room and I’m sure she is proud of the adult she has nurtured for so many years!

This past year has been one of many changes in ESRA.   The first change was sharing duties jointly between the two Chairs, Nina and myself, and the two Vice-Chairs, Val Kantor and Jane Krivine and this enabled us to move forward in many directions. The fact that the duties of chairmanship were shared was huge and meant that each of us was able to give more time to specific areas of ESRA. We were also able to consult with one another on everything, which made decision making so much easier. We would highly recommend this for the future.

The second change that was made directly affects how we promote ourselves to the wider community, how we share what we are doing, and bring ESRA up to date by use of media. This was spearheaded by Jane who is full of ideas and, as a result, we now have a very good website run by our volunteer, Frankie Cronin. We also have access to Pay Pal. This means that it is possible to update your subscription, become a new member, or donate to a project on behalf of a family simcha - all this online with ESRA, from anywhere in the world 24 hours a day.  The donations have already started coming in through this route.  Not everyone wants to pay online, so you can still phone the office with credit card details, or send a check. We have an ESRA site on Facebook with a growing number of friends where we can promote our events. Please look up our Facebook page when you get home and become a friend! We have also published a new pamphlet advertising our projects (with another one on the way showing the activities).

Val has throughout the year worked tirelessly on volunteering and the support services. She organized a wonderful volunteer evening, a successful seminar followed by an Insight program. At all times she has given us tremendous support and a lot of good advice.

Thanks to another outstanding volunteer, Annette Bodie, our database has been totally revamped and is now much more user friendly and gives us far more options. The database is how the office keeps all its contact information on computer, and now it is absolutely up to date with information accessible at the touch of a button. Annette has worked hundreds of hours on doing this long overdue change.

Another change made this year is with the branches. We have divided the branches into three regions and have three regional coordinators who will be part of the incoming executive. By doing this we hope to be able to have closer contact with all the branches.

This meeting is also a change in ESRA. Up until now we have always held the AGM in the evening, but we thought we would try holding it in the morning together with a branch meeting, thereby involving more people who are close to ESRA with the workings of the organization.

Talking about changes, it is a good time to refresh committees. If anybody would like to join any of the committees, especially Public Relations & Media, Fundraising & Volunteering, please speak to one of us after the meeting or phone the office.

Co-Chair Nina Zuck

We have, at all times, the constant help and support of all the committees and would like to thank each and every one of the volunteers – from the Executive, the Finance, the Volunteering and Support Services, Membership, Tutoring, the Programming and Activities, Welfare and Projects, the Magazine editorial board and distributors, Esravision, Fundraising and Shops, PR and Media, the Branches - without you, the volunteers, ESRA wouldn’t exist. 

This year saw the appointment of our new Director, Yonit Gurfinkel. Her hard work and tireless efforts in such a short time with us are evident. She has a handle on everything and really cares about what is happening.  Without our dedicated staff none of the work we do would happen – they are the most wonderfully devoted group any organization could wish for. To them we say thank you.

Our fundraising team organized a very successful concert at the Opera House in Tel Aviv with Achinoam Nini. This was a very special event and the biggest one ESRA has ever done. As a result of the funds we raised we have opened several new projects this year and upgraded others.  We now have a computer center in Hefzibah, Netanya, a new Bayit Cham in Herzliya for at- risk teenage girls, and another ethnic dance group in South Netanya. We’d really like to see a project in every branch – and, of course, a branch in every town! We’re hoping to get Rishon going next year with their first funded project, and will be starting another project of excellence with the Ruppin Marine Science Institute.  

This year we had our Pesach “le chaim” at one of our projects- an Ethiopian sewing center – a great success for the volunteers and staff who attended and for the project participants. One cannot possibly understand a project until one has seen it with one's own eyes, and we urge everyone to try and do so. The project coordinators will be only too happy to show you around. We will also be arranging group trips to our projects.

One of our main goals for the coming year is increasing membership which is the life blood of our organization.  Renee Goldstein heads a team of new and enthusiastic volunteers and you will all be hearing from them regarding membership and outreach to increase membership.

Our programs and activities committee, headed by Audrey Goodman, has provided ESRA members with a wonderful cultural program: outings every month, social activities and generally something for everybody to enjoy. Their only problem is that there just aren’t enough days in the month!

The other exciting events that are in the planning stages for the year 2012 are a Spring Festival based on the success of the 30^th anniversary festival we had at Shefayim, and another big fundraising event with someone as exciting as Achinoam Nini.

For me personally, this has been a hectic, exciting year. The role of being active and involved in the Executive, and having a hand in the exciting route ESRA is taking, has broadened my horizons and taken me to places I would never have dreamed of. I’d like to personally thank Adele, Val and Jane for sharing this most interesting year with me and to say to all of you: "Yishar Ko'ach – we’re doing a good job!"

ESRA EXECUTIVE BOARD 2011/12

Co-Chairs:  Adele Hunter & Nina Zuck

Vice-Chairs:  Val Kantor & Jane Krivine

Annette Bode

Renee Goldstein

Audrey Goodman

Roger Lavender

Maddy Levine

Janet Kiesari

Noah Margalit

Richard Stein

Baruch Tanaman

Gill Teicher

Ed Woolf

Control Committee

Sam Kirsch

Ralph Lanesman