Ellen Oshinsky’s family has long instilled in her the Jewish value of giving back to one’s community. Her five-year career with Avodah – The Jewish Service Corps is in part thanks to her mother’s encouragement to join.
Oshinsky supports the social change organization’s fundraising as the Washington, D.C., and New Orleans director of strategic partnerships for Avodah.
She sits on the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the nonprofit organization Many Hands. Oshinsky received the Harvey Milk Chesed Award in 2023 from Bet Mishpachah for her work with Avodah and Many Hands.
A former second grade teacher in New York City, Oshinsky left the classroom to be an environmental educator with Audubon New York. She continued this appreciation of the outdoors by founding DMV EcoAdventures, which offers nature-based education.
Oshinsky is an avid biker who’s trained for the 330 mile bike ride from D.C. to Pittsburgh while counting the Omer, an experience she’s written about for Hey Alma. She also leads bike rides and retreats through Circle and Spoke, which Oshinsky founded in the fall of 2023 to empower women and nonbinary folks. Through these many involvements, Oshinsky’s goal is to build community.
She lives in Northwest D.C., where she is a lifelong member of Washington Hebrew Congregation.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I grew up in the area, in Bethesda, and my family from a really early age emphasized connection to Jewish life. I belonged to Washington Hebrew as a kid and attended the Gan, the Jewish preschool. From an early age, a sense of joy associated with Judaism was honed in through singing in preschool, going to services at WHC and Sunday school. My family was really invested in tikkun olam, mitzvot, tzedakah. My mom honed in [on] the importance of doing good and giving back to the community and how that was through a Jewish lens.
How did you get to where you are today?
I attended college in Miami and despite a very strong upbringing inside the Jewish community and then going to college, I actually got a bit more distant from being involved in the Jewish community. My mother was involved with Avodah when I was in college and she encouraged me to go and apply. I think most things that parents encourage people to do, they usually repel from and do the exact opposite. But I had met some Avodahniks when I was a junior in college and I thought they were super-cool. I applied to Avodah and did the service corps program in New Orleans right after college. It was such an eye-opening and world-opening experience for me because it really brought home for me [that] I can be a young person discovering my place inside the Jewish community, and others are discovering that for themselves too. It put me in a place of being surrounded by like-minded individuals who really cared about social change work and tikkun olam. I love being part of Jewish community and I love the opportunity to live in our values of building bridges and offering the opportunity to amplify our social change work.
My involvement with Many Hands is also connected to my mother. She’d heard about the organization and shared the information with me. I think the work we do at Many Hands is exceptional; it’s an opportunity to collectively create an impact because through a collective giving circle we get to pool our money and make this huge impact grant, then three partner grants that are tremendously impactful. Many Hands is not a Jewish organization, but my involvement with it is rooted inside of my Jewish identity of “How can we make a collective impact and create a difference in the lives of women, children and families here in the DMV?”
What are your responsibilities as an Avodah director of strategic partnerships?
With my work at Avodah, I’m out in the community, I’m getting coffee with people, I’m talking with people about our work, I’m emailing folks. I’m setting up opportunities to have folks get to know our Avodah corps members. My day-to-day also looks like being on the phone with our Avodahniks and hearing how their experience is going so I can storytell and share that impact with others. It involves a lot of schmoozing, emailing [and] a lot of coffee with folks.
Why do you do philanthropy and fundraising?
I’m a product of Avodah; I did our Service Corps. I know personally firsthand the impact that the program can have on an individual’s life, but also the community that you build, the friendships that you build through Avodah. We’re over 1,600 alumni strong across the country, many of those folks living here in D.C., which fills me with such pride. In my job as a fundraiser, I get to share the story, share the impact. Over 90% of our alumni stay in social change work after the program. That is really exceptional that we’re part of such a community.
Why do I love to do fundraising? It’s because I get to uplift something that I really care about and I also get to see — because of my deep love of Judaism — how this program nourishes people through a Jewish lens and builds Jewish community that helps people stay in social change work for the long haul.
