Representing a group of committed donors, a past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington recently launched the Greater Washington Jewish Talent Project. The project aims to retain skilled professionals in the DMV’s Jewish communal world, according to a press release.
A job posting for a senior director of JTP said the initiative would “revolutionize how local Jewish organizations attract, train and retain local talent.”
Spearheaded by Philip Margolius through the Federation’s Jewish Community Foundation, the JTP will provide professionals working at Jewish organizations in the Washington, D.C., area with access to “top-level training sessions,” local JPro programs, counseling, coaching and adequate time to network with colleagues at other Jewish organizations, Margolius wrote in the press release.
A person seeking a job at a Jewish organization would benefit from a central site containing job opportunities in the D.C. Jewish professional world, the “proper” onboarding training upon beginning the job and knowing their chances for advancement in that organization, Margolius wrote. If there weren’t opportunities to advance, the organization would help the job seeker pursue another position in the Jewish community.
Margolius is passionate about JTP and preserving the future of the Jewish community in honor of his late wife, Phyllis Margolius, an “inspiring lay leader” in the Jewish philanthropic world. The two had been heavily involved in the local Jewish community for 50 years. After her death in 2014, Philip Margolius formed The Phyllis Margolius Family Foundation.
“My three kids, with me, decided to take on projects that [Phyllis] would have,” Philip Margolius said. “My wife always said to me, ‘Leave these projects for other people; I’ll take the hard ones or the impossible one.’ She never shied away from the hard problem.”
Philip Margolius set up an award, the Impossible Dream Award, in Phyllis’ memory, which is now in its third year.
“At the end of the first year, I was thinking, ‘That’s great, but we really haven’t done enough for Jewish professionals,’” Margolius said. “I came to the conclusion, along with my board, that we needed to do more.”
Wanting to inspire people to stay in the Jewish professional world — “Why were many leaving the field after only one or two years?” — Margolius gathered a group of Jewish philanthropists in October 2023 to figure out how to retain talent.
Margolius and Scott Brown, the former vice president of talent for Hillel International, spent a year speaking with more than 100 staff members of Jewish organizations of all sizes and people who opted not to work in the Jewish community. The first issue was the D.C. area’s lack of a JPro chapter — JPro is a group that aims to connect and empower people who work in Jewish nonprofits.
“Almost all of the people we talked to said, ‘Yes, we would love that because we want to interact with our Jewish colleagues,’” Margolius said. “‘We want socialization, we want education, we want those things on a regular basis.’”
Other issues arose, such as agencies’ perceived lack of transparency upon hiring.
“When [people] go to work for a Jewish organization, a lot of them didn’t have a clear idea where they stood … when they were hired by their agency, as to ‘What are my chances of advancement here?’” Margolius said.
Another issue is the possibility that someone uproots their life to relocate to D.C. and the job at a Jewish organization doesn’t work out after one year or they don’t enjoy the work. Margolius had the idea to launch a pilot project with eight to 10 local and national Jewish organizations.
“Each of these organizations would benefit from a collective effort to attract the best and brightest to Washington,” Margolius said. “We’d have a national campaign on behalf of these organizations. If they needed employees, we would advertise for them.”
Executives of participating organizations would agree to certain criteria, such as an ethical contract between the board of directors and the employee for fair treatment and promising to help employees attain a job at a different local organization if there were no chances to advance within the current company.
“That’s never been done before because what we found out is every organization is very zealous of their own employees,” Margolius said. “They don’t want to think they’re going to lose their employees.”
He said JTP will be a “clearinghouse” for this upward movement. The ethical contract is a response to “a number of people” who told Margolius they were overworked: “They felt that their time was not their own and that they didn’t have a lot of opportunities for advancement.”
The contract will ensure that lay leaders treat employees professionally and respectfully, Margolius said.
“The goals [of JTP] are exactly what we should be striving for, which is to make the Washington, D.C., region the best place for people who want to work at Jewish organizations,” said Gil Preuss, the Federation’s CEO. “Across the region, … how do we make sure that when people come here that they have a great experience in individual organizations, they have paths for growth and promotion and that they want to maintain their careers long-term within the Jewish organizations in our region.”
Preuss added that JTP’s mission connects to Phyllis Margolius’ philanthropic work, referring to her as “one of the most beloved lay leaders in [the Jewish Washington] community.”
“I think this initiative is really taking that vision and passion that she had and translating it into something concrete and real across the whole community, which I think is truly inspirational,” Preuss said.
