Staff Writer

News that the country's economic free fall could be slowing hasn't resonated much with leaders of several local Jewish nonprofits. In fact, with a new fiscal year on the horizon, agency leaders say the economic terrain appears more rugged than ever.

"What I see rebounding is hope. I don't see dollars having matched that hope at this point," David Gamse, the executive director of the Jewish Council for the Aging, said in an interview. "From a charity standpoint, when the economy rebounds, people don't necessarily trust that the rebound is here to stay."

Agencies such as Gamse's have been forced to scramble in the past months in an effort to continue providing more services despite decreased revenues, with many of them making not only personnel cuts, but reducing employees' work hours, as well as cutting contributions to employee retirement plans.

Fiscal year 2010 ‹ which begins for most local agencies on July 1 ‹ isn't looking much brighter. Executive directors say they expect charitable contributions to remain anemic, and their budgets all the more spartan.

"We have to budget conservatively, and history is the best predictor of what the next year will bring, so I would love to be pleasantly surprised [next fiscal year], but we're looking at [this year] as the basis of our decision-making," said Gamse, whose agency was forced to eliminate two positions earlier in the year ‹ one part-time community outreach specialist and one office aide ‹ and reduce the hours for one nurse at its Misler Adult Day Center.

The staff reductions have saved the agency about $60,000 in fiscal year 2009.

In January at JCA, "all senior staff," including Gamse, voluntarily accepted a 5-percent wage cut. All of the cuts and reductions will be carried into the upcoming fiscal year for a total savings of about $224,000 to JCA's total budget, Gamse said.

Additionally, $154,000 worth of cuts will be derived through additional staff cutbacks in information services, development and communications.

Pink slips are also being handed out at the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning, where five staff positions will be eliminated at the end of June due to budgetary constrictions, according to James Hyman, the group's CEO. Three newly created positions, however, will subsequently be filled in the beginning of July.

The shift, Hyman says, is critical to PJLL's overall mission, as it will bring aboard specialty employees who have a deep knowledge of new media and technology.

The first position, an education specialist, will "have real expertise in cutting-edge educational technology and fluency with Jewish education," Hyman said, explaining that although other employees had attempted to "dabble" in these areas, a true expert was required.

The second position will be an amalgam of two soon-to-be eliminated part-time jobs: a librarian in the Shulamith Reich Elster Resource Center, and an educator who worked with various clients in the center. The new staffer will adopt both tasks as a full-time employee, Hyman said.

Formerly a full-time job, the Partnership's liaison to the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School of Greater Washington will be reduced to a quarter-time position. (In addition, a part-time coordinator will be hired to work in tandem with Melton teachers in Northern Virginia.)

The PJLL is also instituting compulsory fund-raising benchmarks to be met throughout the year, and if those goals are not met "we will respond vigorously in terms of cost-cutting measures," he said.

Costs have also been cut at at least two local agencies ‹ JCA and The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington ‹ through organization-wide reductions in retirement plan contributions for some employees. (The Jewish Social Service Agency is currently re-evaluating its contributions to employee retirement plans.)

At JCA, for example, the amount of money the agency contributes to staff retirement plans was slashed from 10 percent of an employee's wage to 3 percent. At the federation, contributions were cut in November about 17 percent for those under 55, according to a spokesperson.

Unlike the government, Gamse quipped, "we don't print money. So absent the ability to print money, we [must] balance our budget, and we do so conservatively."

Staff-wide furloughs ‹ in which employees use some unpaid vacation days ‹ have also become commonplace at many agencies, including JCA, the PJLL and the federation, which was among the first local agencies to implement cost-cutting measures such as this in November.

Throughout the year, staffers at JCA will take a week's worth of unpaid vacation days, Gamse said, while PJLL's furloughs translate to one-day per month, according to Hyman. Federation employees had a furlough during Passover, and the policy continues.

Hard times have also hit the region's Jewish Community Centers, where membership is generally down, or at least tapering off, according to leaders.

"We don't expect to be able to provide the same level of programming that we have in the past," said Michael Feinstein, the JCC of Greater Washington's CEO, who noted that his organization was in fiscal straits long before the economic downturn.

Around January and February, Feinstein said, JCCGW members began to approach him about "financial issues" and some began to "freeze their memberships" for six-or-more months, as the economic situation grew worse.

In addition, executive-level staffers have not received a salary increase in "over three years," and won't in the next year either ‹ "I would say it's still tough out there," Feinstein said.

Hours have been cut for one staffer at the JCC of Northern Virginia and 50 hours have been eliminated from those who work at the front desk, Eric Koehler, the organization's executive director, said in an e-mail interview. (The JCC's membership rates have remained stable, Koehler says.)

At the Washington DC JCC, membership waned (and then leveled off), according to CEO Arna Meyer Mickelson. Though she expects the organization to be down nearly $500,000 in revenue, subsequent cuts around the office should help the facility "break even this year," Mickelson said.

Although wide-ranging cuts have saved the agencies in the upcoming fiscal year, both Mickelson and the PJLL's Hyman say there's no telling what fiscal year 2011 could bring.

"I think it will be a very tough year until everyone has agreed that the recession is behind us and brighter skies are in front of us," Hyman said, also lauding the federation's Emergency Assistance Fund, an auxiliary fund-raising effort, which he says, "saved us this year" from collapse.

Misha Galperin, the federation vice president and CEO, agreed, noting in an interview that the EAF campaign ‹ which raised $2.5 million in funds to supplement the struggling agencies ‹ enabled the federation to keep allocations on par from fiscal year 2009 to 2010.

With funding for the upcoming year tentatively taken care of, Galperin says fiscal year 2011 is posing an even greater challenge.

"It's hard for people to keep in mind [the] money that is raised and money that is allocated," Galperin said, explaining that money currently being raised for the federation's campaign will be used to fund fiscal year 2011, which begins in July 2010.

Although Galperin sees "signs of the economy bottoming out ... the impact on individuals has not been completed ‹ there are a lot of people who are hurt and that hasn't changed yet."

Case in point: The Jewish Social Service Agency, which was recently allotted $171,000 through the federation's Community Crisis Assistance Fund, used to address the growing demand for emergency assistance services and scholarships requests. (See accompanying story for details.)

According to Ken Kozloff, JSSA's CEO, the number of patients seeking mental health counseling in relation to the downtrodden economy still remains extremely high. "We're still seeing a steady increase of clients" at both the Montgomery County and Northern Virginia offices, Kozloff said, including "children and adults, as well as married couples."

With 195 clients still on JSSA's waiting list to receive mental health services, Kozloff believes an economic rebound will be reflected in the number of patients JSSA serves. "When those clients start dwindling and people stop coming in for mental health counseling ... that might be a sign," he said.

The Jewish Foundation for Group Homes has certainly felt the fiscal crunch, but has managed to expand its programs without incurring extraneous expenses, according to Vivian Bass, the group's CEO.

After opening the Janet and Irving Torchinsky Family Home in 2008, Bass explained that part-time staffers were given opportunities to work more hours in order to fully serve new clients.

In addition, "as the program continues to expand" through the addition of the new home, Bass said, "rather than hire new administrative staff to oversee that supervision role, we are absorbing the expansion and the supervising functions within the existing staff." Thus, although JFGH will expand "considerably" in a physical sense, all costs will be mutually offset.