Jewish venture program coming to Boston

An organization that attempts to promote innovative and entrepreneurial programs to strengthen the Jewish community is coming to Boston.

PresenTense, a relatively new but buzz-rich organization headquartered in Israel, has been chosen by Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the establishment coalition of Jewish organizational life in Boston, to oversee a new fellowship that will launch in January aimed at helping Jewish young adults with innovative ideas to figure out how they might translate those ideas into action. CJP will finance the program, and PresenTense will run it.

I talked with Karyn Cohen Leviton, the director of strategy implementation at CJP, who said the program is still taking shape, but that it will involve 10 to 15 part-time (evenings and weekends) fellows in their 20s and 30s who will be chosen for the strength of their ideas for new Jewish social ventures (i.e. programs intended to strengthen the Jewish community in some way), and will be offered training on business basics as well as access to potential donors and investors. The fellows will also be offered mentors with experience in launching new ventures, and will be invited to do something called "board-hopping,'' which apparently involves observing the boards of venture capital firms and small businesses. The idea is that some of the fellows will then launch new organizations based on some brilliant idea that will address a challenge facing the Jewish community. I asked Cohen whether there aren't already too many organizations in the Jewish world -- a frequent critique of Jewish communal life in the U.S. -- and she said, "It's a market economy -- some of these (new) ideas could be so good that they should be promoted, and an old one should go away.''

PresenTense was founded three years ago with a magazine, and it runs a summer institute in Jerusalem for "social innovators" -- people seeking to launch new programs that will improve the world. I e-mailed Ariel Beery, co-director of the PresenTense Group, in Israel to ask him to explain what the organization is, and what it's doing in Boston. Here's our exchange:

Q: What is PresenTense?

A: PresenTense is a grassroots movement founded by Jews around the world in their 20s and 30s who came together around the idea that the Jewish people and the world need a new framework if it is going to survive and thrive and fulfill our potential in the 21st century. As such, PresenTense set out to build the Jewish community's next generation of pioneers, to solve social problems and inspire the Jewish people. We're doing so by building a community of ideas through our magazine (reaching 30K individuals online and off), inspiring creativity in local community circles (now in six cities around the world) and training pioneers through our educational programs. Our educational program -- the newest one being based in Boston -- was developed over the past three Summer Institutes in Jerusalem. The particular goal is to equip the next generation of social entrepreneurs with the tools and ideas they need to go out into the world and make a difference. As our world and our people face new challenges brought on by globalization and digitization, I'm confident that this new generation of pioneers will be able to find new ways of working, teaching, praying and serving the needy that will help us build a better world. Most of all, our Summer Institute fellows are our heroes--that is, the heroes of all of us who contribute and participate in PresenTense around the world, be it through the magazine, circles, or hubs -- as they are taking the values and visions that we collaborate upon and actualize them through their ventures.

Q: How is the organization funded, and what are its goals?
A: The organization is a social enterprise, and as such has over a dozen sources of revenue, much of them earned though educational services and membership fees. Our all volunteer magazine is supported through ads and subscriptions, our circles are all volunteer based, and our educational programs are funded by organizations and communities interested in bringing PresenTense's methodology to its population. Of our budget, 40% is from foundations including the AVI CHAI Foundation, the Schusterman Foundation, and others. More info is online.

Q: Why are you coming to Boston?
A: We're excited to come to Boston because of the potential in the community, and the support and active partnership of the CJP. In order for us to fulfill our mission to grow pioneers, we have recognized that we need to work with the community to build new infrastructure for the Jewish people to address social problems and inspire innovation -- and we can't think of a better place to start our state-side fellowships than Boston. 

Q: What exactly will you be doing here?
A: PresenTense and the CJP will be running a five-month fellowship program for Jewish social entrepreneurs -- innovators who seek to engage and inspire the Jewish community to solve social problems. The program will admit a limited number of entrepreneurs in the pilot year, and provide them with a number of supportive programs and training opportunities to meet other innovators, learn from successful entrepreneurs in the field, be mentored by leaders in their fields, and showcase their ventures in a community-wide launch night.

There has been some debate about whether PresenTense is succeeding; the organization claims to have launched 41 ventures in 3 years, but Beery takes on the what-is-success question on his blog.

H/T: eJewishPhilanthropy