For more information on ways to support the Cleveland Hillel Foundation, contact Harriet Rosenberg Mann at hmann@clevelandhillel.org or call 216-231-0040.
One given about college life is that it doesn’t last forever. As much as students may love their campus experience, after four (or five or six) years, it comes to an end. The day they graduate, they are no longer students, but alumni.
A portion of the funding of Hillel’s primary mission – providing a Jewish perspective to campus life – comes from those alumni who look back upon their college years with appreciation.
“In order for our Hillel to grow, it is essential that we identify and engage Jewish alumni to become part of the renaissance of Jewish life that is happening at our campuses, particularly at CWRU and Oberlin and CSU,” says Cleveland Hillel board president Scott Siegel. “We need to build an on-going, self-sustaining alumni campaign to be the backbone of our annual fundraising efforts, eventually moving toward alumni endowments and bequests to support Jewish life on campus well into the future.”
Cleveland Hillel has created a comprehensive and strategic alumni program, inaugurated in November 2005, to double the amount of philanthropic income Hillel now raises, in order to support innovative, creative and substantive programming for students on these campuses.
Harriet Rosenberg Mann, Alumni Relations Director for the Cleveland Hillel Foundation, says the goals of the campaign are to identify Jewish alumni of Case Western Reserve University and Oberlin College; engage key alumni with a connection to Jewish life; connect alumni to current students and contemporary Jewish life on campus; and increase alumni giving to support innovate programming.
“Ultimately, the beneficiaries of the dramatic increase in philanthropic giving are students currently on campus because Hillel will have the resources to engage, educate and empower them as the hope of the Jewish future,” says Mann. “However, alumni will also benefit from their connection with Jewish life on each campus, offering them opportunities to become part of and support a thriving community of intelligent, creative and passionate young Jews.”At CWRU and Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, there are active Jewish Law Student Associations, to which Hillel provides primary staffing and funding. The alumni initiative sees these as natural partnerships to involve Jewish alumni.
Recent alumni events include a summer gathering at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage for CWRU alumni co-sponsored by the CWRU Alumni Association, an evening with Oberlin Hillel’s student leaders for Oberlin alumni at the home of Dr. Tom Abelson, and an event entitled “Putting the Pieces Together: A Networking Event” for alumni and students of the CWRU School of Law at the Glidden House in University Circle. Planned for the fall is a similar event for students and alumni of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law as well as a summer program for CWRU alumni in the Washington, DC area.
Cleveland Hillel is working primarily with alumni from Case Western Reserve University, Oberlin College and Cleveland State University. They look forward to forging relationships with alumni of all of the schools they serve.