by
NJJN Staff Writer

It has taken 66 years, but the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest will undertake its first fund-raiser as it honors board members Mort Bunis and Howard Jacobs on Wednesday, May 31.

The landmark event — Wines and Foods of the World — takes place at 7 p.m. at the Crystal Plaza in Livingston.

The program is intended to “plug some nasty holes” between the money that comes in from the government and through various grants and the agency’s operational costs.

“It was a real learning process,” said executive director Ronald I. Coun, who has been associated with the organization for more than 40 years. “I’ve been around longer than any other director in the community, and I’ve never done this at all. My board may be from the federation for the most part, and they’ve gone to these [events], but they’ve never planned one themselves in terms of our agency, and they had to go through a learning process.”

JVS is not the only vocational service coming late to the fund-raising table.

“A good number of my JVS director friends around the country with huge agencies have only been doing this over the last three or four years,” said Coun. “I guess it’s because our agencies tend to…sell our social service products in order to bring the dollars in. So we haven’t had a third arm that went out and did its own fund-raising. We’ve relied a good deal on government and on our ability to sell training to industry.”

JVS offers vocational, educational, therapeutic, and social services to the “middle income” unemployed with barriers to employment on a nonsectarian basis. Its clients include persons with disabilities, the working poor, the aging, and immigrants and refugees from around the world.

In planning its fund-raiser, JVS sought advice from local organizations, including United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, whose annual allocation of more than $700,000 accounts for about 10 percent of the agency’s yearly revenues. About half of its revenues come from government support; direct donations and program services account for the rest.

“We had some very special help. [UJC MetroWest] gave us some hints, and the Cerebral Palsy of North Jersey laid out, through their fund-raising director, a very good template for us to look at and adapt to what we want to do and offered us some good pro bono advice along the way, stuff we never would have thought of.

“The first thing that hits you is that if you want to do it right, it has to be a professional job,” said Coun.

Picking the right people to set up an event is uppermost on the “to do” list. Coun praised honorees Bunis and Jacobs — both of West Orange — for their service to JVS as members of the agency’s board of trustees.

“[Bunis] certainly has the feeling of our mission, which is not only to care for the Jewish community, but the general community, too,” Coun said. “He’s always been a guy who’s looked beyond just the parochial issues of the suburbs. It’s been good for us to have people with that kind of feeling.” Bunis has been a JVS board member for about 10 years.

Jacobs, who has been associated with JVS for about three years, “hit the deck running,” said Coun. “He wanted to know our issues in terms of importance to the agency.” He also gave JVS a corporate contract for his own company, which served as a pleasant if unsolicited surprise.

“They’re everything a director would ever want in a board member. I have no need to butter them up for the future,” Coun said, adding his gratitude for support from the event chairs, JVS president Ruth Steckelman Popkin of Short Hills and Michael Wolfson of Mountain Lakes. “This experience has been a lot different than I thought it was going to be,” said Coun. “I was worried to death about it. I still am, until we see the final numbers, but I’m feeling real good about it.”

The board considered ideas for its initial fund-raiser, he said, firm in the desire to avoid the typical “buy-a-table, sit-at-the-Hilton, yada yada yada” evening.

The program committee also had to decide how to keep the program brief while showing proper respect for the honorees.

It was Jacobs who suggested running an expanded version of a home-based wine-tasting. The Crystal Plaza made suggestions on an appropriate set-up for an informal gathering. A wine-tasting program arranger will be on hand to explain how to pair samples from five or six countries with appropriate cuisine.

After the theme and the honorees, there were still myriad details to consider. Coun felt the graphic designer they hired would be happy never to see them again after they went through numerous changes for the ad journal and other printed material.

Coun said he hopes the event will attract 200 supporters; a month prior to the program, more than 100 had reserved seats. “This exercise is very helpful,” he said. “If you can raise close to $100,000, it can plug some nasty holes.”

The JVS veteran, who plans to retire at the end of June, said, “I’m very excited, because it did give me something new, something challenging, and something different. It makes a good coda.”