I recently heard a prominent non-profit leader lauding his organization’s success by saying “we spend 7-8 million dollars annually.” This struck me as odd, because as a businessman, in no way does that define your success; on the contrary, spending more money is seen as a negative. This speaker should not have been boasting about how much money his organization spent, but rather about how they had accomplished all their goals. If they did, could they have done so with fewer resources? Can it be done more effectively? These are questions being asked of the non-profit industry as a whole, from the donors, the public, and sometimes even recipients. For an organization without revenue or even a product, as is often the case with non-profits, it is often difficult to find key performance indicators. Therefore, its effectiveness is not easy to measure.

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J-Set is a student-run organization at Yeshiva University dedicated to raising awareness of the contemporary issues facing Jewish non-profits and developing the skills needed to effectively address these challenges. In their inaugural event on Tuesday, February 19th, J-Set hosted a panel discussion which brought together a diverse trio of non-profit insiders to give YU students a glimpse of the internal workings of the Jewish non-profit world. As a J-Set fellow, I walked in with a certain curiosity and soon found myself among prominent community leaders whose work within the Jewish non-profit sector represents its three major cornerstones: means, management and mission.

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