PresenTense Year in Preview 5771 (2010-2011) - Executive Summary

The PresenTense Group is an enterprising nonprofit driven to help the Jewish People realize
their collective potential in the 21st century. It does so through the exponential engagement of
Jewish young adults ages 22-40: developing programmatic vehicles for social change that gather
community members together, bridge the grassroots and local institutions, and leverage the
talents and expertise of community members of all ages towards projects of mutual benefit.
In the year 5771 (October 2010 – September 2011), PresenTense is embarking on a new
phase of its existence as an organization, defined by a few key developments:
1. PresenTense in 5770 received its independent tax exemption, and emerged out of fiscal
sponsorship to become an independent, New York State recognized tax exempt not-for-
profit corporation.
2. Following two years of operating a year-long operation in Jerusalem, PresenTense
opened an office for North American operations in New York, which will also serve as a
Hub, or entrepreneurial community center, for local volunteers and social entrepreneurs.
3. To connect and leverage the connections of individuals with specific interests,
PresenTense adapted the methodology used in local Steering Committees of creating
topic based groups in areas such as social action, environment, technology, and
philanthropy with leading community organizations such as the North American Jewish
Federation system. 186 SC members are expected in this next year alone.
4. Recognizing the importance of drawing skilled professionals into the Jewish community,
PresenTense is increasing its emphasis on mentorship, and recruiting professionals forty
years old and up to volunteer up to one hour a week. 168 mentors are projected this year.
5. Following two year-long pilot programs training social entrepreneurs in Jerusalem and in
Boston (in partnership with the Combined Jewish Philanthropies), PresenTense is
focusing on the year-long Community Entrepreneur Partnership it runs together with
local communities. The intention is to develop autonomous communities of innovation in
Jewish communities around the world. This year, six local programs will compliment the
Global Institute to train 86 entrepreneurs.
6. PresenTense‘s revenue will mainly come from program fees – over sixty percent – verses
grants, enabling sustainability on program generating fees by the end of FY 2013.
7. After focusing strongly on the two countries with the largest concentration of Jews, Israel
and the United States of America, PresenTense in this next year is expanding its
conversations with communities to span all of North America, as well as Eurasia. We
expect at least one program outside of Israel/North America in 5771.
To adapt to these new developments, PresenTense will invest in its operational capacity in 5771.
To meet increasing demand for trainings, PresenTense is launching the SocialStart Train the
Trainers course, which aims to certify between 20-24 instructors in PresenTense‘s seminar and
workshop content in this next year. Half of these trainers will be based in North America, and
half in Israel – with a strong focus on increasing the language scope of available materials from
English and Hebrew to also include, in time, Russian, French, German and Spanish.
PresenTense is also investing in new platforms fluid knowledge management, increased
capacity in remote education and assessment, and tracking metrics on engagement and venture
success using a Constituent Relationship Manager built on the Salesforce platform. PresenTense
is refining its business plan to enable the raising of significant revenue for the purpose of R&D.
5771 will be an exciting year for PresenTense because of this increased focus on local
program development. By year end (FY 5771), we will know whether PresenTense has
developed a sufficiently robust system to enable the organization to spread its impact throughout
the world as a whole – returning the pioneering spirit to the Jewish People, and readying young
entrepreneurs to realize the Jewish People‘s collective potential in the 21 st century.

PresenTense Year in Preview 5771 (Oct 2010-Sept 2011), Page: 1

 PresenTense Year in Preview 5771: Main Body

Introduction:

The Year in Preview was developed by PresenTense to provide robust information to our
constituency about what we do to leverage their time and money for social impact. As a
nonprofit organization, PresenTense sees itself as a public emissary in the broadest sense of the
term: owned and accountable to the public, and operating on behalf of the public‘s interest.
Through this Year in Preview, we hope to provide the public sufficient information to provide
informed guidance and criticism to Group management as we grow our impact and push ahead
towards our goal of realizing the Jewish People‘s collective potential in the 21st century.
Following critique of last year‘s Year in Preview we decided to release a shorter version
– comprised of a one-page executive summary, this short introduction, some general notes on
operations that will provide the more interested reviewer a chance to dig into the department by
department workplan summaries, and budget documents that we are posting as appendices. This
format is still part of our ―beta‖ – so please download, comment, critique, and offer suggestions
as to how we can do a better job of expressing what it is that PresenTense does as a
representation of the public will. Comments can be sent to yearinpreview@presentense.org, or
posted on blogs or wikis (but please share the link with us by email, or post it to twitter with the
information @presentense.org #yearinpreview as part of the tweet).
Finally, a word about timing. PresenTense begins its strategic planning process in
August, with the hope of completing the full planning for the year to come in September of each
year. This enables us to send the plans for review and approval by our board, and ensure our
organization‘s fiduciary responsibilities are covered. Our workplans were, indeed, finalized by
October, as was an early version of our budget. Bringing it all together, and agreeing on a budget
fit for publication, took more time than we had planned. The reason is that as an entrepreneurial
social enterprise, we allocate less to pure management than larger companies – meaning that all
of our staff is directly involved in programs and providing service to our partners. We don‘t have
overhead in the traditional sense, but that means that we also don‘t have the time for the same
type of oversight that can exist in more bureaucratic nonprofits. This is a blessing (in that
everyone is involved in one way or another) and a curse (in that we don‘t yet have the distance
for large scale process improvement), and we‘re working on tipping the scales as our
organization grows. That is why this Year in Preview is coming out so late.
We hope that the current format—short, direct—will simplify the process of publishing
Year in Preview documents such as this in the future, and any suggestions you may have to
simplify the process more will be accepted hungrily.

Summary of Operational Structures:

As PresenTense has focused its output into a core set of products and services,
PresenTense has moved from operating with strict company Divisions (as we did last year in
Community, Creativity, Pioneering) into a more networked approach. While the workplans and
the budget reflect the names of those previous Divisions, in practice we are seeing a more
coordinated approach to our work as the number of outputs shrinks. What that means is that we
have three core output-types during the year, all of whom are connected, and to which all of our
other programs and services serve as supplements. Our core products are:

1. Local Community Entrepreneur Partnerships (CEPs): community engagement programs

that include the community entrepreneur fellowship. Over three years, PresenTense trains

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 and supports a community to develop the local resources to run a CEP; in the fourth year,
the community should be able to continue operations on its own – subscribing to
PresenTense‘s curriculum updates and trainings if desired.
2. Magazine: a forum for the exchange of ideas and visions by members of the Jewish
community that uses print and online vehicles to create a global conversation.
3. Global Fellowship: our summer, Jerusalem based social entrepreneur training program.

These three core products have in common a mode of action: volunteer Steering Committees
who together develop and run the majority of the activities of each program. This volunteer-
based, grassroots approach (which in the last year had 408 individuals volunteering their time to
improve their communities and further social innovation) is our core competency: getting busy
skilled professionals to recognize that, for an hour a week, they can join their peers in doing
something positive for their communities. PresenTense was started as an all-volunteer adventure
– and remained all volunteer for almost three years of its life. We seek to build on that
experience to provide the tools for communities to raise social capital and engage in collective
action.
To supplement and complement these core products, PresenTense operates a number of
distinct programs:
1. Hubs: in Jerusalem and New York we have staff offices with additional space left over,
that we leverage for co-working—rentals to entrepreneurs and small social enterprises—
workshops, and events.
2. FedHeads: across North America there are young Jewish Federation professionals who
rarely have the opportunity to share knowledge and get advice from other professionals in
different geographic locations of their own. We help organize and facilitate this
community of practice.
3. PTInvestments: a number of our community members come from venture-related fields
(venture capital, finance, private equity, law, etc.) and would like to contribute what
they‘ve learned to social causes. We help organize them to donate hours and dollars
towards ventures launched in the PresenTense network.
4. PTSchool: as we developed workshops for our fellows, we realized that Jewish
professionals can use those tools too. PTSchool has taught over 700 Jewish professionals
how to use cutting edge digital tools, and develop organizational strategy for the age of
social media.

All of this is made possible by a set of initiatives that have been crucial to our operation –
providing tools to our front-line staff:
1. Salesforce customization and implementation: with 408 volunteers involved in 5770, and
an estimated 718 volunteers in 5771 (733 individuals involved in the direct production of
our programs and services), tracking who is who and what they need and what they like
to do is crucial to our on-going success, and we‘ve invested heavily in systems to help
this forward.
2. Operations: since we‘re operating around the world, overseeing the logistics of operations
is a massive task we have had to develop expertise in (and are always learning more
about).
3. Sales and Development: since PresenTense is a social enterprise, our focus is more on
program sales than development – but fundraising has played and continues to play a
crucial role in our ability to grow and serve communities. Over this next year, close to
40% of our revenue will come from grants and donations – and while we hope that as a
percentage of our budget this philanthropic investment will go down proportionally as

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 program revenues rise, we do need a healthy ‗runway‘ to continue to build systems and
structures to operate effectively and efficiently.
4. Training of Coordinators and SocialStart Trainers: while the PresenTense program is
mainly composed of activities that tap local expertise and create supportive community
around social innovation, there are elements of the curriculum that need technical skill to
teach (workshops) or coordinate (modules). Instead of growing in staff, PresenTense is
aspiring to take a certification approach to build a network of certified teachers and
coordinators, and its seminars and assorted training materials are being developed to that
end.

Year Calendar in Brief:

Month Main Public Milestones Main Internal Milestones

Oct 2010 Launch of Applications for CEPs Staff trained in new Salesforce systems
around the world
Nov 2010 Publication of PresenTense ―Is Your Community Innovating‖ campaign
Magazine, focus on Environment launched at GA
Dec 2010 Acceptance of Fellows in Tel Aviv, Closing on sponsored fellowship slots for
Jerusalem, New York, Boston and NYC and Jerusalem fellowships
Philadelphia; Launch of SocialStart
Trainers course to develop skilled
workshop facilitators

Jan 2011 Kick-off of local seminars for CEPs R&D on Russia and European expansion
Feb 2011 Publication of PresenTense Recruiting of Global fellows reaches pitch
Magazine, focus on Social Action
Mar 2011 Closing on sponsored fellowships Final discussions and negotiations with
(―chairs‖) for Global Fellowship partners at new sites for CEPs
Apr 2011 Announcement of new locations for Compilation of Fellow Yearbook for
CEPs in 5772 (2011/2012) 2010/2011 Local Fellowships
May 2011 Launch Nights for CEPs in Tel /
Aviv, Jerusalem, New York, Boston
and Philadelphia; Publication of
PresenTense Magazine on
Leadership
Jun 2011 Launch of 2011 Global Fellowship /
(5th cohort)
Jul 2011 Coordinator Course for coordinators /
from cities new and old
Aug 2011 / Strategic planning process for 5772

Sept 2011 Launch of Community Building half Review of strategic plan for 5772, along
of CEP in sites around the world with budget documents, by board.

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Introduction to the Budget:

PresenTense is a not-for-profit corporation, recognized by the IRS of the United States of

America as having tax exempt status under 501(c)(3). PresenTense applied for this status
because it sees itself as an expression of the public good, and hopes to educate communities to
unleash their creativity and solve social challenges facing the Jewish People and the World.
PresenTense‘s fiscal operations, however, reflect the strategic decision by the organization to
operate as a social enterprise – focusing on earned revenue as opposed to purely philanthropic
income, from the perspective that a community should demand the products and services
PresenTense offers and express such demand by its willingness to pay a price.
When we priced our products and services we recognized that the community Federations
and organizations we seek to partner with have limited resources – but also that we could not in
good faith ask national philanthropies to overly subsidize programs that benefit a local
community which has resources of its own to tap. We ended up picking a price point that we
found to be reasonable, and which should lead us to fiscally sustainable operations, without
philanthropic investment, at 18 local programs around the world.
The budget appended to this document reflects this understanding, allocating resources
according to type of product or service, and allocating expenses according to both the actual
program expense, as well as the cost of sale. Recognizing that we are an organization where
nearly every staff member is involved in every type of program or service, what is sometimes
categorized as ‗overhead‘ in other budgets is spread out here according to time allocation to
projects, and invested in Research and Development, which enables us to deepen quality and
increase quantity.
Finally, we think it is important for public organizations to share the salary information
of top management. To give context, the co-directors of the PresenTense Group, Aharon Horwitz
and Ariel Beery, divide their time as employees for the PresenTense Group in North America,
and the Israeli subsidiary company which runs PresenTense in Israel, PTLogistical Services. As
a benchmark, in FY2008-2009, Beery and Horwitz were each compensated in aggregate
$46,500, and in FY2009-2010, Beery and Horwitz earned an aggregate of $55,500. In FY2010-
2011, Beery and Horwitz will earn $43,325.88/year for their work for the North American
PresenTense Group, and for their services for PTL in research and development, Beery and
Horwitz will earn approximately $39,000. In total, this means Beery and Horwitz will be
compensated approximately $82,326 in 5771 (2010/2011), before taxes are deducted from both
countries. This increase is in line with the PresenTense Group‘s desire to compensate its
employees on par with comparable organizations and positions (while still representing a
significant negative deviation from median compensation as found by the Nonprofit
Coordinating Committee of New York in June 2010).

Looking Ahead to 5772:

PresenTense has big plans for 5772 (2011/2012), not the least of which includes
operating between 10-12 local fellowship programs around the world – locations where the
majority of young Jews ages 22-40 live world-wide. To get to a place where PresenTense will be
able to operate globally, additional training and enrichment opportunities for staff and affiliated
trainers and coordinators will be developed implemented. Over this next year we will be
searching for specialists in knowledge management, training trainers, web development and
start-up midwifery to join our ranks as volunteers, partners and, with the right R&D
philanthropic investment, staff.
The most exciting thing to look forward to in 5772 is the growth of PresenTense beyond
its leadership core. PresenTense began as an all volunteer organization of dozens of young,

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idealistic Jews around the world, but over the past few years it has become identified with the
personalities of a few key staff members whose contributions have been exceptional in reframing
how Jewish social enterprises can function. Over the past year, leaders have emerged from
PresenTense‘s Steering Committees and staff, spreading the responsibility of the organization
onto more shoulders. This emergence has started to expand the founder-centric organizational
culture to let in new ideas, new approaches and new relationships. By the pure law of physics,
this next stage of growth will bring new leaders and leadership paradigms into the PresenTense
community. From what we‘ve seen so far, the organization and the Jewish community as a
whole will be better off for it.

Conclusion:

The year 5771 will prove or disprove PresenTense‘s strategic decision to expand its
program through localization. If the year goes according to plan, PresenTense will finish this
year with 86 new fellows, and approximately 80 new ventures led by teams seeking to solve
problems facing the Jewish People and the World, 718 volunteers who have been given tools to
make a difference for only one hour a week, tens of thousands of readers of ideas spread through
PresenTense Magazine, and hundreds of thousands of second-order participants in programs run
by PresenTense fellows.
This element of incremental engagement makes PresenTense the exciting organization it
is, drawing people to it and its projects from around the world. In an age in which the Jewish
People are facing some of the biggest challenges of our history – widespread assimilation and
indifference, the growing Israel-Diaspora divide – it is our belief that system-wide solutions are
needed, and to find those we need to think big and start small. We look forward to this year, its
risks, and its potential rewards.

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