Wartime Difficulties in Fund-raising Outlined at Conference of Jewish Federations

The difficulties which Jewish fund-raising work may face in America during 1942 as a result of the war situation were outlined here yesterday at the closing session of the ninth General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, by Louis Tobian, Board member of the Jewish Federation for Social Service, Dallas, Texas.

Stating that increased taxation, higher cost of living and industrial dislocation will confront the Jewish fund-raising activities with new problems, Mr. Tobian added that these obstacles are not insurmountable. He pointed out that in Canada, where taxes are proportionately higher than in the United States, more funds have been raised for Jewish philanthropy each year since 1939, when Canada entered the war. He also cited the recent successful Jewish fund-raising campaigns in England. At the same time he warned against inflated “unrealistic” quotas, stating that they are harmful to fund raising. He urged the national agencies to evaluate their programs and eliminate “surplus activity and surplus programs.”

FUNCTIONS OF NATIONAL ADVISORY BUDGET SERVICE DEFINED

The approved report on National Advisory Budgeting Service, as submitted at Sunday’s session by Mr. Jacob Blaustein, member of the Council’s board of directors, was made public here today. The report, recommended jointly by those who supported the project as well as by the group which had previously opposed a National Advisory Budget Service, provides;

1. Reports issued on organizations will be limited to analysis and descriptions of functional services, administration and fund-raising procedures, the problems with which the organizations deal, and the results of services rendered.

2. Reports will not attempt to translate findings in terms of total budget requirements and no specific recommendations will be offered to member agencies on approved minimum or maximum financial needs of any organization.

ROLE OF JEWISH VOLUNTEERS IN BRITISH ARMY DESCRIBED BY DR. SILVER

The closing session of the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds was also addressed by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal. Emphasizing the role which Jewish volunteers in the British forces are now playing in various theatres of war, Dr. Silver said;

“Many thousand Palestine Jews are skilled workmen, making war materials and repairing machines for mechanized war. An American lease-lend administrator is stationed in Jerusalem, indicative of Palestine’s strategic importance in the war.”

Moses A. Leavitt, speaking for the Joint Distribution Committee, said that “the J.D.C. cannot and will not send funds to enemy-occupied territories. But to prevent collapse of programs which alone stave off starvation for hundreds of thousands in Poland, Shanghai, China, Hungary, Rumania and elsewhere, the committee is using methods which, during the last World War, prevented the collapse of sorely tried Jewish communities in the war zones.”