Oshman Family Jewish Community Center
Organization
Since the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center (OFJCC) was founded 1960, the organization has grown steadily. Its new campus in Palo Alto, opened in 2009, provides a preschool for 300 kids, an afterschool program for 155 kids per day, boutique cultural arts programming, and hundreds of programs relating to the Israeli community. While OFJCC’s mission and vision encompass the Jewish faith, it has strong ties to the whole community through its programs and facilities. Its fitness program has over 5000 members.
Situation
The OFJCC facility is running out of space. Part of the facility is being leased out, which generates significant earned income. At the same time, OFJCC is considering adding/expanding programs that are on mission, but generate little or no income, at least in the short run. These conflicting demands for space are also creating competition between existing and new programming. The problem is becoming more severe as growth continues and participants are encouraged to join multiple programs.
Project Objectives
OFJCC asked an ACT team to present recommendations for making the best use of facilities on the OFJCC campus.
Project Overview
OFJCC campus facilities are currently being leased to ten long-term tenants, in addition to short-term room rentals by about 200 members in the prior fiscal year. The ACT team reviewed functional expenses by programs and the associated overhead allocations, rental room usage, and rental rates to better understand facility usage and the income generated from that use.
Key Recommendations
The ACT team primarily recommended that OFJCC consider increasing granularity in its financial data collection in order to analyze short-term rental revenue by room, instead of just by member. This would better enable a framework for evaluating which programs to invest in based on the program/rental tradeoff and the related KPI’s to measure.
However, academic research supports the theory that the more donors interact with the organization, the more likely they are to be more generous and to cultivate their friends as donors. Community goodwill increases donations. Loyalty, more so than rentals, is likely to foster community goodwill. Rentals may provide more money in the short-term, but will not create the long-term relationships necessary for the future. Hence, the ACT team recommended that OFJCC offer more opportunities for participation through programs.
Key Conclusions
- The highest and best use of facilities is for OFJCC mission-related activities, whether they be carried out by OFJCC or by the tenants on their campus.
- OFJCC should raise rental rates for one-time usage to better balance supply and demand and set a minimum hurdle for one-time usage to cover actual costs and administrative effort.
Final Report Outline
- Project overview
- Investigative methodology
- Key conclusions
Other
The ACT team provided a pivot table analysis of one-time usage revenue by member for the prior fiscal year, which revealed that 80% of the revenue was generated from about one third of the customers.