WITHGRATITUDETOOURCOMMUNITY Dear Community, Thank you for caring so deeply about ensuring our Jewish community thrives. Because of your continued support, our Federation continues to provide initiatives that build pathways and connection to Jewish life for people of all ages, philanthropic opportunities to amplify impact, serving those in need both locally and globally, and ongoing collaboration to strengthen our Jewish organizations. Our work continues to grow in new ways. Over the past year, we launched a new Teen Engagement Initiative, created a new community security program, launched our new philanthropy advisory practice called Federation Philanthropy Partners, expanded our presence in the Palo Alto area, and partnered to respond to the devastating Sonoma and Napa County fires. This past year also marked the launch of our first-ever, 10 county-wide community study, A Portrait of Bay Area Life and Communities. The Portrait revealed that as the 4th largest Jewish population in the U.S., our community is relatively stable in size, diverse, very mobile throughout the region, and highly educated. Young adults and Boomers comprise the largest cohorts among adults in Jewish households. Pockets of poverty, need, and economic vulnerability exist in the midst of affluence. A relatively small, highly engaged population is offset by a much larger unaffiliated population that is substantially less connected, particularly among young adults. Younger Jews, liberals, intermarried couples, and the unaffiliated are less likely to be very attached to Israel. Thanks to this study, we and our partner agencies and synagogues now have a better understanding of our community, enabling us to identify and quantify our needs and to amplify our strengths. To that end, the Portrait provides the foundational research for our Federation’s strategic planning process, which began this past spring. We hired the consulting firm NextStreet to conduct a four-phase approach to developing a strategic plan. First, the staff, leadership, community leaders and partners, and philanthropists provided input on the Federation’s strengths, issues, challenges and opportunities. With this input, NextStreet developed a “fact base” of the internal and external environment. By early fall, we began discussing potential strategic options and are currently in the process of defining these areas. The upcoming final phase will define our implementation plan for these strategic priorities. Much of this plan will build off the experiments and pilots of recent years, and we look forward to sharing with you. With appreciation, Danny Grossman CEO Jim Heeger Board Chair 2