JOI's
Visibility
1996-1997 Survey of Jewish Communal Professionals
Over the past ten years, the Jewish Outreach Institute
has developed programs and services designed to help Jewish
communal professionals develop more effective outreach
programs for their intermarried clients. The final series
of questions focused on the visibility
and success of JOI in its own outreach efforts
to Jewish communal professionals. Respondents were asked
whether they were familiar with the Jewish Outreach Institute
[JOI], whether they had previously read any of JOI's newsletters
or publications, whether they clearly understood the target
group for JOI's outreach efforts was the intermarried,
how visible they viewed JOI, and how they rated JOI's
success in advancing the cause of outreach to the intermarried.
Given the nature of the dual sampling frame, the JOI list
respondents were obviously much more familiar with JOI
than the respondents from the national professional list;
approximately two-thirds of JOI list respondents indicated
that they were familiar with JOI and had read its publications
[almost four-fifths had read JOI's newsletter], and 85%
clearly/somewhat clearly understood that JOI's target
group was the Jewish intermaried. But, even
among those from the JOI list, the difficulty of gaining
visibility as a national organization and demonstrating
success was obvious. In terms of visibility,
only 6.1% of JOI list respondents
thought that JOI was "highly visible" in advancing the
cause of Jewish outreach to the intermarried, and another
40% indicated that JOI was "somewhat visible;"
for over half of the JOI list respondents, JOI was seen
as barely visible [or invisible]. Similarly the perception
of JOI's success in advancing the cause of interfaith
outreach shows that much more needs to be done to advance
the cause of outreach to the intermarried. Of those who
knew about JOI before the survey, only
12% of JOI list respondents thought that JOI had been
fairly successful in advancing the cause of outreach.
Another 60% that that JOI had been partly sucesssful,
while 28% said that JOI had not accomplished its goal.5
The data from respondents sampled from the national
list of Jewish Communal Professionals underscored JOI's
difficulty as a relatively new Jewish organization in
achieving national recognition.
Focusing on national list respondents
only:
- 59% indicated that they
were not at all familiar/not very familiar with JOI
before the survey; 27% were somewhat familiar, and
only 14% were previously very familiar with JOI;
- only 29% had ever read JOI's Newsletter or
any other publication;
- less that half indicated that they previously understood
that JOI focused on outreach to the intermarried;
6
- 43% said that they had never
heard of JOI before the survey, and another 34% thought
that JOI was barely visible in advancing the cause
of intermarriage outreach; 20% answered
somewhat visible, and only 2% of national communal
list respondents thought that JOI had been highly
visible;"
- finally, "How successful has JOI been in advancing
the cause of outreach to the intermarried?": only
9% of those who had heard of JOI before
answered "fairly succesful," while 52% said that JOI
had "partly accomplished" its goal, and 38% indicated
that JOI had not accomplished its goal.
In short, in the ten years of JOI's existence as a
national force for the cause of outreach to the Jewish
intermaried, the results of the 1996-1997 survey of
Jewish communal professionals show the need for JOI
to devote even more resources in the future. Almost
half of the respondents from the national Jewish communal
professional list had not heard of JOI before the survey;
but over 40% had not only heard of JOI, but somewhat/clearly
understood that JOI focused on outreach to the intermarried,
not to other potential outreach groups in the broad
Jewish community. Eliminating those who had never heard
of JOI before the survey, JOI has been rated by the
survey respondents as having partly accomplished its
goal of advancing the cause of outreach; 60% of JOI
list respondents and 52% of national list respondents
said that JOI had "partly accomplished its goal," while
12% and 9% respecctively indicated that JOI had been
"fairly successful."
____________________
5
If we had included respondents who had never
heard of JOI prior to the survey, the percentage who
thought JOI had been successful would have decreased.
6Twenty
four percent [24%] of Jewish communal list respondents
said that they clearly understood JOI stressed outreach
to the intermarried, and 19% said that they somewhat
understood JOI's mission; 57% had not heard of JOI before
or were not clear of JOI's outreach efforts towards
the intermarried.
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