Year In Review

For Detroit, A Year
Of Tighter Fiscal Control

A "flat" Campaign during recessionary times causes the community to

re-evaulate itself and make changes.

PHIL JACOBS

Managing Editor

2

HiIlel leachers went on strike for higher wages.

ords like "strategic
planning," "Days of
Decision," and "prior-
ity budgeting" set a
constant undertone
during the Detroit
Jewish community's
year of 5752. There
were major changes, victories and de-
feats, but most of them seemed set
against a backdrop of a need for serious
fiscal responsibility.
In past years, Federation agencies
could overextend themselves within rea-
son with the knowledge that the um-
brella agency would pick up the deficit.
This year, however, that would change.
A "flat" Allied Jewish Campaign forced
Federation to insist that agencies cut
back at least 5 percent.
A flat Campaign drove the Federa-
tion to "Days of Decision," an early sum-
mer effort to close this year's Campaign
and give Campaign and Federation
leadership a more accurate idea of what
monies they actually had. Days of De-
cision brought the sluggish Campaign
back to last year's total of $26 million.
It also brought in hundreds of first-time
givers.
Federation moved its headquarters
from what for years was the address of
the organized Jewish community, 163
Madison downtown, to its new location
in Bloomfield Hills on Telegraph Road.
The headquarters was dedicated in the
name of worldwide Jewish communi-
ty leader and philanthropist, Max Fish-
er.
Even with its shiny new address, the
Federation was watching its agencies
like never before. It set up a committee
to manage the Jewish Home for the
Aged, which had taken some $4 million
in supplemental allocations, an amount
Federation could ill afford.
Federation also stepped into the
Agency for Jewish Education. A Giles
Committee report advised Federation
to leave the business of teaching ele-
mentary school age children to area syn-
agogues. It also brought in Howard
Gelberd of San Francisco as its newly
appointed executive director.
Tlvs was a year, though, that hit area