The Jewish Leadership Collaborative is a volunteer-driven enterprise. Our governance structure involves community volunteers who provide strategic direction and oversight for the Jewish Community of Western North Carolina.
The Jewish Leadership Collaborative of WNC
The idea of a Jewish Leadership Collaborative originated in a strategic plan of the Asheville Jewish Community Center (JCC). The leadership of the local Jewish community organizations could get together on a periodic basis to discuss issues of common concern, with quarterly gatherings initially run by the JCC.
With a grant from the Tzedek Social Justice Fund (formerly the Amy Mandel and Katina Rhodis Fund), the Jewish Leadership Collaborative of Western North Carolina (JLC-WNC) adopted a Dynamic Governance model for leadership. Meetings are now held 8-10 times a year, rotating to locations where there’s active community involvement.
Our dynamic governance works as a sociocracy, aiming to achieve solutions that create a harmonious social group, as well as productive organizations: Presenting issues, gathering input from everyone at the table, agreeing to a solution, and revisiting the problem to see how a solution is working—adjusting as necessary.
The advancement of our region’s Jewish non-profits depends on the continued development of our volunteer leadership. To gather a larger pool of potential leaders, the Collaborative’s members are not asked if they’d serve — but for those they’d value as good candidates, and why. In this way, members and donors are selecting those they’d like to have as leaders, themselves.