By Donald H. Harrison

What was the real cause for the closure of the San Diego office of the National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly known as the National Conference of Christian and Jews.)?

The organization’s name change was part of the problem, according to Rabbis Martin Lawson of Temple Emanu-El and Leonard Rosenthal of Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

“After it changed the designation from ‘Christians and Jews,’ it seemed to have lost its identity,” suggested Rosenthal, a Conservative rabbi who also serves as president of the San Diego Rabbinical Association.

“It was once a great organization, vibrant, doing wonderful work with Camp Anytown, and the leadership suffered under several directors,” said Lawson, a Reform rabbi and former board member for the local NCCJ office. 

“The problem was that it lost its sense of direction. … in its shift to serve a more diverse community, it was difficult to make the transition. … It lost its identity.”

The name change had been described as necessary to show that the organization welcomed many groups, not just Christians and Jews.  But, in so doing, it may have lost some of its core supporters.

If NCCJ simply had switched from one name to the other, perhaps some of the confusion might have been mitigated.  But, first it changed its name from the National Conference of Christians and Jews to “the National Conference,” according to Cheryl Kendrick.

That prompted nearly everyone to ask, “the National Conference of what?” recalled Kendrick, a past president of the local chapter who serves now as a national vice president of the organization. Thereafter, it attempted to be known simply by the initials “NCCJ”—which is how the organization is listed in the local telephone book. 

Another factor in the local office’s demise, according to observers, may have been   turf battles between Kendrick—an ally of NCCJ’s National President Sanford Cloud—and the last two local directors, Ashley Phillips and Ron Lanoue. 

One source, who asked not to be identified, said there was so much internal politicking going on that the staff’s attention was diverted from such essentials as raising money and expanding programming. The battling culminated in September when Lanoue was let go as the local chapter’s executive director.  Since then Pedro Anaya has been serving as a caretaker director, whose job is to shut the office down by the end of the year. 

He said a number of community groups have agreed to work together on the MLK breakfast but the fate of  such programs as Camp Anytown and Minitown are uncertain. 

Don McEvoy, who was regional director of NCCJ from 1988 to his retirement in 1991, said before the name was changed, the organization promoted regular meetings among religious groups to discuss emerging problems.  Had that philosophy still been in effect, he said, NCCJ might have promoted dialogue between the Jewish community and the Presbyterian Church, which recently called for a boycott of certain Israeli products. (Instead the American Jewish Committee initiated such a dialogue).

McEvoy was succeeded as executive director by Carol Hallstrom, whom he described as a phenomenal director.  “I had told national headquarters about all we could raise in San Diego was $100,000, and she went right out and raised $300,000,” he said.  “I figured 500 people was the most that would attend the Martin Luther King breakfast.  She got 3,000.”

Camp Anytown, the continuance of which is now in doubt, used to bring students from across the county in a camp setting to role play and confront their prejudices. Hallstrom also developed Camp Mini Town in which students and teachers from the same school would spend a similarly intensive weekend together dealing with issues or race, religion, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Hallstrom now works as a community relations officer in Chicago for the Department of Homeland Security, During her NCCJ tenure, she said.  “we had a solid programmatic reputation, and as a result we had widespread community support. … I’m not familiar enough with the program activity of the last few years, so I can’t assess whether it stayed on a high level.  If it did, it would be hard for me to understand why that core support didn’t stay in place.”

Morris Casuto, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, commented that “nonprofits live and die by fundraising. There isn’t a lot of give, if either the regional or the national organization is in trouble.”

Julie Dubick, a former local board member, expressed a hope that the closure will be “more like a Chapter 11 than a Chapter 7”—meaning that a financial reorganization is possible. Kendrick suggested that NCCJ chapters could be reinstituted for tax purposes as separate charitable institutions—so that if a chapter runs up debts it won’t drag down the national organization.

Sam Sokolove, regional director of the American Jewish Committee, said whatever the immediate reasons for the closure of the NCCJ office, the message to other organizations in the civil rights community is clear.  New donors must be developed all the time and coaxed to become actively involved in the programming.  Philanthropists of longstanding—committed to the goals for which the organization was founded—have a way of dying off.