By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calf. —Imagine you raise funds for a Jewish organization in a Midwestern area like the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.  Where would you go during the cold winter?

If you are like Jay Jacobson, the dean of Jewish fundraising professionals in Minnesota, you would head for Florida or for Southern California—in other words, to some place warm, to which Minnesota “snowbirds” flock to escape the blizzards.  That way you would be able to continue fundraising without missing a beat.

Jacobson, a cousin of my wife Nancy, stopped off to visit us at the end of such a tour that had him meeting with Minnesotans wintering in such places as Palm Springs and La Jolla.  We were also joined by his wife, Lorita.

Jacobson in his lifetime has raised many millions of dollars for Jewish causes that have included the Jewish Federation of Minneapolis, the national United Jewish Appeal, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and, for the last 13 years, for the Sholom Community Alliance in the Minnesota twin cities area.

The Sholom Community Alliance provides home care, meals on wheels, housing, nursing, physical rehabilitation, adult day care and other services for approximately 1,000 Jewish residents in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul region.  With roots reaching back about 100 years, the Sholom Community Alliance has probably touched the lives of every Jewish family in Minneapolis/ St. Paul either in direct service or in aiding a friend or a relative.  There are about 40,000 Jews in the area.

                                                                                                                                       Jay Jacobson
                                                                                                                    
Currently, Jacobson says he has raised $28 million toward the $40 million necessary to build a modern complex for Jewish seniors in St. Paul.  When completed in mid-2008, the St. Paul complex will have apartments for independent living,  assisted living, two floors for a nursing home, a rehabilitation wing, an adult day care center, and a kitchen preparing Meals on Wheels—facilities that also can be found at a sister Sholom Community Alliance facility in Minneapolis.

However, in addition, the St. Paul facility also will have its own therapy pool as well as a hospice floor able to accommodate 12 patients and their families.

Jacobson said he believes this may be the first Jewish hospice to be built “between the coasts,” and he credited Lynn Johnson, a large liquor distributor, for pushing to make the dream a reality.

The approach of death can be one of the most spiritual times in the life of a patient and his or her family, yet now hospice patients are required to go to facilities where the personnel may be unfamiliar with Jewish ritual and Jewish dietary laws, Jacobson said. 

Kosher food is served at all Sholom Community Alliance facilities.  There is a rabbi on staff.  There won’t be the symbols of any other religion on the walls of the hospice. And  each room will be large enough for a family member to sleep in a chair that converts to a bed. There also will be separate apartment units available in case the whole family wishes to stay for an extended visit.

Jacobson said that patients in wheel chairs will be able to roll right down into the specially designed therapy pool. It also will serve more ambulatory patients. “The older people get the more we tend to fall down and break bones,” he said. “ Well it has been proven  that people  who use those non-weight bearing exercises, as in a therapy pool, have 30 percent less stress fractures than those that don't. So we will have a big outpatient and inpatient therapy center.”

Sholom Community Alliance also is in the process of  developing  50  independent living unit within a privately-funded, 1,000 unit Victoria Park complex.  

Jacobson, who doesn’t plan to retire until he turns 75, says his parents, the late Rose and Abe Jacobson of Louisville, Ky., kept a family scrapbook in which there is a 1945 news clipping, “when I was 11 years old, that said I was part of a youth campaign and I donated $5 and I helped collect money, so I have been doing it for 60 years.”

After graduating from the University of Kentucky at Lexington, and obtaining a degree in pharmacy, Jacobson owned a pharmacy, a liquor store and a credit furniture store. But more than for his businesses, he had a passion for causes.  He became involved both in the Jewish Federation and in a program sponsored by the NAACP to help young Black entrepreneurs. He also served on a committee established by the Louisville school board to advise on how text books could appropriately represent the experiences of minority groups.

His volunteer work for the Federation led to him becoming part of the Young National Leadership Cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal, and before long the realization hit him that this was what he loved doing.  “I was 38 years old and I went back to get a master's degree in community organization and at 40 I went to Minneapolis as a professional fundraiser. I was campaign director of r the Minneapolis Federation.”

It was there that Jacobson pioneered some techniques that are in the standard repertoire among fundraisers for Jewish causes today.  In the past, he said, a community’s fundraising goals would be established by  professional staff members, who then would go out and sell the community.

 “I came up with a concept that the goal should be set by people who give large amounts of money,” Jacobson said.  “So, if we would give the facts to 35-40 people who (habitually) give $25,000 and over, and  tell them what we need and why we need it, they will set the goal and then they will give the requisite level….” .

Another Jacobson technique was to find a major figure in industry with a record for supporting the United Jewish Appeal—“someone every other businessman would like to meet”—and to create an opportunity for them all to get together at a hotel, where each potential donor could have some personal time to talk business with the mega-star.

”So I would raise half or more than half of the campaign in a few days,” said Jacobson 

After spending 10 years at the Jewish Federation in Minneapolis, Jacobson moved over in 1983 to the national United Jewish Appeal where he took charge of the major gifts division.  He personally shepherded members of the “Prime Ministers Club”—people who donated upward of $100,000 to the United Jewish Appeal-- on first-cabin trips to Israel, where they would have sit-downs with prime ministers and other important figures, or to such other venues as the Super Bowl in Miami, which was the centerpiece of a three-day trip in which Jewish concerns filled the other days.

On several occasions, Jacobson chartered the supersonic Concorde to take the donors to a air field in northern Israel to receive a top-level briefing on the capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces.  On one such occasion, he said, two Israeli jets rose up over the Mediterranean to escort the Concorde.  The military jets dipped their wings in salute to the donors—a gesture that Jacobson said “still chokes me up"—and escorted the plane into Israel.

After they landed at the airfield, an alarm was sounded and the Air Force pilots scrambled their jets into the air, one aircraft taking off on the tail of another with hardly any space in between, Jacobson aid.  Such surprise drills are a standard part of training, and the Israeli brass decided to surprise not only the pilots but the philanthropic visitors.

On another occasion, Ariel Sharon—then minister of defense—arrived at the airfield by helicopter to meet the donors.  On yet another trip, Jacobson recalled, a bus filled with community leaders drove into Israeli-occupied Lebanon under heavy guard, so they could get a sense of the terrain.

Although he has been in “big rooms” with numerous prime ministers dating back to Golda Meir, Jacobson said he got to go into small rooms—that is meeting rooms with just a few people—with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.  Jacobson said he’s proud that the late Rabin would call him by his name.

In 1992, Jacobson left UJA on the assumption he was going to work for the Israel Tennis Centers, but “they changed their mind,” so he started his own consulting business. One of his first clients was the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank which boasted such Middle East analysts as Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, when they were out of government.  Before long, he became development director of the institute.

Jacobson stayed only a short time before he was lured home to Minneapolis by the Sholom Community Alliance, part of the attraction being that his and Lorita’s daughter, Peggy, and son-in-law, Joel Mandel, had taken residence. Joel today is director for major gifts and endowments of the Courage Center, which operates facilities for people with disabilities. Now grandchildren Aleeza and Margo also live  in the Twin Cities area.