Rich Walter
Understanding the needs of our community is a critical piece of the work of Jewish Federation. Last year, our ecosystem collectively looked at the data from the Pew Survey on Jewish Americans in 2020 as a starting point. At that time, I wrote about the opportunities that Pew provided us as communal planners in addition to the challenges and trends.
Recognizing that Pew is just one tool, this year, we partnered with our colleagues at Jewish Federations of North America on a three-part education series focused on data and trends for engagement in Jewish life. These sessions incorporated not just data from Pew, but also from a number of individual community studies and other surveys conducted over the past five years. If you were not able to attend these sessions, the recordings, as well as links to additional studies are available here.
Last year, we began setting aside dollars during the allocations process to invest in targeted research to understand more about specific needs in our community. We recently completed the first of these projects, a Landscape Analysis of early childhood education in Greater Atlanta conducted by Rosov Consulting. The goal of this study was to inform potential new investors of following dimensions of the Jewish Early Childhood Education market in greater Atlanta: geography and access, operational and fiscal health, and pathways and barriers to enrollment. We will be sharing more details on the findings with targeted groups of stakeholders over the coming weeks. If you would like to learn more, please contact me.
Finally, very soon we will be launching a community snapshot study to help us better understand the composition of our Atlanta Jewish community. This will help all of us to better understand the needs of our community now and in the future.
We will issue a link to a short survey (10-15 minutes) that will allow you to participate. You can also share the link with friends and family in Atlanta’s Jewish community.
We hope you will participate in this research and thank you in advance for your help. Keep an eye on your email in the coming weeks for the link to the survey.
