Budget Files Progress

As we are inching our way through the Budget Department files, we are pleased to announce the completion of two major subsubseries. The first, FJP (Federation of Jewish Philanthropies) Annual Agency Budget Files (our internal category M-1), is composed of 188 bankers boxes (nearly 2 football fields in length if laid end to end) and encompasses all the agencies that Federation funded from 1917 to 1986. The second subsubseries, FJP Reports of the Budget Department to the Distribution Committee, spans the years 1938 to 1982 and is comprised of 38 bankers boxes. We are also processing subject files of the Budget Department, which will become its own subsubseries; currently this subsubseries is about 35 bankers boxes in size. We also will have subsubseries for budget files pertaining to the Distribution Committee, the Functional Committee, and the Greater New York Fund, as well as 4 bankers boxes of FJP financial reports that summarize without the detail of the subsubseries above the financial information approved each year by the Board of Trustees.

The UJF M-1 subsubseries, which are the annual agency budget files after the merger of UJA and Federation (FJP) in 1986, is currently being processed. The files currently being processed from our most recent shipment are from Budget Director Steven Rosenbloom, spanning the years 1986 to 1994, and is composed of 56 bankers boxes prior to processing. The UJF files are being arranged according to the following schema:

I. Care of Aged and Infirm
II. Medical Care
III. FCVR /Human Services
IV. Jewish Education and Culture
V. Community Center Activities
VI. Community Relations/Development
VII. Camps
VIII. Subventions
Special Grants and Other Allocations
Inclusions
Designated Organizations

In the 1983-1984 fiscal year, Family, Children’s, Vocational and Rehabilitation (FCVR) Services became known as Human Services. In the 1984-1985 fiscal year, the Community Relations functional group split into Community Relations and Community Development. The Jewish Community Council (JCC) agencies became part of Community Development. In the 1985-1986 fiscal year, these two groups became part of the collective heading of Community Development.

Each year of the Rosenbloom files contains office copies which may contain duplicates of previously processed M-1 files from a different staff member’s office, as well as additional material not previously found and these folders are marked with “Supplement”. In some cases, these office files fill in missing gaps of agencies that were not previously encountered in the first shipment of UJF boxes. It appears that FJP as well as UJF maintained a system of these office files in colored folders where each color represented a functional group; for example blue folders were used for Community Centers, yellow folders indicated Designated Organizations, etc. One of the constraints of processing a large collection using our minimal processing workflow is that once boxes are completed they are sent off-site for storage, and it will not be possible to check folder by folder for duplicates. So as not to lose unique documents, we risk maintaining some duplicates.

The image depicted below is a summary of grants for the Federation Joint Services of the Lower East Side. This type of chart appears in every folder of every agency that Federation funded from the late 1970s through 1986.

Federation Joint Services of the Lower East Side, 1988-1989 Budget

Welcoming a new archivist to the project

We are happy to welcome a new archivist to the UJA-Federation of New York Archives Project, Heather Halliday. Before becoming a member of the project, Heather was the Photograph and Reference Archivist at the American Jewish Historical Society. With her formidable experience working with visual materials, we will soon be able to bring in portions of the unprocessed collection that we anticipate will have a high concentration of photographs and rely on her expertise to guide our processing and handling of photographs found in the collection.

Welcome, Heather!

Reynold Levy in the news

Reynold Levy, whose oral history is included in Federation’s collection of oral histories, is featured in this morning’s New York Times.

Reynold Levy, circa 1985

The Times article features Levy’s extraordinary fundraising skills during his tenure at Lincoln Center.  Before this phase of his career, of course, he was important to Federation as Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y, one of the agencies funded by Federation.  And before arriving at the 92nd Street Y he worked closely with Sanford Solender, who readers of this blog may remember as Federation’s Executive Vice-President from 1970-1981.  During the two years in the mid-1970s when New York City’s fiscal crisis was at its peak, Solender was simultaneously the chairman of the Community Council of Greater New York’s Task Force on the New York City Crisis.  Levy was the Staff Director of the task force, and the two corresponded and met regularly.  Levy’s memories of Solender in his oral history give a vivid picture of the kind of man Solender was during his Federation years.

Mission Statement of the Community Services Division, 1983

In the near future we plan to begin work in earnest on the Community Services Division files.  This material is expected to contain the files of the Federation professional staff in charge of every aspect of agency business.  Included among these staff members should be Martha Selig, Jack Ukeles, Donald Feldstein and others.

The following document was found in the Budget Department files, because they received this memo from Jack Ukeles when he was Executive Director of the Community Services Division.  Written in 1983, the memo requests that each department within his division submit a departmental mission statement.  To start the process, he distributed the mission statement for the division.

Community Services Mission statement 1983, page 1

and page 2:

Community Services Mission statement 1983, page 2

Perhaps when we get to Jack Ukeles’ files (9 boxes are listed under his name) we’ll find all of the departmental mission statements.

We may be able to use this mission statement to help craft our historical note about the division as an aid to researchers.  And although by 1986 Federation had merged with UJA, the work performed by this division had to continue in some form and may have retained the form and functions developed by Federation.  We’ll know more when we see the Community Services materials in the coming months, perhaps 300 boxes or more, and when we get to the files of UJA-Federation from 1986 to 2000 sometime next year.