Hi there! I hope that you are all well.
How about a total operational shift? Plenty of our synagogue’s struggle to meet their budgets. The knee jerk reaction is to cut on the quality of our product (program). This will, in turn, allow us to save more money and help us find our way out of the red. Let us be open to another way. The president of my shul, West Side Institutional Synagogue, decided that we should order 960 (no mystical symbolism, that was simply the number that worked with the baker) HamenTashens for Purim from the finest bakery in town. 960! We need to save money! Our president ran out and bought doggie bags and made sure that everybody leaving Megilah reading received a complimentary bag of HamenTashens. Simple, sweet, and memorable. Several days later we had three new members sign up. That just paid for four times the value of our HamenTashens. Not to mention the compounding value of new members + the compounding value of treating your long time members. Don’t cut on quality, don’t cut on taking care of your membership.
See you around,
Shlomo Einhorn
Rabbi of West Side Institutional Synagogue - www.wsisny.org
Director of WINGS – A OU Synagogue Consulting Group – http://www.ou.org/synagogue_services/wings
