Eitzah Center faculty conduct various research studies and evaluations designed to produce knowledge about religious communities that is useful for training religious community leaders, working with religious communities, and contributing to the general understanding of how congregations function and may be led.

There is a great deal of accumulated knowledge about how to create programs and services in religious communities that meet the spiritual needs of their members. There is less accumulated knowledge about the leadership, lay-clergy relationships, decision-making structures, and organizational processes that characterize effective religious communities. It is not enough to simply take the lessons from other types of organizations, even churches and other non-Jewish religious institutions, and transplant them onto religious communities. religious communities reflect Jewish values in fundamental ways, and fulfill a unique place in the community and in the life of Jewish people. They exist at the intersection of those values, mission-focused organizations that depend on both professionals and volunteers, and "businesses" that must sustain themselves through growth and development. It is that intersection that must be mapped through the conduct of careful research.

Eitzah Center researchers sponsor and conduct various studies designed to produce knowledge about religious communities-their organization, leadership and management, stages of development and transformation, and other aspects of organizational life. We focus on questions of interest to rabbis, cantors, lay leaders, congregants, and associations interested in advancing the state of existing knowledge about religious communities and their transformations. Our research methods involve standard social science techniques for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information. We seek to disseminate the results of our research through appropriate outlets.

Research Topics

Research topics are generated in various ways. Eitzah staff develop research projects based on their desire to further their understanding of religious communities as organizations, and clergy and lay members as leaders. These research projects are often driven by a need to create knowledge that can be taught within Institute programs. Program participants themselves may generate research topics, as they raise questions for which there are not comprehensive answers. Finally, research topics may be generated by outside agencies (foundations and philanthropies, clergy or lay leader councils and associations) that seek to deepen their understanding of issues central to the mission of Eitzah.

Eitzah's initial research program will focus on identifying the Best Practices across a sample of religious communities, varying in size and geographical region, in the following topical areas:

• Creating positive organizational cultures marked by innovation, accountability, collaboration and support
• Clarifying appropriate organizational structures and processes
• Using committees, meetings, and task forces
• Managing conflict among lay leaders
• Developing successive generations of lay leaders
• Involving significant populations of religious community members in activities
• Staff roles, responsibilities, boundaries and inter-relationships
• Staff team building processes based on Jewish values
• Managing congregational participation in the rabbinical transition process
• Managing the search and selection process
• Managing the exit process of the current senior clergy

This initial set of research topics will offer a useful foundation on which to construct increasingly sophisticated studies of interest to Eitzah program members and other constituents. The results of all such research studies will be disseminated through the Eitzah website (www.eitzah.org) as they become available.

Evaluation

Eitzah Center staff and associates also evaluate the initiatives that religious communities, associations, foundations, and others sponsor to create vibrant religious communities that best serve people's spiritual needs. Evaluation projects may assess religious community programs and services, leadership and management practices, strategic change processes, and other initiatives taken to improve religious community life.

Our evaluation model heavily emphasizes a partnership with sponsoring organizations and religious community leaders. We work closely with program developers to learn their objectives and how they are or were going about their initiatives. With their input, we design appropriate measures to assess to what extent religious community initiatives have achieved their desired ends, locate and survey the appropriate participants, and interpret the results. We then prepare evaluation reports that include aims, results, interpretations, and implications for further initiatives.

Those interested in exploring the possibility of contracting Eitzah evaluation services should contact a Center co-director for more information.