What does it look like to be an Israeli nonprofit fundraiser right now?

What does it look like to be an Israeli nonprofit fundraiser right now?

I can tell you what it looks like to be me, at least.

Let me backtrack to what it looked like to be an Israeli nonprofit fundraiser in August.?

*

We were nearing the end of the summer months, when so many of our organizations went into quiet modes. These August quiet modes are a lifeline to the Israeli working parents that we are at Landman Strategic Fundraising, the only way my team manages summer after summer to juggle our children's ridiculous disjointed August schedules with our work.

We know that anything truly ambitious we want to do for our clients needs to wait until September, as none of the donors are around or receptive and neither are the clients, though our work must continue. So we take all the tedious ongoing work items that often get pushed to the back burner and focus the time on those items, ready to spring back into action in September.

September comes, the kids go to school, and we immediately make fun of ourselves for having been so naive as to think once again that September would ever be normal. Don't we know nothing is truly stable in this country until "acharei hachagim" (after the holidays, ie October)??

We get through half-work-weeks interrupted by High Holidays (throw in my oldest son's bar mitzvah in there too), squeezing in everything we can in the days that we have, looking ahead to the weeklong holiday at its end, Sukkot in week 1 of October - both in resentment of the lack of work time available to us to allow us to do all we want to do for our clients, and in excitement for the full week off.

Naava Shafner and I write to each other over Slack on Thursday, September 28th all about big plans we have for October 8th and how excited we are to get back to the "shigra", referencing the Israeli "chazara lashigra"-- post-holiday return to work routine-finally!

When we come out of the Simchat Torah holiday and begin reading and hearing all the things we never could have imagined happening -- murder, rape, kidnapping, beheading, burning -- all while keeping happy faces, waiting to discuss more in detail after the kids would go to bed, Dani gets a call and all of a sudden we're packing his bag for him to go northward to his base as a reservist. We're telling the kids that those sirens we heard over the holiday were more than just far-away rockets but they were the beginning of a war and some people have been hurt.

As Dani continues dressing into his uniform, I tell my 3 year old, who has yet to experience Dani leaving for miluim (reserves), that Abba is a soldier, and soldiers are people who have to leave home to keep us safe, and that Abba is going to go away for a little while to keep us safe. And he leaves and I put the kids to bed. And then, like the rest of the country, I scroll late into the hours of the night.

When I wake up the next morning it is not at all the day to whose arrival Naava and I were counting down the days, though it certainly is busy. We work around the clock, because some of our clients are the backbone providing some of the most impactful, inspiring relief work this country has seen, and we are jumping into action to get emergency campaigns up online to make sure they can meet the need. And the clients that aren't are counting their dead among program alumni and friends, and we are making sure to honor their legacies through respectful bereavement announcements - one after another after another.

My boys are thrilled that in our practically-no-screens house I let them sit for hours on a computer so that I can push through, until I realize just how neglected they are, that they are actually sick of the glorious screen time.

I take breaks only to make them meals, go to the bathroom, send them off to friends, and put them to bed, often going as late as noon, 2 PM, 5:40 PM once! - before realizing I haven't yet had anything to eat or drink.

At one point a friend texts, offering to visit, and I don't see the message until many hours later. I answer her that I am sorry I missed it, as I was working, and she asks me if my clients are really working right now? Is my staff working now? And I realize just how much the nonprofit sector carries us through the most difficult times, and how easy it is to never notice.

In that entire first week I sleep a total of 4.5 hours. And I'll tell you, of the 2.5 weeks total that have passed since October 7th, that week was my most stable.

I didn't have the luxury to feel. I didn't have the time to fear for my husband's safety or grieve the loss of so many innocent people. I was driving important work that was making a real difference in war time and I was providing my kids stability. And I didn't have the chance to truly process the horrifying events that had taken place.

A week in, I get the greatest gift -- Dani is sent home. The army decided that in the north, where he is based, certain kinds of soldiers will stay and others will go home, and he is in the latter group. Will he be called to return? It is possible, and we won't know it's happening until it happens. But for now he is here and we are blessed. When he enters the house I crumble and the tears pour. And since then I am a mess, like everyone else in this country.

I am no longer in survival mode. It's been a week and a half since I allowed myself to feel, and I am feeling it all, my soul broken. I continue to be uplifted by my work, the organizations and institutions I support, but the darkness that necessitates their goodness overcomes me. It cannot be any other way. When every day brings more death announcements, more funerals, more graphic accounts of barbaric attacks on our people, more silencing of our wails, more indifference to the direct threat on our lives, there is no way to go back to what was. There is no way to ever feel truly safe.

Fundraising is not about being a beggar, about "schnoring." It's all about building relationships between people with shared visions for change, so that they can bring their shared resources together to make that change happen. I spend a lot of my time guiding organizations through making this paradigm shift and then working together to identify the connections they have within their network to others who share their visions for change. So often we make some progress and then they say to me, "but I am not someone with 'connections.' I'm not that kind of person. Even if we do identify such people, there's no way I can make a connection" - To which I respond, "If we were anywhere else in the world I might accept your claim, but we are Israeli. In this tiny country, in our 'mishpacha' mentality, everyone is 3 degrees of separation away, TOPS." We are all feeling this now, we are all mishpacha. Previously, I used to tell friends in the US that everyone in Israel knows someone who is somehow connected to a war or terror attack. Today we can say that everyone in Israel knows someone who was murdered, everyone has lost someone.

This is why I have messages sitting in my inbox from relatives and friends overseas telling me they're thinking of me, I have tags here online from colleagues, and they are all sitting unanswered. First I was too numb to answer and too busy running from task to task. And now I'm feeling too much, unable to answer in a one-line Whatsapp what needs to be pages and pages long. Unable to answer that I am inspired more than ever by my country, connected more than ever to my people, and driven more than ever to provide support to some of the most important initiatives in the world. But so much more than that I am so shattered by evil in my midst, so betrayed by those who will not name it for what it is, and so fearful for my safety and for my children's futures.

It's taken two and a half weeks to be ready to even say anything on any platform about it, so maybe I'm now in a third stage of processing that is sharing. Maybe even oversharing. I guess I'll find out.