Art Paikowsky video transcript, Oct. 6, 2023
Hi, I’m Art Paikowsky. I am the co-chairman of the Moving Forward Together campaign at Temple Chai. Unfortunately, my co-chairman Lanny Lahr is not able to be here, because he’s traveling.
I’m sure that many of you have been awaiting this first message from us regarding the progress of the campaign, which I’m going to get to in a few minutes.
But in the meantime, I want to share something about the process. When I agreed to become the co-chairman, David [Weiner] and I had a conversation. And I said to David, look, if we’re going to do this campaign, we’re going to do it right. Which means that we have to establish credibility with our donors. And to establish credibility to our, with our donors, we have to have three components before we go out and start talking to people.
The first is we have to develop a beautiful plan. And when you hear from Nathan Goldberg, I’m sure and you see the renders and all the things that are going to come in his video, you’re going to recognize that this is an absolutely phenomenal project.
Secondly, we have to have a corresponding budget that’s defensible. And so, we turn to Betsy Zangara, who’s an amazing young woman who actually worked tirelessly on this and develop that comprehensive budget, which shows that the total all in cost for the project is a bit over $15 million.
The third element was to create a three-year pro-forma budget to be able to satisfy people who are going to wonder whether once we build the new campus, that we were going to have enough resources for it to be sustainable.
I’m pleased to stay to say that in those projections, we anticipate being revenue-positive in year three, which I think is great.
I will tell you also, that the first question that I asked Betsy, when she presented it, to me, it was whether or not this was a conservative estimate, and she assured me that it would. In looking at that what I want to say to substantiate this is that it’s because we made very conservative estimates about the growth of our membership over the course of the first three years.
Frankly, based on the interest that we’re seeing already, with new members literally joining every day, I think we’re going to blow those numbers out of the water, which means much more income than is anticipated in that three year pro-forma budget.
All right, so now we go on to the campaign, simultaneous to those things happening. We had the finance committee working on the numbers, we have the building committee working on the project, then we have the fundraising side.
I have to tell you, that around the fact that the rabbis weren’t willing to move the High Holy Days to November, we had a lot of closed down days in terms of being able to get in front of people.
Having said that, I want to tell you that our fundraising team has been remarkable.
All of the clergy have been directly involved in the process of reaching out to donors, making appointments, going to appointments, Wendy [Cohen] has been doing a phenomenal job in terms of managing the infrastructure of the campaign, which is meant that it’s freed up Lanny and I to go out on a substantial number of those asks, the bottom line, which you’re all waiting for is that as of this morning, literally, while we closed our second million-dollar gift, we are now at $4 million that we’ve raised so far.
Now, when I say $4 million, I’m telling you, when it comes to fundraising, there is no fluff in there. There are no projections in there, there are no wishes in there. Those are concrete pledges where a person has said I am giving X, okay — and we’re gathering the pledge forms as I speak.
I feel very comfortable telling you right now, that as of today, we’re a bit over $4 million.
Now beyond that, we’ve made one very substantial additional request that I’m hoping will be closed by the time we get to the board meeting. I understand this is a projection, this is a hope. But there have been enough conversations to believe that this isn’t unwarranted as a projection of where we might be going forward as we get closer to the congregational vote.
I’m sorry, I think I’m misstated. The board meeting is coming up on the 10th. We probably won’t know before the board meeting, but we certainly will know I believe before the congregational meeting later in the month of October.
Now, we all understand that we’re on the clock here. And that’s part of why we pushed so hard to make as many of these meetings as possible. And we’ve actually closed at this date 27 individual gifts. We’ve been successful people have responded, nobody’s turning us away. We’re having these conversations, and we anticipate the need to have many, many more to get to the ultimate goal which is $9 million.
While I told you that ultimately the cost of the project is 15 million dollars, you will probably remember that the sale of the original property, which I’m standing in now netted us over $3 million.
The only expenses that had been charged off on that $3 million are expenses associated with the current project, which are architects’ fees and things like that. So that has been managed very, very tightly — and well.
Secondly, we’ve been to the banks. And we don’t feel comfortable borrowing more than $3 million, but we know that we can borrow $3 million. And so that accounts for the first six of it, which means we have a net of $9 million dollars that we still have to have to raise.
I’m certainly hoping that even in short order, we may be up another 500,000, maybe as soon as early in this week.
But having said that, it’s going to be up to all of you to determine your level of comfort when the vote comes to move forward with the acquisition of land, and that decision has to be made in the next several weeks.
With that said, I think you have a pretty good idea of where it is that we are right now. We’re all very energized. We brought a lot of passion to this.
I will say one last thing, one of the things that I believed when I decided to take this project on. And yes, it’s a lot of work was that part of the reason was because we have outstanding leadership at the temple right now.
It’s impossible to say no to David Weiner because he’s just amazing. I mean, he’s literally on this 24/7. And I’ve gotten to know all the members of the clergy in a much more personal way. And I think they’re all amazing. Wendy’s been tremendous, you know.
When you have a situation like that, I think we all have supported one another. Whenever you have a fundraising campaign like this, you have surprises, and the surprises sometimes are very positive and sometimes not so.
So, there are times that we have to feed off one another to make sure that we regularly bring the energy that we need to have to every single meeting that we have with a potential funder, so I remain optimistic. I’m proud that I’m associated with this project and with Temple Chai and with that, for now I’m gonna sign off.
Thank you very much.
Hi, I’m Art Paikowsky. I am the co-chairman of the Moving Forward Together campaign at Temple Chai. Unfortunately, my co-chairman Lanny Lahr is not able to be here, because he’s traveling.
I’m sure that many of you have been awaiting this first message from us regarding the progress of the campaign, which I’m going to get to in a few minutes.
But in the meantime, I want to share something about the process. When I agreed to become the co-chairman, David [Weiner] and I had a conversation. And I said to David, look, if we’re going to do this campaign, we’re going to do it right. Which means that we have to establish credibility with our donors. And to establish credibility to our, with our donors, we have to have three components before we go out and start talking to people.
The first is we have to develop a beautiful plan. And when you hear from Nathan Goldberg, I’m sure and you see the renders and all the things that are going to come in his video, you’re going to recognize that this is an absolutely phenomenal project.
Secondly, we have to have a corresponding budget that’s defensible. And so, we turn to Betsy Zangara, who’s an amazing young woman who actually worked tirelessly on this and develop that comprehensive budget, which shows that the total all in cost for the project is a bit over $15 million.
The third element was to create a three-year pro-forma budget to be able to satisfy people who are going to wonder whether once we build the new campus, that we were going to have enough resources for it to be sustainable.
I’m pleased to stay to say that in those projections, we anticipate being revenue-positive in year three, which I think is great.
I will tell you also, that the first question that I asked Betsy, when she presented it, to me, it was whether or not this was a conservative estimate, and she assured me that it would. In looking at that what I want to say to substantiate this is that it’s because we made very conservative estimates about the growth of our membership over the course of the first three years.
Frankly, based on the interest that we’re seeing already, with new members literally joining every day, I think we’re going to blow those numbers out of the water, which means much more income than is anticipated in that three year pro-forma budget.
All right, so now we go on to the campaign, simultaneous to those things happening. We had the finance committee working on the numbers, we have the building committee working on the project, then we have the fundraising side.
I have to tell you, that around the fact that the rabbis weren’t willing to move the High Holy Days to November, we had a lot of closed down days in terms of being able to get in front of people.
Having said that, I want to tell you that our fundraising team has been remarkable.
All of the clergy have been directly involved in the process of reaching out to donors, making appointments, going to appointments, Wendy [Cohen] has been doing a phenomenal job in terms of managing the infrastructure of the campaign, which is meant that it’s freed up Lanny and I to go out on a substantial number of those asks, the bottom line, which you’re all waiting for is that as of this morning, literally, while we closed our second million-dollar gift, we are now at $4 million that we’ve raised so far.
Now, when I say $4 million, I’m telling you, when it comes to fundraising, there is no fluff in there. There are no projections in there, there are no wishes in there. Those are concrete pledges where a person has said I am giving X, okay — and we’re gathering the pledge forms as I speak.
I feel very comfortable telling you right now, that as of today, we’re a bit over $4 million.
Now beyond that, we’ve made one very substantial additional request that I’m hoping will be closed by the time we get to the board meeting. I understand this is a projection, this is a hope. But there have been enough conversations to believe that this isn’t unwarranted as a projection of where we might be going forward as we get closer to the congregational vote.
I’m sorry, I think I’m misstated. The board meeting is coming up on the 10th. We probably won’t know before the board meeting, but we certainly will know I believe before the congregational meeting later in the month of October.
Now, we all understand that we’re on the clock here. And that’s part of why we pushed so hard to make as many of these meetings as possible. And we’ve actually closed at this date 27 individual gifts. We’ve been successful people have responded, nobody’s turning us away. We’re having these conversations, and we anticipate the need to have many, many more to get to the ultimate goal which is $9 million.
While I told you that ultimately the cost of the project is 15 million dollars, you will probably remember that the sale of the original property, which I’m standing in now netted us over $3 million.
The only expenses that had been charged off on that $3 million are expenses associated with the current project, which are architects’ fees and things like that. So that has been managed very, very tightly — and well.
Secondly, we’ve been to the banks. And we don’t feel comfortable borrowing more than $3 million, but we know that we can borrow $3 million. And so that accounts for the first six of it, which means we have a net of $9 million dollars that we still have to have to raise.
I’m certainly hoping that even in short order, we may be up another 500,000, maybe as soon as early in this week.
But having said that, it’s going to be up to all of you to determine your level of comfort when the vote comes to move forward with the acquisition of land, and that decision has to be made in the next several weeks.
With that said, I think you have a pretty good idea of where it is that we are right now. We’re all very energized. We brought a lot of passion to this.
I will say one last thing, one of the things that I believed when I decided to take this project on. And yes, it’s a lot of work was that part of the reason was because we have outstanding leadership at the temple right now.
It’s impossible to say no to David Weiner because he’s just amazing. I mean, he’s literally on this 24/7. And I’ve gotten to know all the members of the clergy in a much more personal way. And I think they’re all amazing. Wendy’s been tremendous, you know.
When you have a situation like that, I think we all have supported one another. Whenever you have a fundraising campaign like this, you have surprises, and the surprises sometimes are very positive and sometimes not so.
So, there are times that we have to feed off one another to make sure that we regularly bring the energy that we need to have to every single meeting that we have with a potential funder, so I remain optimistic. I’m proud that I’m associated with this project and with Temple Chai and with that, for now I’m gonna sign off.
Thank you very much.