Joseph Gitler, Founder and Chariman of Leket Israel
change the world 12
[00:00:00] Guest: Welcome
[00:00:06] Tzivia: to season two of the change, the world podcast. This season, I'm going to be speaking, not only with nonprofit founders, but with other nonprofit leaders, such as fundraising experts, communications, executives, and board members. We'll be addressing some of the big issues facing Jewish nonprofits today and brainstorming ways that we can come together to address them.
Thanks for joining. [00:00:30]
Hi everyone. Thanks for tuning in today. I have Joseph Getler with me. He is
the founder and chairman of ETT Israel. Joseph, thank you so much for being
here. Thanks [00:00:39]
Guest: for the opportunity.
[00:00:41] Tzivia: Pleasure. So let's dive right in. Tell me a little bit about
yourself, about your background and how you got into the nonprofit world.
[00:00:47] Guest: Okay. So I, uh, I don't sound Israeli, but I do live in Israel. But I do live in ran, which is not the best place to get an Israeli accent. I grew up in New York, uh, Washington Heights, New York, Teaneck, New Jersey, [00:01:00]
Riverdale, New York. After I got married to my wife, Lela who's from Toronto, grew up a very, I would say a typical modern, Orthodox Jewish background.
Jewish day schools, high schools. She university had a very brief legal career
before we made Aliah 10 months and happily living in Israel for the past 22 years. I think, uh, my involvement in the nonprofit world. Would've happened
differently if [00:01:30] we hadn't moved to Israel, I'm sure I would've gotten involved.
Like many of us do in the day school. I would've sent my children to the high
school who knows the synagogue, the Mikva, whatever it may be. And that
probably would've been, and that's a wonderful way to help the community. But by coming to Israel, a even right after my Ali, I got involved in the type of
charities.
That maybe religious Jews don't have the time to get involved in more secular causes, whether it be the local hospital, which we. [00:02:00] Utilized, but maybe you don't have the time to get involved with or the, or the money cuz you're committed elsewhere. And then about three years after moving, I was working in a family business here and I just got very concerned by the wage gaps, by the struggles I was hearing coming from so many Israelis, unfortunately that hasn't changed much, whether it be here or the United States.
And on the other hand, like, uh, many of the fortunate few. Seeing the
staggering amount of food [00:02:30] that was getting wasted, whether it was from hotels or weddings barn, bat mitzvahs, we were going to, and I made the lucky decision to say, talk is cheap. Let's see if I can do something about it. And with very little thought, I would say mostly a Lark, a three month sort of sabbatical has continued for 19 years.
So wow. Um, yeah, so it. It was happenstance. It was, it was the right decision for the right [00:03:00] time. And we found a niche, which is surprising because I'm sure many of the viewers here may be somewhat familiar with the Israeli nonprofit scene. It's very robust and it's, uh, chasing after everyone's dollars or sheels depending where you are.
And so to find something so basic, a food bank, which is so typical in the United States and every major. City in the United States was surprising when I discovered in Israel that that really didn't exist. There [00:03:30] were a myriad of charities feeding the poor, but no one who was just centralizing the rescue and redistribution of safe, nutritious, healthy food, and making sure it got to those same agencies.
Wow. So tell
[00:03:45] Tzivia: me how it looked when the organization started, what the services were and what the scope was and what it looks like today.
[00:03:51] Guest: Okay. So when we started, it was me and my Aliah station
wagon, which generally, if you're aware you get a tax break for [00:04:00] the first car you buy in Israel, you wouldn't typically use that car for the transportation of cooked meals and the spills and smells that go with that.
So it was my car. Our refrigerator in our house for the first few months that moved on relatively quickly to the same car, but then multiple refrigerators in the garage. And then things moved quickly. I would say after the first six months, our first small warehouse, our first refrigerated truck, [00:04:30] maybe the first six months we delivered to 10 nonprofits.
In the area around where I live. Right. Farba Celia pickups were mostly in that
area for the first few months. And then we started to recruit volunteers and then within a year, maybe we even had a mini strategic plan and we've really just gone from strength to strength. That's a story of Luckett. Sure we've had challenges like everyone does, but overall in a pretty smooth run as [00:05:00] things go today, we're an organization that has 120 employees.
Wow. Uh, we have a budget of, I'd say about 24 million that's cash. That's what we're gonna spend this year. On salaries on gas. Unfortunately, the inflation is killing us logistics, renting our warehouse, renting our office insurance, leasing trucks, buying trucks, marketing, all the things people don't like, uh, marketing, fundraising, all that stuff more [00:05:30] important though, of course, is, is what we do with that money.
And what our staff does and our 40,000 plus volunteers a year. And I'm sure
many people who are watching this have, have picked fruit s or vegetables would ed or have worked in our warehouse. And if not, they're of course all welcome. Now with that, we will, this year probably rescue about a hundred
million dollars worth of food.
Wow. About 90% of that by volume being. Rescued fruits and vegetables coming from farmers, packing houses. Kibbutzim [00:06:00] some picked by volunteers, some picked by our staff, some already picked by farmers and for a whole variety of reasons like ugly fruits and vegetables. If you've heard that term. Okay. Low market price, acts of God, order cancellations, Russia, you name it.
Uh, there are just myriad of crops left in the fields. So that's part of what we do and the biggest part of what we do. And then what we're maybe better known for in the beginning of our journey [00:06:30] was the work we do with the army and hotels, corporate cafeterias event halls, to make sure that their excess meals don't just get thrown out, which is just a horrible crime, in my opinion.
And one that unfortunately in many countries in the world, everyone's too scared to do, even if they can figure out safe way. To do it. They're just scared of getting sued. And so they just say, who needs the trouble? Let's just dump it.
[00:06:57] Tzivia: Wow. So that's incredible how you've grown. I'm really [00:07:00] intrigued specifically about what you mentioned about how after
about a year you had what you called a mini strategic plan.
So tell me what that looks like. And I I'll tell you why I'm asking, because I have found most founders that I interviewed, they kind of look back and they can't even believe they don't even know where it happened, where it scaled. It didn't seem intentional. It was almost by accident. The need kind of took on a life of its own.
So I just, um, so excited by someone who seemed to have done it intentionally .
[00:07:26] Guest: Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah, so I wouldn't say the [00:07:30] beg, the beginning was intentional. The longer term certainly was. And I never thought it would take off so quickly, but I think once I saw how quickly it was taking off, so I wanted to have a little plan in place and it was really more of a logistical plan.
It wasn't some, it wasn't a fundraising plan per se. The fundraising plan was, you know, people always ask me, how did you learn how to fundraise go out and do it. You have no choice, you gotta pay your bills. You know, it's like, Think of our grandparents' generation, right. [00:08:00] They came to America or Canada.
They had no choice. They had no money. So they had to figure it out. You
know, our, our generation may be a little less so. And, uh, you know, we, well,
the votes aren't yet. And really for me, it, you know, it was, it was gathering, uh, some people that I trust and putting them around the table and trying to talk through some of the issues and figuring out, you know, I'm not a financial person per se, figuring.
What the numbers were gonna look like, what kind of money we would need to bring in, think about [00:08:30] expansion, where would be the right places to go? A lot of it was also a lot of the strategy was about, you know, who are we? Who is our, who are we trying to serve? Where are they, how quickly do we go national?
Or do we stick locally? Because those were all big, big, big ticket items financially for us. And I'm not gonna say everything went according to plan. I think that's never the case. And we've had many plans since then. [00:09:00] Some pieces have worked, some pieces haven't worked, but overall it's been pretty smooth in those days.
Also, we didn't really, our board was, you know, Joseph Getler and two friends
of his, because that's how you, when you start. And you have a concept. You
don't want people getting in your way in the beginning , but within three, four years of let get started, we started to bring in serious board members with serious credentials.
I always say the only reason I get invited. So the board meetings is cause I
started the organization. because I am no way on the level of the [00:09:30] people who are sitting around the table now, professionally and, uh, from their accomplishment. And that's been good because, you know, over the years we have had challenges and issues that have come up that are, I know how to organize food pickups.
I know how to go out and pitch a foundation on giving us money, you know, but how often have we rented a distribution cent? Once twice it's like going to the mechanic, you know, I don't, whatever the mechanic tells me is what I do. So to bring, we needed to bring people with expertise in different areas [00:10:00] around the table, accounting law, just to keep an eye on us and to provide advice.
And so today we have a wonderful board in Israel, very hardworking, very
much in tune with what we're trying to accomplish. And of course we have all those friends of organizations in America, Canada, UK, et cetera, who help us out in a myriad of other ways.
[00:10:18] Tzivia: Amazing. So what would you say would be looking back now, you know, over the growth of the last 19 years, what would you say was the biggest challenge that you faced and would you
[00:10:28] Guest: have anticipated it?
[00:10:30]
Great question. So look, if you had asked me that question before COVID, I might answer differently. And if you had asked me that question before the inflation that we've seen over the last six months, I might have answered differently. COVID turned out to be an operational challenge. Because our, just everything we do changed overnight and we thought.
Sk
y was falling certainly financially, but it turned out to be the opposite. The rich got richer and they gave big. And so that could actually, our budget grew by about 50% over the [00:11:00] last two years. And our output grew by over a hundred percent. So it was a challenge operationally, but it turned out to be a great win 20, 22.
And I think you're gonna hear this from a lot of the charities that you talk to or work with. It's scary out there. Inflation plus. Stock market crash. Plus general economic feeling is definitely leading to a downturn in donations. And I think the biggest problem in the charity world, at [00:11:30] least that I'm seeing in the biggest way since I started.
But certainly since 2008 is. When charities need to not just tread water, but to actually grow is when it's hardest for us to do that because it happens at a time of economic difficulty. And so the people who can make. Growth happened. Maybe aren't feeling as flush as they might have a year ago. Right?
People made a lot of money, the fortunate in the stock market. And even if your portfolio is up a hundred percent over the last two years, and now [00:12:00] it's only down 25%, you've made a lot of money. If you look at it, you're still not feeling as good as you were a few months ago, and that is gonna impact your giving.
No, if ends or butts. And so we're feeling it and other charities are gonna feel it. And so. This is a problem in general, in the social service world. And one that charities need to think about how to solve. And we're thinking about ways we're a little late, maybe for this one, but we're gonna do our best.
And we're gonna dig into our reserves, which is something I recommend every charity that's able to, to the, try to build up reserves. And [00:12:30] we will dig into our reserves to a point because this is what we exist for. I don't, I'm not a bank. Okay. And so if, if we had we didn't, but let's say we had six months of reserves and we know we're gonna finish the year based on our projections.
With three months of reserves. This is when you do it, you do it when times are tough. Cuz at the end of the day, however difficult it is for Ette and our budgets it's much worse for the 250,000 Israelis that we serve. They dream of having a stock [00:13:00] portfolio, right? They don't even know what that is. And so as much as we're struggling and our, and our funders are struggling, the people we're serving are in a much worse place than we.
That's very
[00:13:11] Tzivia: true. Do you recommend if you're in a situation where you are tapping into the reserves, you set aside for a rainy day, do you recommend cutting budgets? And if so, like which department would you cut? Mm. Or do you say, and it will all resolve itself.
[00:13:24] Guest: It's a big organization with a lot of money flowing through it.
So you can imagine we have a very professional see in your [00:13:30] staff, which is always looking at our income and our expenses. And we. Budget a budget B budget C. We have that every year, even when we're feeling good, we're always ready at this 0.6 months into the year, we're going full throttle still, but that can change in a moment's notice.
And of course, we all know that when you cut in a charity, you know, the last
thing you ever wanna cut is what you exist for. Right? You never wanna cut trucks, gas, [00:14:00] picking up food, delivering food to the poor. That's the last thing. If that goes, then we might as well shut. Okay. So we'll do everything in our power and, and I'm not, this is not.
It's not a, uh, uh, a cry from the dark. This is just reality. As of today, for all I
know after this, someone's watching it calls me and says, I'm sending a million dollars to select, I don't know. And, and then I'll call you back and say, thank you. And it was, you have great people watching this. And, and then we, we will be less concerned either way, no matter what, [00:14:30] it's always good to be on top of your budget.
So of course the, the, the likely answer is you cut those things that are certainly not luxuries, but that people look. As luxury or the kind of things. Poor charities. Don't do the marketing, the events. Of course, the flip side to that is if you don't do that, are you gonna bring in money? But I don't have answers to global versus short term.
Right? Yeah. And, and you gotta spend money. We've learned over the years,
but, but we spend money smartly and we're always testing the waters. And
[00:15:00] I think for us, what's gonna keep us going and hopefully we'll bring in all the budget we need is. Our team working hard and doing as many one on one meetings.
That's what brings in the best results to look at. We have campaigns. We have tens of thousands of donors a year, but the bigger bucks come in from just sitting one on one and telling people the story of what we do. And, you know, there's, there's no seed. The secret to fundraising is. Getting your supporters passionate enough about your work, that they don't just support you.
But when you say, [00:15:30] can you make an introduction, don't overdo it. Don't say 10 introductions, an introduction here or there for me that if you can get a small percentage of the people to say yes, then you should be on, in a good place. I love that. I think
[00:15:42] Tzivia: every founder shoul d have that hanging on their wall because that's, that's very nice.
I think people, you know, in the nonprofit space, they get lost sometimes in like the nitty gritty or the, the micro details. But it really is that you need to bring people on, you need to just share with them and communicate with them. And I think that's, that's where the bottom line ends. [00:16:00] So a lot has evolved in the last few years.
I mean, especially in the nonprofit world, between COVID and inflation and
Ukraine, and everybody's feeling it. What do you think is changing and will
change? Over the next, let's say three to five years because of how the world has evolved
[00:16:16] Guest: of late. Wow. That's a great question. Look, I think there's definitely without a change.
Definitely just a general concern about, well, I'll give you, it's funny. Before we,
before we start this conversation, I read a little bit of the giving USA 2021
[00:16:30] report. And what it spoke about the, the key for me was actually
giving was. In the United States in 2021, but it didn't keep up with inflation.
Okay. So that I think is gonna be a big concern. If inflation continues over the
next couple of years, even if people dig deeper into their pockets, even if they understand maybe 5%. Is not enough for my foundation. Let's get it up to 7% or 8%. So more funds flow in. It's no different than your own finances.
If your income doesn't keep up with inflation , you're [00:17:00] falling behind. So I'm hoping that those who have will understand that that's an issue and they're gonna need to, if inflation is going up, they're giving is gonna need to. React to inflation. I think that's one, um, big issue in Israel specifically. Uh, the party may be over a little bit for technology.
Not completely. There's still companies raising big money, but you know, many of the Israeli companies that went public, their shares are not doing well. That's can impact the philanthropic [00:17:30] Israeli work. And we do raise, we raise a good percentage of our budget in Israel. We have more donors in Israel than we do overseas, and we're very proud of that.
We work hard. The numbers are smaller. But there's plenty of money in this
country. We we're very happy to have the support and we need the support from the diaspora. And so that could impact Israeli giving just in, in general. And I'd say the other big piece for us is ju is again, it's an Israel specific and that is cost of housing.
I feel like when [00:18:00] I go to America and I sit with my friends, everyone talks about the cost of tuition at day school. That's right. That's all anyone talks about. Okay. Uh, how much I have a brother in wood year, right? How much does he after cost? how much does Mariah? I went to Thery school of Anglo read a lot.
He has four kids there. And so. And in Israel, the big discussion when you talk
to people, right? We don't talk about the cost of schools, cuz basically that that's included your taxes or, or medical. That's also a topic in the us here. Everyone talks about the cost of housing and it used to be about [00:18:30] purchase.
And now it's gone down a level. If we can say that where people are saying we can't even afford rents, like it doesn't matter how far we go from Tel Aviv. It doesn't matter how far we go from Jerusalem. And so that may, that is going the defining issue in Israel, except for elections every two weeks over the next few years.
And so if the government and cannot come up with a solution for that, and we know the [00:19:00] solution, it's just more. Housing being built, but unfortunately this year, just to give one number, we're gonna break housing, start records in Israel this year, 60,000. Units homes, apartments are gonna be built, which is very impressive, but it's still 40,000 shorts of what we need.
And so we all want the population of Israel to grow. You know, we want
immigrants, we want women to have a lot of babies and that's great. And the population's growing and it's one of the only countries in the [00:19:30] world that population is growing. But if people can't survive financially, It's gonna be a crisis here.
And that, of course, that impacts me because the people that we're trying to
serve, if they're using more of their income, To pay for housing. That's less money to have in their pockets for food or electricity or any of their other expenses. So, you know, I think it's gonna be an interesting few years and hopefully the government together with private, uh, developers [00:20:00] and will work and the feds, the feds work with inflation will work.
And then we can go back to Lala land, which is where we were the pass of heart to believe COVID was a bit of Lala. Financially for a lot of people.
[00:20:10]
Tzivia:
Ha
ve you noticed any shifts in terms of the demographics of the people giving the ages at which they're giving or the ways at which they're either giving or wanna be involved?
Everything I've read about, let's say the millennials that are kind of the strongest giving generation right now kind of indicates that they wanna be more involved versus just like [00:20:30] writing a check. Have you noticed that
[00:20:32] Guest: I've read that also. We want people to be involved, but you know, how many people can we have involved to be honest.
Okay. So we definitely have people involved, but it's, we're not overwhelmed
by thousands of our donors saying I want more involvement. It would be nearly impossible for us. And of course we can only also have a few difficult people involved, too many difficult people makes things next to impossible. So you, if any of the difficult people are watching, you know who you are. [00:21:00]
Thankfully, our difficult people come through in big ways for like it when push comes to shop. So we don't just put up with them. A lot of them have made us better as an organization with the hard work they've put us through in order to get their financing, financing i n place. You know, the big change I would say for, for the younger generations, just how they give.
right. So if used to be 90% checks, 5% bank transfers, 5% credit cards today it's 80% credit cards, 10% checks, 10% bank transfer. So that of course changes the [00:21:30] way we wanna run our operation. We have to have much more robust systems in place, information systems in place, trying to make things as automated as possible.
Of course, people react. We do a lot of campaigns on social media, on Facebook email campaign. And so we need a team to really keep up with that. That's a big change. I mean, when I started 19 years ago, it was the website that was it, website and a telephone number. And then I think we're on our fourth website since we started, cuz technology has changed [00:22:00] and the demands on, on our, our website have change.
And then of course, Facebook and Instagram and. On and on and on. I help
where I can, but thankfully, a lot of that they do for me. So , so that, that's the
really the biggest change I've yeah, a lot,
[00:22:14] Tzivia: a lot, definitely changes over almost two decades. So you
have to really be ready to
[00:22:18] Guest: call everything, everything changes.
And I, you know, I'm thankful I, most of what I do, hasn't changed that much since I gave up the reins, let's say more than a decade ago of, of day to day management, you know, [00:22:30] most of my time has just spent meeting people, talking to them, trying to convince them to support ETT. Podcast this morning, I was in Yao at I 24, doing an interview for one of their TV shows.
I do a lot of that kind of stuff. That's, you know, our CEO says that's the best
use of my time. So I, that sounds about I wanna keep, I wanna keep 'em happy. So I, I go along.
[00:22:50] Tzivia: That's a good plan. So before we wrap up, I always like to ask everybody if they have a favorite story, something you know about something, your organization, the way that it affected [00:23:00] or something you've encountered running your organization.
Just something that you'd like to share with our listen.
[00:23:05]
Guest:
Sure. So collected is an interesting animal because we don't serve the poor directly. And so in all those stories, we often don't have have them, or if we, and we don't chase after them either. But I always remember, I think it, it, it's an important, just a point to make when it comes to respect and how we treat the people we serve.
And I always remember the first time we delivered to an Ethiopian [00:23:30] organization and we delivered eggplants to them and they. These were relatively new, uh, immigrants to Israel and they had no clue what it was. Okay. Like, you know, we had these round eggplants and the, I know one of the kids thought it was a soccer ball, you know, it started kicking it around.
And so, you know, what it said to me at the time was of course this is about
providing, we, we take very seriously that we're providing healthy, nutritious
food. We don't give out junk, not because we're against junk because I don't wanna use your dollars. To pick [00:24:00] up junk food. If, if a junk food company wants to give food to the poor, they can deliver it directly.
I'm not using philanthropic dollars for that. I have no problem with it, but the
money is limited and I wanna use it for the right things. And so for me,
whenever I think about that, I think about the fact that, you know, part of our
mission is the right food to the right people at the right time within logistical
limitations.
But part of it also is teaching, not because we're imperialists who are trying to tell people, you must eat this. You're now in Israel. Everyone love. Eggplant in Israel, eat it, [00:24:30] but you know, this is healthy, nutritious food. And if we can teach people how to make it, how to cook it, find ways that fit with their culture to make it cuz we are in Israel.
We have enough food to feed everyone. This is not, thank God. You know, it's
just unfortunately hearing on NPR about what's going on in Ethiopia, where
people, unfortunately it's the worst drought in a thousand years in Ethiopia on their, their. You know, it's like going back to my youth, uh, people there are at risk of starvation, millions and millions of Ethiopians.
So [00:25:00] thankfully, thank God in Israel. That's. What we're talking about, we're talking about the opposite. We're talking about the us Canada, the UK rich Western country with, with too much food to go around. And because of that, we waste with abandon. And so Israelis can all be fed, healthy, nutritious food. And part of our job also is to teach them when they're unfamiliar with what we're providing, uh, how to U utilize that food.
That's
[00:25:24] Tzivia: awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. If anybody wants to get in touch with you or the organization, where should they.
[00:25:29] Guest: [00:25:30] Okay. So me real simple. Joseph J O S E P H at ETT, L E K E t.org. With any questions with pleasure, our website, ett.org, lots of information out there. If you're coming to Israel and you wanna volunteer.
You're a synagogue, you're a bar bat mitzvah. You're an individual. Just write to me. We have two to 300 people volunteering every day and we certainly need help. Probably made that [00:26:00] abundantly clear, maybe too clear. So don't be shy with that as well. And thank you. The opportunity was great talking to you.
Thank
[00:26:07] Tzivia: you. Thanks for
[00:26:07] Guest: joining me.
[00:26:13] Tzivia: Thanks for listening to this episode of the change, the world podcast. If you have any feedback or comments, or if you are a nonprofit leader who is interested in learning more about how 14 minds can help you, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me by email at CIA 14, mine dot. For more nonprofit [00:26:30] content.
Follow me on LinkedIn or visit 14 mine.com to subscribe to our mailing list.
Change The World Podcast - Ep. 12.docx 1 of 1 01 of 13
