Shul Planning Guide—Part 9—The Kiruv Committee

Committees can be great and committees can be awful. But you need a committee so that no one person—presumably your champion—tries to do it all him or herself and soon gets so overwhelmed that the entire program has to be scaled back or canceled. Better to have a team of committed people working together, each with specific responsibilities.

As a team you can develop your kiruv calendar and decide what programs you want to run when. But, then, each team member should take on responsibility for a particular program and create his or her own committee to
create and implement that program. He or she becomes the champion for that program and has to report back to the main committee with status updates at each meeting. By using this system of subcommittees, hopefully, the work will be shared and everyone can enjoy the process, rather than feel burdened.

The more people who are involved in committees, the more people throughout the shul will buy in to the idea of kiruv becoming an important part of the shul. However, the more people who are involved, sometimes it becomes more difficult to keep track of what everyone is doing and
their progress. One way of handling this challenge is to use the Groups feature on Kiruv Café. The head of the main kiruv committee should
create a group for that committee and invite all members to join. Then each member that has taken responsibility for a project, can start their own group as well, to more easily communicate with and track the progress of his or her group members. The main committee head should be a member of
all the committees so he or she gets copies of all communications and can
easily see what’s happening and where he or she may need to step in to help
keep things moving. Of course, your other option is to set up your own groups on Yahoo or some other similar emailing program. the benefit of Kiruv
Café is that it is easier to share information between committees and easier to track the flow of information within committees.

to all that you are working together and if someone sees that they are going to need help, let them speak up early so help can be found before the project reaches close to its deadlines and things are not in order. Team members should be there for each other!

Working within groups can be frustrating if everybody does not do their share. But when everyone pitches in, it can be very productive and rewarding for all.

Good luck!