High-class hiring at JCF: editorial

Following the inking of Tom Dine as the S.F.-based JCF's new CEO, federation leaders are practically giddy.

You can almost envision them hopping down the avenue in mid-day and singing, "Grab your coat and get your hat/Leave your worries on the doorstep/Life can be so sweet/On the sunny side of the street."

And it's easy to see why. Dine earned a national reputation as one of the nation's top lobbyists during his run atop American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, during the 1980s and early '90s.

Working subsequently for the U.S. Agency for International Development and, currently, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, he's expanded that to an international reputation.

And members of the Jewish Community Federation's search committee certainly seemed to take notice when Dine claimed he could boost fund-raising 10 percent a year for the next three years, and then 15 percent a year in seasons four and five.

In real terms, by the way, that'd be about $2.3 million next year and about $2.5 million the year after that.

On the other hand, including funds raised for Ethiopian airlifts, the federation actually raked in more in the early 1990s than it did this fiscal year. So for Dine to get the JCF back to its 1990 level would be a magic trick akin to pulling a rabbit out of a rabbit hutch.

But if Dine can reverse the longstanding trend of a diminishing Jewish donor base — and, more than mere aggressive fund-raising, give donors a tangible reason to believe the federation is the best place for their hard-earned cash — well, that would be something.

Dine isn't coming to the job in November with a game plan already mapped out, but it seems fairly evident he'll be doing more than just passing the cap around. In some manner — that, perhaps, he hasn't even yet formulated — he'll be changing the way the federation does business.

If the S.F.-based JCF is looking for a leader capable of transforming it into an entity more relevant to a wider swath of the Jewish community than its current incarnation, it appears Dine would be an excellent choice.

Granted, he has never worked for a federation before — and raising money for the continued existence of Israel as AIPAC's executive director is probably a different sell than gathering funds for the continued existence of meals on wheels as a federation head.

But a man with Dine's obvious skill for adaptation ought to be able to figure that one out.

We congratulate the federation's search committee on their hire.

And we hope they're at least as happy in five years as they seem to be today.