It's Who You Know! The Podcast · Michelle W. Malkin: Nonprofit Jewish Professional

Unlikely Allies with Aaron Dorfman, Executive Director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership For Democracy

·51 min·3 clips

The organization recruits politically diverse advisors like Yuval Levin, Ben Ginsberg, and Eric Ward to lower polarization.

Michelle W. Malkin introduces Aaron Dorfman as executive director of A More Perfect Union, the Jewish Partnership for Democracy. She mentions she has been hearing about the organization a lot. When she reaches out to book Aaron, the staff leans into the mission and the ways listeners can get involved. Michelle jokes that they roped her in. The pitch works. She signs on as a partner and jokes about the "intro quo." She says later conversations will feature other member organizations. Then she turns to Aaron's personal path. She asks how he ended up in this role. Aaron says the route was idiosyncratic and comes with caveats. He explains that he brought the idea to the board of Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. He asked whether they would support the concept and why it made sense. They did their own deliberations. They gave him a planning grant to spell out what the work might look like. He put together a robust proposal. The foundation then created a challenge-grant setup. It funded the first six months of 2022. Ongoing support depended on hitting benchmarks like building strategic advisors, raising the rest of the 2022 budget, and launching recruitment and support structures. Aaron says that runway pushed him to approach other funders. It also helped build a network of about a dozen family and professional foundations around the project.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how A More Perfect Union turned early support into a Jewish democracy partnership.

The episode follows the launch of A More Perfect Union, the Jewish Partnership for Democracy, from the inside out. Michelle W. Malkin speaks with Aaron Dorfman about the planning grant, the challenge grant structure, the benchmarks tied to later funding, and the network of…

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You want to hear how a Jewish democracy partnership got from idea to funded launch.

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