The umbrella organization for the Zionist movement in the United Kingdom is to be radically overhauled due to serious financial problems.
The Zionist Federation UK, which was founded in 1899, has announced that “drastic cost-cutting measures” are needed to save the organization from financial ruin.
These changes “include the prospect of making staff redundant,” the Jewish Chronicle reported.
The Zionist Federation, which represents more than 30 organizations and over 50,000 members in the UK, said in a statement that with the resignation of Chair Paul Charney in May, the organization’s leaders have been seeking “to gain clarity about the state of the Federation’s finances.”
“It has sadly now become apparent that in addition to inheriting significant liabilities, the inherited business model of the Zionist Federation is financially unviable,” acting chair Richard P. Woolf said.
Woolf added that the organization will now begin a process of “consulting with its staff on ways to avoid compulsory redundancies.”
He called the current restructuring a “challenging moment in the history of the Zionist Federation.”
“The current lay leadership is fully committed to rebuild the organization to ensure that it can fulfil its important role of giving British Jews a strong voice within the international Zionist movement and promoting Zionism with the British Jewish community and in wider British society,” Woolf said.
According to British media reports, the Federation is in such financial trouble that without drastic intervention, it risked becoming insolvent within the next month.
The organization has agreed to implement “all necessary steps to reduce all spending” and to consider laying off staff, the UK Jewish News reported.
At the Federation’s National Council meting on Tuesday, Woolf was told to “constitute a working group that will ensure ongoing activity with member organizations at no cost” until such time as a “sustainable financial model has been determined.”