The Blogs: Sparking success with data-driven Israel missions

Every year, tens of thousands of American Jews travel to Israel on trips run by Jewish organizations and programs. The impact and value of these trips is as varied as the experiences of the people taking them. For many Jewish teens and young adults, these trips offer important educational experiences and formative social bonding with their peers. For others, it’s a trip of deep spirituality and connection with their roots.

Missions to Israel have long been a key component of engaging and stewarding community members for Jewish Federations. These trips offer unique opportunities for individuals, Jewish professionals, and lay leaders to connect to Israel and the Israeli people. But unlike other programs, they frequently lack the same rigorous and systematic evaluation that other educational travel programs provide. What’s our framework for evaluating the efficacy of these trips? What are their goals and intended impacts, and how do we measure their success?

When we at Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP), Greater Boston’s Jewish Federation, found ourselves wondering about these questions, we knew we needed a new way to measure and address them.

Immersive Israel experiences are a key component of CJP’s vision of creating a more connected and educated community. In organizing these trips, we seek to unite and invite the Greater Boston Jewish community into experiences and conversations centered around the importance of Israel to the Jewish people, increase participants’ understanding of their own connection to it, and create connection between Boston and Israel.

To inform the creation of meaningful experiences for future mission-goers, we partnered with Rosov Consulting to establish a clear plan to measure the long-term impact on trip participants. We aptly titled the initiative “Spark.”

Spark was a year-long initiative involving cohort-based learning experiences preceding and following travel to Israel, which coincided with the country’s 75th birthday in April 2023. Planning started in 2021; evaluation plans followed in 2022; the trip followed the next year, and post-trip surveys took place in 2024.

The Spark experience was designed to positively impact four Jewish and Israel-based outcome areas: increased knowledge, strengthened connections and sense of belonging, increased engagement, and deepening the leadership pipeline. Spark was designed to be more than a travel program to Israel – wraparound programming offered before the trip and during the year following the cohort’s return resulted in an immersive experience with a deep and lasting impact.

Now, more than a year after participants returned from their visit, Spark’s results are in.

Surveys and intensive interviews revealed participants had a significantly increased understanding of Israeli society and culture, and Israel’s role in the Jewish identity of American Jews. This knowledge was sustained long after the trip, with participants reporting greater awareness compared to nonparticipants. The experience also deepened their connection to Jewish life, with many increasing their involvement in Jewish community events and organizations.

Specifically:

Fifty-nine percent reported feeling confident about Israel’s impact on their Jewish identity before the trip compared to 76% afterwards, with that number reaching 89% a year later.
The trip’s impact may have extended beyond participants to their friends and family, with 65% of participants saying they talked more about Israel with them and 35% noting that non-Spark individuals participated in Jewish programs or events more frequently.
Participants developed stronger connections to CJP, with reported engagement rising from 44% before the trip to 75% after, alongside increased involvement in leadership roles and first-time donor activity.

During the Spark experience and subsequent study, unrest in Israel and the atrocities committed during the October 7 attack shook the Israeli and global Jewish communities. The resulting war has been devastating and led to anti-Israel protests and antisemitic incidents around the world. This has possibly impacted the study’s results, revealing increased engagement among a comparison group of Jews who did not participate in Spark.

In-depth interviews conducted by Rosov with Spark participants and their family and friends examined Spark’s ripple effect among its community, concluding that immersive experiences can deepen organizational involvement and cultural understanding for the benefit of both mission trip participants and their peers. The gaps identified by CJP in post-mission trip impact measurement, combined with the communal response to these geopolitical events, underscore the urgency of refining processes to deepen the impact of these integral trips to Israel.

The Spark experience is, to our knowledge, a first-of-its-kind systematic evaluation of a large Federation mission. The study, which was developed and executed by Wendy Rosov and her team, lays the foundation for assessing CJP’s long-term effectiveness and holistic impact, equipping us with innovative tools to ensure our community’s efforts are guided by insight and purpose.

Spark aims to chart a path for Jewish Federations—and any organization sponsoring mission trips abroad—to foster meaning and connection before, during, and after their travel. Data-based planning is the key to enhancing visits to Israel for our community at a time when recruiting and planning for travel is more challenging—and more important—than ever.