Darim Online envisions a Jewish community empowered by the best leadership, business structures, tools and practices to strengthen identity and community and achieve our personal, familial, organizational and communal goals.  In a world where culture, business practices, leadership and technology is constantly changing, we believe that Jewish organizations and leaders must be continuously learning, innovating, and sharing our knowledge so that we all may be able to skillfully and confidently use technology to achieve our goals and fulfill our missions.

The mission of Darim Online is to advance the Jewish community by working with staff and lay leadership of Jewish organizations to help them align their work for success in the digital age. 

• Webinars. Darim Online offers a regular webinar series through our Learning Network to educate our memberhsip community about new developments in social media, tutorials on specific tools, and knowledge sharing to learn from the best practices of others within the Jewish, non-profit and for-profit communities. We welcome staff, volunteers, and lay leaders of member Jewish organizations to attend our webinar events. Organizations and individuals who are members of Darim Online may register and attend webinars at no cost.  Click here to learn more about becoming a member.
  
  Darim also offers private webinars for your organization, association or community. We offer a menu of possible webinar topics and series, and are happy to explore custom curricula too. Contact us for more information.
  
  Our community is built around the model of a community of practice, in which members learn from each other through sharing resources and expertise, problem-solving, and developing collective wisdom on an ongoing basis in order to grow professionally and improve their practice. This model is particularly valuable for the Jewish organizations with which Darim works, helping to promote best practices, share knowledge, save time, increase sophistication, and advance the Jewish community's use of these important technology tools.  Thus, many of our webinars include guest experts, practitioners sharing their work, and discussion among the participants. All webinars are recorded and archived for future references, and include supporting materials available online for Darim members.
  
  Some of our recent webinars have included:
  
  • Strategic Storytelling 2.0: Tips and techniques for effective storytelling through blogs, Facebook and Twitter, with guest Deborah Grayson Riegel.
  • A Taste Of... G-dcast and Media Midrash: Innovative programs for Jewish learning, with Sarah Lefton and Charlie Schwartz.
  • Foundations of Social Media: The fundamentals of our current communications revolution, with Lisa Colton.
  • Facebook Strategies for Jewish Organizations, with Avi Kaplan and Caren Levine.
  
  Check out our Fall / WInter webinar schedule.
  
  In addition to the live webinar events, Darim offers a robust online resource bank which includes archives of each webinar, powerpoints, best practices, sample policies, resourceful articles, useful tips, and links to valuable materials on the web. Darim Online members have full access to the archives and resource banks. Others are welcome to come have a taste! This is a constantly evolving resource bank -- we welcome contributions of your best practices and materials, and invite you to let us know what other materials would be most valuable to you.

• Social Media Boot Camps. The Social Media Boot Camps were created to help advance communities forward in their work with social media tools, and in a connected, digital culture. After observing that periodic webinar attendance alone didn't necessarily translate into high quality practices for participants, we created this more intensive approach to help individuals, organizations and whole communities take major steps forward.
  
  The Social Media Boot Camp is an intensive program to help Jewish organizations learn about social media culture, theory and tools, and to help you design and implement a social media project in your organization over the year. The Boot Camp has three components:
  
  1. Live events, to bring teams together, build the cohort, learn the foundations of social media, chart our course for the year, and share knowledge and experience. Prepare to be inspired, challenged and have a handful of “ah-ha” moments!
  2. A webinar series where we infuse new knowledge and skills into the community, as well as promoting sharing of knowledge and experience among the participants. We tackle a variety of topics from theory to staffing to policies and a range of tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogs.
  3. Small group and private coaching and consulting to help you design, develop and implement local projects.  Webinar-based coaching allows us to work in any community, and helps lay leadership participate regularly from home or work.
     
  
  Social Media Boot Camps are often supported by a local Federation or foundation, and include 10-30 organizations.  Recent Boot Camps include a cohort of 20 synagogue on Long Island, funded by UJA Federation of New York, and a cohort of 20 diverse Jewish organizations in Northern New Jersey funded by a Berrie Innovation Grant. Contact us to learn more about bringing a Social Media Boot Camp to your community.

• Coaching and Consulting. Moving into the digital age successfully goes far beyond launching a Facebook page and tweeting now and then.  Creating a vision for your work, and putting the pieces in place successfully requires much more.  Darim's coaching and consulting services are designed to fit your needs, skill level and capacity, to help you create that vision that is tailored to your mission, then put one put in front of the other with confidence to make it a reality.
  
  At Darim, we distinguish between coaching and consulting.  As a consultant, we work to understand your needs, and recommend solutions and action plans.  We can customize presentations and training activities to meet the needs of your staff and lay leadership.   In rare cases, we can also provide outsourced assistance to implement such a plan.  
  
  As a coach, we function as an expert partner, to help guide you through your own growth and learning to achieve your goals.  This includes facilitating discussions to get your team on the same page, with shared (ambitious, yet realistic) goals, assumptions, and a baseline understanding of the landscape in which you're working.  Coaching engagements usually start at 4-6 sessions (every other week for 2-3 months), and can often extend to six months or a year with meetings spaced every 2-4 weeks or as needed.  Coaching is a great solution for both beginners (we'll hold your hand, and help you do it well), and for more advanced participants who are seeking to deepen their work, expand skills, and/or develop a plan that can engage others in their organization who may not yet be on board.
  
  Both coaching and consulting work can focus on social media tools, skills and strategies, as well we new models of leadership, re-examining programs and mission in a social media powered world, and assessments of the norms and leading practitioners in your field.  In most cases we prefer to work with a small team of staff and/or lay leaders from an organization, as we find this group effort translates into greater and more sustainable capacities in the long run.  However, we are open to working with individuals as well.  Participants will build confidence, skills, strategies, and gain experience with online resources and strategies customized to yourspecific needs in a friendly and low-pressure manner. Coaching programs are tailored to your goals and are conveniently scheduled through a series of regular phone calls and/or webinar sessions.
  
  Where appropriate, Darim can engage additional expertise (or refer you to them) in specific areas.  Our ecosystem includes consultants, coaches, trainers and thought leaders from within the Jewish, non-profit and for-profit fields.  Thus, we are able to deliver the most relevant, high quality and useful resources, examples and expertise to you.
  
  Our coaching and consulting clients include synagogues, day schools, congregration-based/complementary Jewish
  education, central agencies for Jewish education, Jewish Federations, social service agencies, and other non profits. Interested in learning more?  Contact us.

• Speaking and Presentations. Darim Online offers private and public speaking engagement and presentations, including presentations to staff, associations, workshops and conferences.  Our presentations and speaking engagements can be tailored to suit your goals and time frame, from one hour to a full day.  Our staff are dynamic speakers, who bring theory and practice together to create vibrant, educational and entertaining live events.
  
  Recent appearances include:
  
  • The Wexner Heritage Summer Institute, Snowbird, Utah, July 2010. "From the Gutenberg Talmud to the iPad Torah: Technology and the Jewish Community."
  • The Covenant Fellows (previously JECEI Fellows), Seattle Retreat, July 2010. "Building and Sustaining Community in a Digital World."
  • UJA Federation of New York Agency Executives, New York, May, 2010. "Ten Commandments of Social Media."
  • Nonprofit Technology Network Conference (10NTC), Atlanta, April 2010. "Social Media's Potential for Faith Based Organizations."
  • North American Association of Synagogue Executives (NAASE), Houston, March 2010, "Social Media's Implications for Synagogues."
  
  If we are traveling to your location, often we can arrange to book several events into one day, for example at a Federation we have presented 3 sessions in a day, one for local Rabbis, one for agency staff, and one for Federation staff.  We are happy to tailor our presentations to your specific audience, field, and skill level.  Darim staff are also skilled at facilitating discussions among your participants, to explore how to apply the information and inspiration to your work. Interested in learning more, or discussing a presentation or speaking engagement?  Please contact us!

• Our blog, JewPoint0.org offers knowledge, insight, book reviews, links to useful blogs, best practices and more.  Check it out, subscribe, comment!