Becoming Executive Summary

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Overview

BECOMING transforms our coming-of-age milestones into meaningful rites of passage, harnessing Jewish wisdom and tools in service of human flourishing and commun connection. BECOMING programs provide space and time for individuals encountering key milestones in their human and Jewish journeys, seeking personal reflection, commun connection, spiritual direction and purpose. BECOMING reimagines Jewish traditional coming-of-age journeys as sacred solutions for better living.

The Need

At a time of growing societal divisions and intergenerational tensions within and beyond the Jewish world, BECOMING offers innovative frameworks that offer meaningful and min ways for lifelong engagement with Jewish life within the community. Recent demand in BECOMING’s signature rites of passage programs reflect a wider growing desire to enme more deeply in Jewish community through meaningful and introspective processes. As modern Jews continue to shift away from affiliating with traditional synagogue mode BECOMING meets people on their terms, at critical life junctions, offering tools a techniques that reframe personal purpose and communal participation.

Vision for BECOMING

BECOMING is the cornerstone of the next organizational chapter for Lab/Shul – an everybody-friendly, artist-driven, God-optional, experimental community for sacred Jewish gatherings based in NYC and reaching the world – and a revolution for the Jewish spiritual communal infrastructure. In five years, BECOMING will be part of a powerful wave of Jewi engagement deeply rooted in broad-based Jewish literacy, drawing on Lab/Shul’s pioneering and experimental approaches to re-imagining ritual for use in marking major thresholds throughout life and building bridges across differenc
Our business plan represents a strengthening and streamlining of BECOMING programs over the next three years to deepen our impact and build long-term sustainability. We invite your support in this meaningful work and look forward to hearing how our vision may align with yours.

Target Audience

Over the next three years BECOMING will focus on strengthening its signature coming-of-age programs, each with unique target audiences, and unite them under one cohesive banner:

Raising the Bar (RTB)

Lab/Shul’s unique, artistic, accessible and inclusive reimagined process and product of the traditional BMitzvah experience, for young Jewish teens ages 11 – 14. RTB is a robust, year-long NYC-based program that will expand to include an in-person cohort launching in Hudson Valley in 2025, with plans to expand its overall footprint in other communities post 2027 through strategic partnerships and new models for growth.

GENerate

A year-long rite of passage program for Jewish adults ages 60+ transitioning from career to retirement, and/or from child rearing to empty nesting and wise eldering. GENerate, currently conducting its fourth cohort, is poised to launch a new year-round cohort each year, with plans to create an affinity cohort for those who identify as LGBTQ+ in 2026, and other affinity coho years to come.

Pass/Age

Pass/Age marks the coming-of-age journey, engaging Jewish adults in their 20s through 50s who are exploring their personal and collective identity, and their transitions and trajectory of life, as inspired by Jewish wisdom. In 2025, we will offer separate weekend retreats for two a cohorts – 20s/30s and 40s/50s – to meet organic demand and test a tailored model with each demographic. Participants will be introduced to a powerful adult BMitzvah opportunity as part of each Pass/Age weekend, for those who seek to engage in that rite of passage.

Key Program Components

BECOMING programs share unique hallmarks such as personal storytelling skills and Jewish ritual co-creation, multi-faith friendly and God optional philosophies, locally connected and digitally intimate experiences, and more. Lab/Shul’s deeply impactful signature approach to Jewish life and literacy – the Storahtelling Maven Method™ – sits at the heart of BECOMING
programs, with its application evolving across programs. The Storahtelling Maven Method™ illuminates classical Jewish learning approaches with contemporary stagecraft, informing and
transforming the ways people of all ages relate to cultural legacy, ritual celebrations and spiritual heritage.

Program Calendar

Between 2025 – 2027, BECOMING programs will scale through measured, steady growth for sustainable impact:

We project the following numbers for cohorts, participants, and trainers in the coming years, based on historical participation, market research, and business model development:

BECOMING Institute and Training Model

Educational Trainers are a core component of BECOMING’s success equation and scalability. Lab/Shul trainers serve as spiritual leaders for participants, creating transformative experiences individually for participants and community-building for cohorts.

Lab/Shul is committed to building and professionalizing the field of creative, spiritua progressive educators to guide individuals at all ages and stages in marking key milestones in life through a Jewish lens. The BECOMING Institute and Training Model will serve as the intellectual and creative hub of this work, equipping trainers with the skills, tools, expansive thinking, and ongoing learning opportunities to nurture and guide individuals throughout meaningful moments in their life.

From Current State to Future State

In 2024 – 2025, we will continue to work with our current trainers to lead our programs, and strengthen and support their development. Concurrently, we will begin to develop our new training model, centered around the BECOMING Trainers Institute and Program, to launch in phases over the coming years.

In the future state, the BECOMING training model will include:

• Competitive application and nomination process
• Certification and continuing education proce
• Growing cadre of senior trainers and trainers delivering curriculum
• BECOMING Training Institute Retreat and supplemental modules (virtual training, observation and apprenticeship, feedback, trainer support, resource bank)
• Partnerships with creative content providers (nature, technology, etc)
• Underwriting by institutional funding partners

The BECOMING Training Institute is projected to take place in 2025, and will run every other year thereafter. To prepare for the Institute, Lab/Shul will build the training model and update, codify, streamline, and scale the curriculum. It will invest in the following infrastructure:

• Form a BECOMING curriculum taskforce in Sept 2024 to outline its scope of work to codify and update the curriculum over the course of the next 6 – 9 months.
• Hire a contract Instructional Designer to create and package the curriculum, codify and design materials, and design the Institute schedule.
• Engage a BECOMING Program Coordinator or Lab/Shul staff member in building administration and logistics for the Institute.

Organizational Structure

For the next three years, BECOMING will continue to be incubated within Lab/Shul, leveraging Lab/Shul’s organizational assets and strengthening its impact and sustainability. Beyond 2027, BECOMING may remain a part of Lab/Shul or may spin off, acknowledging that its impact h potential to spread beyond the Jewish world.

BECOMING’s success will rely heavily on its talented staff who bring the vision, capacity, a strategic focus to bring BECOMING programs to life under a unified umbrella, and creati deep impact across the broader Jewish community.

BECOMING requires dedicated leadership focused on BECOMING, providing cohesive vision and execution of all programs underneath the umbrella. Beginning in 2026, our model includes:

• A full-time BECOMING Program Director
• A full-time BECOMING Program Coordinator
• One designated Lab/Shul senior program lead for each program to increase strategic focus (3 people total)
• Senior Trainers and Trainers to co-lead the Training Institute, lead cohort sessions for BECOMING programs, and provide 1:1 support for program participants. The number of trainers increases over time to match the growing number of participants.
• Lab/Shul support for BECOMING programs at both the senior advisory and administration level, decreasing over time as BECOMING leadership takes root

Revenue Model

BECOMING is designed as a financially sustainable model with diversified revenue streams that demonstrates a greater degree of self-funding over time. Its revenue streams include fee-for-service from participants (including a sliding scale for access and equity) and contributed revenue from institutional foundations and individual donors whose values and vision align with that of BECOMING.

For 2025, we seek $200,000 in contributed revenue from funding partners to codify and strengthen our program model and training hub, as well as develop our new program models for RTB Hudson Valley and Pass/Age weekend retreats. We seek funding of $275,000 per year thereafter from funding partners in the form of multi-year commitments.

Our projected balance of contributed revenue vs. earned revenue decreases each year, allowing Lab/Shul to engage funders as partners in charting out the future of BECOMING while also building long-term sustainability.

BECOMING Budget

The three-year budget demonstrates growth in both earned and contributed revenue, reflecting growing numbers of participants in a steady number of cohort programs as well ongoing and growing commitments from foundations and individual donors. 2025 is largely a building year, focused on developing core components of the program model while shoring up support and expanding marketing for its continued growth. 2026 represents the largest growth in revenue, while allowing Lab/Shul to sustain its continued growth and keep pace with its capacity in 2027 and beyond.

The budget projects a net positive model, acknowledging that two core programs subsidize others – Raising the Bar, due to its high price tags and associated demand, and GENerate, due to its projected ability to attract contributed revenue from foundations interested in engaging adults 60+, one of the fastest growing populations with growing degrees of engagement in communal life. Pass/Age has yet to be tested in its funding potential and participant demand, and while BECOMING Trainers represent an area we believe to be a significant funding priori in the market, it is an inherently expensive program, so is projected to be net negative. Overall, the budget is designed to balance each year.

High Level Budget

BECOMING Year 1: 2025

BECOMING Year 2: 2026

BECOMING Year 3: 2027

Operational Model

The BECOMING operational model is designed to achieve efficiencies in economies of sca Core infrastructure needs for a successful BECOMING model include:

• Clear messaging and participant recruiting
• Skilled and sufficient st
• Scalable curriculum model
• Shared back-end services (financial management, technology, communications, etc)
• Diversified revenue model

Each of these elements is addressed in detail throughout the business plan, supporting Lab/Shul in building the organizational infrastructure to support meaningful rites of passage for many years to come, harnessing Jewish wisdom in service of human flourishing a communal connection.