This year was all about the volunteers.

Jewish Family Service’s 2026 Annual Meeting was held on March 24, 2026 at the Mayerson JCC, to a full house and, for the first time, captions in Russian as well as English. It featured Jewish Family Service CEO Liz Vogel and Board President Ellen Feld, MD. But at its core, Jewish Family Service went out of its way to appreciate its donors and its volunteers, from the thank-yous spoken from the stage right down to the Graeter’s ice cream in the back.

In her keynote, Vogel spoke about looking for the sparkle—the joy—despite difficult times. And she shared some of the places she found that sparkle: in the good JFS does, and in the community that cares about JFS and uses its services.

Challenging Times

These are challenging times, said Vogel, and she expects needs to remain high in 2026. Despite this, she said, in 2025, “We helped more people than ever before….[And] we moved people from dark to light.”

Linda Kean, JFS’s Chief Operating Officer, offered some uplifting statistics about JFS’s volunteers overall. In 2025, increasing pressures on the government safety net meant a client increase of almost 20 percent. A record number of clients—3,488—were served. Partly in response, JFS was able to double its numbers of volunteers, also to a new record—nearly 175 people. In total, these volunteers gave 1,539 hours, which calculates out to about a half hour per client.

Then Kean offered the surprise of the night: three Volunteer of the Year award winners instead of just one. This year the Miriam Dettlebach Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service was handed out three times, all to volunteers at the Heldman Family Food Pantry at the Barbash Family Vital Support Center. Each person has volunteered for 14 years or longer. 

The three Miriam Dettlebach Award recipients were Judy Barnett, Kim Juran, and Nancy Steinberg Warren.