Bethel Community Transformation Center
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“The work is bigger than just our congregation. It’s a much bigger picture of healing and reconciliation between city and suburbs, between black and white, between Jew and non-Jew ... and who knows where it will go from there.”
– Pastor Aramis Hinds, BCTC Detroit
Project Overview
How do you rally a community to renovate a historic Jewish synagogue that’s now occupied by a Black church? We began by assembling former, current and future stakeholders in the success of the building and its surrounding communities to listen to their memories and hopes for the future. The client side included six different clergy members from multiple faith and racial backgrounds. We built an interdisciplinary team of staff and volunteer designers, architects, the public relations and videography expertise of Robin Schwartz PR, event planners, builders, and promoters that worked closely together on a tremendous marketing and crowdfunding campaign.
Execution
My team developed a comprehensive Vision Document reflecting the honored legacy of the Jewish community that once inhabited the space as well as the aspirations of the past, current and (anticipated) future stakeholders in the building. The document laid out a four-year timeline, investment goals, and strategies to build interfaith programming in the space and surrounding community.
We designed and implemented a joint crowdfunding and marketing campaign that quickly raised the profile of the fledgling project, attracted new partners and investors, and inspired hope for the future of the neighborhood. Throughout the process, my team documented the renovation in real-time and cultivated an online community of supporters for BCTC. To this day, renovation work continues and the building is being utilized by a diverse interfaith community.
Results
The campaign secured over 1,190 earned media news mentions for the project, including:
- A new life for historic Temple Beth El – The Detroit News
- Jews, Christians team up to revive historic synagogue in Detroit – Detroit Free Press
- Interfaith effort aims to revive iconic Temple Beth El building – Detroit Jewish News
Social media engagement included over 1M unique engagements in the first year, and over $100K raised initially towards the campaign – in the years since, BCTC has developed into an award-winning model for local church/synagogue redevelopment in Detroit, recognized by the City of Detroit and identified in the National Register of Historic Places Inventory. In 2024, based in part on our campaign's groundwork, the project received a matching grant of $250K from the National Fund for Sacred Places, a program of Partners for Sacred Places in collaboration with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.