The donors to the Federation barely know where their money is going because it is spread so thin. Few really have any ideology; they just want their name somewhere and the Federation is still the best place to be a macher based only on money.
The Federation will be irrelevant anyway in 30 years, but that is even worse because the reason it will be irrelevant is that its secular donors’ children are marrying out and have no interest at all in anything Jewish.
That organization is a sad story. The founder’s father became a BT and her grandmother was very resentful. The grandmother, who is now deceased, had money and gave it to the granddaughter for this feet thing both to spite her son and to dodge various taxes (probably legally). The founder herself went off because she spent time with secular relatives in EY and decided she wanted an easy, carefree life. Had she not had her grandmother’s money, she’d have just quietly gone off herself.
The founder is no longer in the picture and is studying law; now it is in the hands of non-Jewish counselors. When the original founder ran it, she tried to retain respect and/or she wasn’t very successful in brainwashing people – her own brother went back to Yiddishkeit after some time away. The non-Jews who do the day-to-day work are just paid employees who indeed consider it a success when they talk someone out of Yiddishkeit as opposed to just helping someone get a GED and giving them a place to hang out.
The answer is more options within our world. However, the Federation is supposed to support Jewish survival – and plenty of frum Jews do give to it if only for professional and business reasons. My very Chassidishe friend’s father-in-law, a Chassidishe yid from “der alter heim” who is a big wholesale jewelry dealer, was very active in the Federation when he was younger because his retail customers were members. Again, wait a generation and it will either disappear or become a funding source for day schools etc only. My guess is the former – the state of Israel hardly needs donations, Soviet Jews are free, and secular American Jews are vanishing. There goes the need for the Federation.