Atlanta’s Jewish organizations must work together to connect with the area’s unaffiliated Jews rather than fight one another for members, reports a New York-based agency that studied the community here.

The Jewish Outreach Institute’s (JOI) study concludes that there are plenty of Jews to go around, but the majority of them aren’t involved in the Jewish community in any way. Rather than pour money into drawing and retaining members among affiliated Jews, the institute argues, Jewish organizations should concentrate on ways to get all Jews more involved.

“Painful as it may be for Jewish communal professionals to think that all our educational programs, exciting social soirees, resonant services and cultural opportunities are at most being accessed by only a minority of our population, this is the truth with which we must come to terms as we move forward,” the JOI report says. It criticizes the “self-defeating” competition for members among the Jewish minority — the affiliated.

The JOI was scheduled to unveil the 61-page report on its study of Jewish Atlanta at a meeting featuring dozens of community leaders Dec. 5, part of the institute’s three-day National Leadership Conference at the Westin Buckhead.

The institute, which is independent, aims to help the Jewish community develop pro- grams that welcome people who don’t join synagogues, aren’t members of the Jewish Community Center and generally haven’t found a comfortable place among their fellow Jews.

The JOI makes clear that the biggest issue is intermarriage, saying institutions don’t know how to embrace such families.

“Interfaith marriage is not the end of Jewish continuity; not raising Jewish children is the end of Jewish continuity,” the JOI report reads.

To prepare the Jewish Outreach Scan of Atlanta, the institute interviewed 83 leaders from 46 organizations, including 26 synagogues. Representatives of all the major streams of Judaism participated, and 38 of the 46 called outreach a very or extremely high priority.

The institute cites several outreach problems, including:

• Too much internal programming. Synagogues and other organizations run events that appeal to members and are held within the walls of those institutions, where unaffiliated people rarely venture.

• Too much internal promotion. Even events that are intended for outreach are usually publicized only within the active Jewish community.

• Too little cooperation. Few Jewish organizations look for opportunities to partner with secular groups on programs in public places. And Jewish organizations rarely work together on programs that reach out to the unaffiliated.

The institute says outreach takes three general forms: public-space Judaism, in which people can just wander in, such as Chabad menorah lightings at malls; destination Jewish culture, which takes place in secular locations and requires a decision to go, such as the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival; and open-door community, which covers events at Jewish institutions, such as Chanukah bazaars.

The institute’s key recommendations include:

• Make name collection, with personal notes and contact information, a standard part of outreach events. The best events involve fun ways to collect the information, such as free raffles.

• Collaborate among community organizations. That means sharing the names of unaffiliated Jews, referring people to other agencies that have requested programs and generally accepting the idea that the entire community benefits when more people are engaged.

• Create a communitywide outreach panel and coordinator.

“The Atlanta Jewish community has so much in its favor,” the report reads, “and JOI is optimistic.”