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Three Charitable Foundations See Changing of Guard
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Patricia Brozik acknowledges feeling melancholy as she prepares to step down as president of the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley. It’s a feeling that comes from having started something, being part of every major decision, watching it grow, seeing it flourish and then realizing it’s time to move on, she says.
“Yeah, it’s an adjustment,” she muses. “I’m sure anyone retiring from any job has the same feelings. A lot of people aren’t lucky enough to be in a position to start something, but I’m sure most people retiring have the same feeling.”
Brozik’s retirement at the end of this month from the position she’s held since the birth of the foundation in 2001 is just one of the transitions Mahoning Valley charitable foundations are preparing to undergo – or have undergone.
Earlier this year, Pamela Berry became director of the Home Savings Charitable Foundation, succeeding its longtime and first director, Darlene Pavlock. Meanwhile, the Raymond John Wean Foundation is searching for a new executive director to succeed Jeffrey Glebocki, who announced in May he would step down this summer.
Brozik, a banker before she joined the foundation, says that background helped her as she assembled the “financial guts” of the entity.
“It was really important at the time because of the number of things that we had to do that were financially related,” she recalls. “We had to put together budgets and balance sheets and hire investment managers. … It was a very smart move for that first board to bring someone with a financial management background in the first go-round.”
Today the foundation manages nearly $50 million in assets and disburses $2 million or so a year, Brozik says.
Brozik has done “a very effective job of growing and positioning the Community Foundation,” remarks Phil Dennison, board chairman of the foundation. He counts the achievement of national standards for the organization among Brozik’s major accomplishments. “That shows a degree of quality and compliance that is essential to donors,” he remarks.
In choosing Brozik’s successor, Dennison says the foundation tried to identify someone who could build on what Brozik has accomplished. Late last month, the foundation announced that Shari Harrell, executive director of the Warren YWCA, is the new executive director of the foundation
“To me, it’s the next logical step,” Harrell says. As the director of a direct services agency, she says she brings “a unique perspective” to the funding arena. In terms of its role in bringing donors and projects together, the foundation “really has an opportunity to be a leader in the gathering of assets in our community and reinvesting to make the community a better place to live,” she says.
Harrell acknowledges that “probably the most nerve-wracking part of stepping into the role” is following Brozik. “She’s done a wonderful job and has really worked to create something that is a true community asset. And I hope to be able to continue that and build upon what she’s put out there.”
Brozik describes her successor as “smart, energetic and compassionate. She’s a strategic thinker.”
Like Harrell, Home Savings’ Berry follows someone who held her role since the entity was born. Pavlock had headed the Home Savings Charitable Foundation since 1998. Berry has worked for the Home Savings and Loan Co. 24 years, including 15 years in several branches before coming to the main office. She became head of the foundation in March.
“It was a great opportunity for me,” Berry remarks. “I think that what I had done prior to this was good preparation. The management part of it, the administrative part of it, made it a very smooth move for me to step into the role. And I actually did get to work with Darlene before she left, which was a big help to me. She has so much knowledge to share.”
Berry researches grant requests and the organizations that submit them before she makes a recommendation to her board, who makes the final decisions. The foundation has $14 million in assets, and since 1999 has disbursed just over $11 million, Berry reports.
While there are exceptions, grants tend to be $10,000 or less, the reason being to “help as many organizations as we can,” she says. “There’s such a wide area that we cover” – Home Savings has branches in northeastern and north central Ohio, as well as a branch in Beaver, Pa. – “that we give the smaller amounts to cover more organizations,” Berry notes.
Glebocki, who joined the Wean Foundation in 2011, counts as his accomplishments: the revitalization of the Mahoning Valley College Access program, which has turned “into a bit of a rocket ship”; the 11-month renovation of the building on Courthouse Square that serves at its headquarters, recently recognized by Heritage Ohio; and what the organization has done to strengthen itself internally.
Glebocki also takes satisfaction with the Mahoning Valley Economic Competitiveness project, a collaboration with Trumbull 100 and the Fund for Our Economic Future that focuses on developing talent, particularly among “people who haven’t been at the table of employment or kept out of that pipeline.”
The Wean Foundation is “very early” in discussions regarding how it plans to find a successor to Glebocki. “He has given us a much better organization,” says its chairman of the board, Gordon Wean, internally and in terms of policy. In Wean’s “best-case optimistic scenario,” which he contends could happen, the foundation could have someone in place in September in time for this year’s Nonprofit Summit.
The foundation, which has $75 million in assets and disburses about $3 million annually, is “positioned incredibly well going forward as an organization,” Wean says, because it stays in touch with the residents of the Valley and with the organizations serving those residents in the neighborhoods. Those residents are the Valley’s greatest asset and providing them “the tools to chart the course for their future” is the purpose of the foundation.
Wean, who also serves on the board of the Community Foundation, credits Brozik with getting the area funders to talk more with each other. “They are collaborating more and I think there’s a real opportunity for that to get even better,” he says.
“Things had been done in silos for so long,” he adds. “Things occurred without knowledge of what others were doing and that’s not the most strategic way to change a community.”
“We have some very positive philanthropic resources in the Mahoning Valley but at the same time the need is so great we have to be really thoughtful and strategic in where we apply those resources,” Glebocki affirms. When area philanthropies communicate, they can leverage each other’s resources “and I think that is starting to play out,” he says.
The loss of that connection among the Valley’s funders is among Brozik’s chief concerns as the Community Foundation and other foundations undergo these transitions in leadership. One of the most strategic things she did when she came on board, she recalls, was to form a network of funders who talk to each other, appreciate each other’s strategic goals, and who understand where they can and can’t work together. “If you’re working alone, you’re not as effective as you’re going to be as if you’re working with a team, ever,” she observes.
First published in the MidJune edition of The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.