Tuesday, July 19, 2011
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Patricia Brozik, president of Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, said the 10-year old philanthropic organization is part of the community and supported by the community.
By Robert Guttersohn
YOUNGSTOWN
Three years ago, at the cusp of the recession, the Boardman Board of Education knew it would face tough budget decisions.
To help soften the blow to programs, the board decided to start the Boardman Community Foundation using private donations to help pay for school supplies.
Three years and $3,000 later, the foundation has paid for math department projection screens, books and art supplies.
“The foundation is in its infancy,” Boardman Superintendent Frank Lazzeri said. The $3,000 is “a drop in the bucket of the $6.8 million deficit over a three-year period we had to close.”
To help get established, the foundation and more than 90 others in the region turn to the 10-year-old Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley.
Until Patricia Brozik, its president, envisioned the foundation, the Valley was one of the last regions in Ohio without one. This left nonprofit organizations and community foundations to bear the overhead costs of operating.
Besides writing grants, community foundations work the back end of operations, allowing individual funds to focus on their mission, she said.
Brozik was on a steering committee with a few bankers and together developed bylaws for what would become the Valley’s foundation. Five years ago, they received the National Standard Seal, a grueling voluntary accreditation process for community foundations.
“It was hell,” she said. “You take apart every practice, every single procedure you do.”
And today, the state’s 69th community foundation continues to grow in the amount of foundations it manages and in office space.
Today, she runs the foundation with Julie Scarsella, director of marketing and development, and Andrea Walters, donor services coordinator, in the Commerce Building at Commerce and Walnut streets.
“A month ago, we were working in a 400-square-foot office, with two desks and two computers for three of us,” Brozik said.
Today they occupy an office in the Commerce Building.
“It gives a venue for people to carry on their philanthropic legacy,” Scarsella said. “The money stays here and helps locally. And that’s what makes me love what I do.”
But it’s also an organization the community can be proud of, Brozik said.
“We did a public art project a couple years ... at a time when the community was pretty much in the doldrums,” she said.
The project raised $250,000, money they reinvested into the community.
“We needed a feel-good kind of thing,” she said.
“We are the community foundation. We belong to the community. We are voluntarily supported by members of the community. We work for the community as a whole.”