Assisting Nonprofits and People in Need

By Colleen Gundlach

The Community Foundation of Northwest Connecticut (CFNC) was founded in 1969 by a small group of citizens in Torrington with $15,000 and plans to promote public giving. Today it has assets in excess of $87 million and endows 101 scholarships and more than 350 grants each year. And, since September, a Norfolk resident has been in charge of the foundation’s grants and programs.

Julie Scharnberg’s experience and skills make her a good fit for her new position.

Julie Scharnberg had been working for CFNC for several years as a freelance writer, and had authored several papers for the foundation, including “The Plan to End Homelessness in Northwest Connecticut, “A Summary of the Economic Status and Other Indicators of Well-Being of Women and Girls in the Northwest Corner” and the recently published “Food Insecurity in the Northwest Corner.” This work caught the attention of foundation president Guy Rovezzi, and when the position opened up last fall, Scharnberg was promoted to grants and program director.

Her past experiences, both volunteer and remunerated, seem to have inevitably led her to a position of this scope. A move to the East Coast from Los Angeles when her now college-age son was a toddler eventually led Scharnberg to Norfolk realtor Tom McGowan, who took her first to visit the Norfolk Library. Her reaction was “I want to live in this town, and I want to be close to the library.” Both wishes were granted when she moved into a house on Maple Avenue shortly thereafter.

“There were lots of boys on Maple Avenue, so my son had many friends. He could play outdoors and on the Town Hall lawn without fear,” she says. “It was idyllic. Nobody gets to grow up like that anymore.”

She immediately jumped into volunteering in the community, first with the Botelle PTO and then with the Library Associates. Since then she has expanded her volunteerism and now is on the board of directors of the Norfolk Children’s Foundation, the Coalition for Sound Growth and the Foundation for Norfolk Living. She is financial coordinator for the Regional 7 High School Robotics Team and chair of the Norfolk Historic District Commission, and she served on the governance subcommittee of the Norfolk/Colebrook Consolidation Committee.

For a while after moving to Norfolk, she worked from home as a medical transcriptionist and did many other part-time jobs to be able to stay home with her son, but eventually she took a full-time job in Hartford.

Scharnberg’s ability to multitask began during her college years, when she studied for her BA in international relations and political science at Canisius College and went on to an MBA at Pepperdine University. After her work as a paralegal and loan administrator, it was a natural progression for her to expand her interests into grant writing and administration.

Scharnberg calls her new position at CFNC “the right job at the right time. I am thrilled to be able to use my experience and contacts to deploy the donor money to the community.” Having fiduciary responsibility is not new to her, but “now it’s personal,” she says, because she is using the money to help her own community.

The Community Foundation’s funds are all donated through “local philanthropy.” In 1990, Carlton D. and Jenny R. Fyler gave the foundation an unrestricted gift of $1 million, an endowment that has since grown to more than $10 million. Later, Jim and Shirley Draper donated a further $30 million to the endowment, which support 19 area nonprofits and also provides unrestricted funds to assist nonprofits in six northwest Connecticut towns. In addition, the $20 million John T. and Jane A. Wiederhold Foundation became a supporting organization of the CFNC.

All the funds under the management of CFNC are used to provide grants to nonprofit organizations and college scholarships to deserving students within the foundation’s 20-town service area. Norfolk is represented on the CFNC board of directors by Alyson Thomson. The funds also provide educational opportunities to nonprofits, such as the Connecticut Council on Philanthropy’s program for nonprofit boards, a series of five classes scheduled to begin in April.

One focus for Scharnberg in her new position will be on food insecurity in the Northwest Corner. The problem, she says, lies in part with the income limits for government programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). A family of four must make less than about $44,000 per year to qualify for assistance. “The fact of the matter is that a family of four needs to earn about $70,000 a year just to get by,” she says. “The working poor of northwestern Connecticut are the ones who fall through the cracks. The food pantries are getting hammered.”

To learn more about the services provided by the Community Foundation of Northwest Connecticut or to make a donation, contact Scharnberg at 860-626-1245, ext. 113, or jscharnberg@cfnwct.org.

Photo by Bruce Frisch.