A Simpler, Smarter Way to Give

By the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation team

September 24, 2026 — When Erika Shefchik and her husband first came to the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, they were looking for a simpler way to manage their charitable giving.

Erika was frustrated with keeping track of donations and wanted the Foundation to take on the details. But she had a concern: Would the Community Foundation understand what mattered to her family or steer their giving in a different direction?

After meeting with Donor Services Manager Maribeth Franken, those concerns quickly faded.

“She did understand, and she did not try to steer us towards other priorities,” said Erika.

A Strategy Built Around What Matters

While talking through the family’s charitable interests and the organizations they wanted to support, Erika shared their hopes for opening a small endowment fund.

The idea was rooted in a very personal experience that Erika had as a child growing up in a home affected by poverty and addiction. When a family member needed treatment, an employer stepped in and offered to pay for it. The financial burden was lifted — and with it came a sense of hope.

“Even as a child, I could sense the lifting of that burden and the return of a sense of hope and possibility,” she says. “And it’s the lifting of that burden and return of hope we wanted to help with.”

The goal of the fund would be to help offset the cost of addiction treatment, recovery and support for parents who still have children living at home. With the idea being so highly specific, they weren’t sure if the Community Foundation would be willing to manage such a fund.

“We were wrong,” she says.

Maribeth guided them in establishing the fund and connected Erika with recovery organizations to help refine the fund’s intent and ensure their generosity could reach as many individuals and families as possible.

New Possibilities for Impact

The generosity born from one family’s experience is now a lasting resource for others.

“The fund will always be there, and we can add to it at any time to make an even greater impact,” Erika says. “It’s a fund that anyone in the community can donate to as well.”

And because Maribeth understood the personal reason behind Erika’s giving, the relationship continued beyond the creation of the fund. When federal funding cuts put a local program serving women in recovery in risk of closing, our team reached out. Knowing how deeply the issue mattered to Erika and her family, Maribeth suspected the opportunity might be meaningful to them.

Erika and her husband chose to help.

That connection — between a donor’s personal story and an emerging community need — is part of what makes giving through the Community Foundation different.

“Hearing a donor’s story is not only interesting to me, it also helps me understand their ‘why’ so that we can continue to provide the most personalized experience possible,” Maribeth explains.

For Erika, what started as a desire to simplify giving became a thoughtful strategy for turning what mattered most to her family into lasting impact.

“I am grateful to Maribeth and the entire staff at the Foundation for making everything seamless for us,” Erika says. “For helping to keep us informed of the needs of the community as they arise. And for the compassion, empathy and dedication they show up with every day, doing their best to leave this world a little better than they found it.”

Interested in exploring the right strategy for your giving? Our team can help you identify your goals, consider your options, and create a giving plan that works for you. Call us at 920-432-0800 or visit ggbcf.org/donors.