YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The hiring of a donor relations manager represents the latest phase of the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County’s effort to establish a new division to engage community stakeholders.
Established in September, the stakeholder relations division – headed by Zak Kozberg, chief stakeholder relations officer – brings together elements that already exist within PLYMC to communicate with community stakeholders, said Aimee Fifarek, PLYMC’s director and CEO.
“Generally, libraries are usually a very quiet part of the community, right? We are effectively wallpaper. We’re always here when you need us, but you don’t necessarily think about us unless you do need us, unless you’re in the target population, especially parents with young children,” she said. “Being loud about and tooting our own horn is not something that we do a lot, but it’s something that we need to do better.”
Creation of the division was prompted by the retirement this fall of Deborah Liptak, its first development director, a post she had held for more than two decades. Given that Liptak had originated and evolved the role, there was no way to directly replace her, Fifarek said.
“When you have long-term staff like that – and PLYMC has had the opportunity and the good fortune to have several people who have served a majority of their careers at the library – it’s less about replacing them, because with that level of institutional knowledge, you can’t really hope to do that,” she continued. “So the question is how do you adjust the position for what’s needed today, and that’s really what we needed to do.”
Building a Stakeholder Relations Division
The library system recently hired Mandy Shina to the recently created position of donor relations manager. Her role is to communicate with the philanthropic community. The title change for Shina’s position “was mostly to bring it up to date and to put it in alignment with our organizational titles, while also making sure it was meaningful in the fundraising world,” Fifarek said.
Michael Stepp, who joined the library system as strategic communications officer in early 2024, communicates with elected officials and deals with media outlets.
Both, along with development coordinator Heather Elder, who works with Shina, and Tasha Lambert, administration office coordinator and staff liaison to the library’s board of trustees, are part of the stakeholder relations division headed by Kozberg, who started with PLYMC in July 2024.
Kozberg said his role is “essentially to take the time to think bigger picture” about how the work of his colleagues in the division fits together to tell the library’s story.
The division is “outward focused,” but in a different way than the library’s public services team is, and represents a piece Fifarek said was missing from the library.
“We do a phenomenal job through our frontline staff and our marketing team to get information out there about library programs and all of the great opportunities and impacts libraries have,” she said.
However, there always will be a contingent of people for whom it isn’t a regular part of their lives – though the library still affects them – and they hear about its impact on the community only when there is a levy on the ballot, she said. Community leaders and the general public don’t always hear about the library as a business, how it is spending tax dollars, its accountability and its economic impact, whether through employment or capital improvements.
“We need to be talking about this year-round and each year, regardless of whether there’s a vote on for the library or not,” she said.
The library does “a phenomenal job” of engaging with patrons and the community as a whole and of providing “exceptional library programs and services,” but oftentimes people don’t recognize it provides “an essential service in this county,” Kozberg affirmed.
“Pulling the relationships that Mandy is going to be forming, pulling the relationships that Aimee has and that Michael has together to form a large narrative to be able to tell that story is my primary mission,” he said.
The library’s role in the community and the resources it offers are why Shina joined the staff, she said. The recently launched Family Place Library at PLYMC’s Kusalaba branch is “a perfect example of the impact the donors can have on our library and on the community,” she said.
“If someone’s never been to a library, they could walk in and find at least one resource that would be useful to them,” she said. “We are a vital, vital piece of the community.
Stepp said his job is to relay to the media, elected officials and other community stakeholders in the community not only the programs and services that the library offers but “the broader themes of what we’re about, what we’re here to do,” including “essential functions in the community that sometimes people don’t see but they will see. And so it’s sort of to engage a different group of folks than you are around the same themes,” he said.
One of the things that has changed since Liptak joined the library in the early 2000s is donor recognition. Back then, libraries put bookplates in books and plaques on benches to acknowledge donor contributions, something that is difficult to do because many of those materials are commodities that get worn out and replaced.
“We try to avoid throwing out something that’s a memorial to somebody. We want to make it meaningful recognition for the doors and the people being recognized,” she said. That is why there is more focus on donor recognition at programs and events, such as letting the community know when a corporation or its foundation is providing support.
There also is greater attention being paid to drive the philanthropic spirit among younger generations, she said.
“It’s really important to connect with new groups of people and try to make them library supporters, whether that’s users, voters or donors – ideally, all three,” she said.
Funding Uncertainty
Creation of the division comes at a time when the library faces challenges that include the “high level of uncertainty” around its budget and “competing narratives in the public and political arena,” Fifarek said. When explaining the creation of the new division to PLYMC staff, she displayed a screenshot from an Ohio Library Council webinar she had been on that showed no fewer than seven pieces of legislation at play at the time that could adversely affect library funding.
The library is already addressing the budget reduction resulting from reduced funding from the state Public Library Fund, including an early retirement incentive package, eliminating some technology, which will result in lower software licensing costs, and reductions in the mobile hot spots available as usage of those has declined, she said. Other steps have included eliminating the staff development day and shifting funds to provide greater flexibility in 2026.
“One of the biggest things that we’re talking about right now is how can we educate the public on what property taxes are used for, because the referendum that is currently gathering signatures wants to eliminate property taxes but wouldn’t propose an alternative solution to provide services,” she said.
She also pushed back on accusations of “mission creep” by PLYMC critics, contending that it reflected an “outdated” and “possibly inaccurate” view of what libraries do. Libraries have always been gathering spaces, for example.
“Libraries have always been about books. Libraries will always be about books. There is no better way to tell a long-form story than black print on white paper,” she said. “However, libraries have never only been about books, and that is where some people have a very narrow view about what libraries do.”
Library officials are in the early stages of discussing an educational campaign in collaboration with elected officials, Stepp said.
The budget adjustments “are not a result of mismanagement on the library’s part” but rather “a direct result of the political agenda of people at the statehouse,” Kozberg said.
Next year’s general election, “especially at the governor’s level,” will have “a very big impact on what our funding looks like at the end of the biennial budget in June 2027,” Fifarek said.
Pictured at top: From left are Michael Stepp, Mandy Shina, Aimee Fifarek and Zak Kozberg.