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NONPROFIT: Karen Johnson: Schulz Museum director built Human Race, has long history of nonprofit leadership

SANTA ROSA – As the Charles M. Schulz Museum opened its doors, Karen Johnson was pulling out of her driveway, bound for New York City. Little did she know less than three years later, it would be the museum that drew her back to Santa Rosa.

Ms. Johnson was recruited back in 2004 to serve as museum director because, in the 15 years before she left Santa Rosa, she had become a fixture in the local nonprofit community, having led the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County from 1987 to 2002 .

“We needed somebody to make an impact in the community, so I asked her to come back,” said Jean Schulz, the museum’s founder and widow of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. “To me it was sort of a no-brainer. She was a dynamic force in the nonprofit community.”

Now Ms. Johnson, 61, has been tapped to help address a curious problem – people from all over the world have visited the Schulz Museum because the Peanuts cartoon is a cultural icon, but the facility was still unknown to much of the local community.

“We had people coming from all over the world, but people from Santa Rosa would say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get there sometime.’”

If Ms. Johnson’s track record at the volunteer center is any indication, she is the perfect candidate for a community outreach program. As head of the center, Ms. Johnson expanded the organization more than sixfold, increasing its annual budget from $560,000 to $3.8 million. By the time she left, it was the second-largest volunteer center in the country, after Los Angeles.

“Her personality and her business acumen really pushed the volunteer center as one of the major volunteer organizations in the community,” said Jim Berger, who was a board member at the center during Ms. Johnson’s tenure and is now a volunteer at the museum.

Ms. Johnson was inspired as a teenager by civil rights leaders such as Marian Wright Edelman, an attorney and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, now a $22 million-per-year children’s advocacy group. A Southern California native, Ms. Johnson graduated from Long Beach State with a degree in comparative religion, but family circumstances prevented her from pursing her dream of a law career.

She moved to Sonoma County at age 25 and worked as an occupational therapist at Sonoma State Hospital, now the Sonoma Developmental Center. In 1978, she applied to Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she earned a master’s in public administration. She returned to the hospital, near Glen Ellen, but left to take what she calls a “glamorous” job as spa director for the Sonoma Mission Inn.

“It had a lot of pizzazz, but it wasn’t fulfilling for me,” she said. When Ms. Johnson left the inn to lead the volunteer center, she did take one important lesson with her – people like to have fun.

“When I go out and teach fundraising, I’m always saying that you can’t sell misery,” Ms. Johnson said.

“People need to know what’s going on, who’s being underserved, who’s not getting the food they need. But how do you create an environment for people to step into that and create solutions and see themselves as participating to make a difference?” she said. “When you get a group of people focused on something, there’s camaraderie, there’s laughter, and it brings people back.”

One of Ms. Johnson’s most visible accomplishments in outreach was her expansion of the local Human Race, which is a national fundraising event for nonprofits. She grew Sonoma County’s annual walk and run to become the largest Human Race in the nation, and last year it brought in more than $1 million for more than 400 nonprofits.

In the Schulz museum, she saw another opportunity to help bring the community together. “Like everyone else in my age group, I grew up with an affection for Peanuts,” she said. “It defined part of my family culture, it defined part of the political culture and it was a part of the culture of the ’60s and ’70s.”

Since joining the museum, Ms. Johnson has focused on expanding school and community programs, and the museum has already seen a small uptick in attendance.

“It is important to continue educating the people of Sonoma County about what an incredible resource they have,” she said. “We will be able to continue the story of Charles Schulz and the legacy he left.”

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