LITCHFIELD — Litchfield Bancorp was presented with the United Way of Northwest Connecticut’s annual Corporate Leadership Award during the organization’s campaign finale celebration Thursday night.

The Litchfield-based bank was instrumental in helping the United Way reach its $864,700 campaign goal this year despite the tremendous difficulty a recession in the local economy posed to fundraising.

Tom Villanova, executive vice president of Litchfield Bancorp, was co-chairman of this year’s campaign with Register Citizen Publisher Matt DeRienzo, and led the organization on a theme of “broadening the base” of givers by reaching out to companies that hadn’t run a formal campaign in past years.

New givers made up for the drop in giving at numerous local companies that had to deal with layoffs and wage freezes over the past year.

Led by the company’s in-house campaign Chairwoman Jane Vannini, Litchfield Bancorp increased its own contribution by nearly 20 percent, raising more than $19,000, with 100 percent of employees participating. And about 25 percent of Litchfield Bancorp’s employees volunteered on this year’s United Way campaign, including Jennifer Ives-Grobel and Lisa Partrick and Margret Warner, who co-chaired the United Way campaign cabinet’s

Professional and Small Business divisions, respectively. Litchfield Bancorp’s support of the United Way goes back more than a decade. It has had posted 100 percent employee giving for six years in a row.

Senior Vice President Paul McLaughlin was chairman of last year’s United Way campaign, which raised pledges of $941,801. He serves on the United Way board of directors with Villanova and Ives-Grobel and is currently its second vice president.

Litchfield Bancorp President and CEO Mark Macomber was thanked Thursday night for allowing so many members of his senior leadership team to invest so much time in the United Way and the 24 local nonprofit agencies it supports.

[Macomber himself has been a member of the United Way’s Leader’s Circle since 1996, and in 1999 was the first president of the current United Way of Northwest CT, when the former United Way of Northwest Connecticut of Winsted merged with the United Way of the Torrington Area.  He led the Torrington merger team at that time.]