The Tribune

by LANE GLAZE

LAST WEEK, I spent a few days in Nassau with key members of One Eleuthera Foundation’s (OEF’s) leadership team, including my colleague Keyron Smith, OEF’s President and CEO. We visited with prospective and long-time donors, thanking them for their past support and sharing exciting program expansion plans, heartfelt community impact stories, and success statistics from the last year.

I quickly discovered that there was a buzz across New Providence about the success and community development work being accomplished by OEF and its partners. As one donor put it, “I think every family island is trying to figure out how to replicate OEF in their own backyard!” This was music to my ears, as I thought to myself, OEF’s impact is indeed spreading.

This brought back a memory from 2016, when I received a call from my friend Shaun Ingraham, the founder and then-President of OEF. Since meeting in 2002, Shaun and I had worked together on numerous service-based projects, and university study abroad programs. I had been keeping up with the progress of his new OEF venture, more from a distance than not. This fateful phone call was our first lengthy conversation in a while, during which I was fully briefed on the vision that Shaun and a handful of passionate founding members were pioneering.

Shaun knew that--in addition to being an ordained Methodist minister—I was also a CPA and private banker. With this in mind, he put the challenge to me:

Shaun: “I need your help getting a U.S.-based 501(c)3 up and running that can support all of this work.”

Me, cutting right to the chase: “Look Shaun, if you and your board are really serious about impacting all of Eleuthera, The Bahamas, and eventually the region, then I’m all in!”

And with that, Steve Merritt – one of the organization’s founding members - and I recruited other US friends with long-term ties to Eleuthera to form One Eleuthera Foundation of the US, OEF’s sister-organization.

OEF-US is based in the Carolinas and exists to support the work of OEF and its partners. Since formally launching in the fall of 2016, OEF-US has helped facilitate more than $28 million in philanthropic “investments” into OEF’s many projects and programs. When combined with Bahamian donations, more than $40 million (including scores of $25 and $100 donations) have fuelled the personal and communal transformation taking place across Eleuthera.

OEF’s legacy is rooted in turning challenges into opportunities, and harnessing the capacity to scale from humble beginnings to long-term success. On the plane ride back to the Carolinas from Nassau, I began to reflect on this and other key success factors that resonated with me.

Number 5: Strong Governance

Since its inception, OEF has been blessed with highly capable, highly committed board members. Too often, people join boards or committees and do little other than attend meetings. The best boards are filled with individuals who seek, with the President/Executive Director’s guidance, to give the best of their gifts and talents to the work at hand.

Number 4: Effective Storytelling

Since its launch in 2012, OEF has had a broad mission that can be difficult to grasp, even for those of us on the inside like me. In recent years - thanks to the leadership of Chief Communications Officer, Yolanda Pawar - OEF has become a leader in the sector in communicating the fullness of our story.

Number 3: Trusting Donors

Nonprofits are able to do their important work because of the generous support of donors. OEF has been supported from day one by a group of donors who practice trust-based philanthropy. This has led to mutual relationships that reflect shared trust, unwavering strength, and accountability.

Number 2: Selfless Team Members

From the beginning, OEF has been the beneficiary of selfless servant-leaders who have left more secure jobs and given their lives to a vision that, in the beginning, had never been seen in The Bahamas. One of the best examples is Robyn Curry, Executive Support Officer, who left her career in banking because of a desire to impact her community of Rock Sound. She continues to play an invaluable role at OEF today.

Number 1: Strong Partnerships

Undergirding OEF’s tangible, visible strengths have been a set of organisational values – OEF’s DNA, one might say – that has been vital to our success. And one of the most important values – one that is echoed in our Mission and Vision Statements – is the belief that individuals and groups working together can achieve far more than individuals and groups working alone or in isolation. I would argue that this has been the main component in OEF’s success.

Years ago, at an ecumenical and interfaith gathering on the topic of hunger, I remember a preacher pleading with the audience “Surely, if nothing else, we as faith leaders can all rally behind a program that is designed to ensure that people do not go to bed hungry at night,” he pleaded.

Over the years, we at OEF have had hundreds of similar conversations with dozens of individuals and a wide range of for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental entities that have approached us with an interest in tackling some of the same social and economic challenges on our radar.

During this fractious, divisive time in which we live, this has been some of our most revolutionary work.

OEF’s willingness to work with a diverse group of partners to find real, lasting solutions to some of Eleuthera’s biggest challenges continues to drive our impact and success. Whether championing food security with our state-of-the-art cooling house, revitalizing agriculture through local farmer training, delivering life-saving water safety and swim lessons to youth, or empowering more than 600 individuals on Eleuthera through technical trades and entrepreneurship programs, collaborative partnerships have paved the way and proven to be a cornerstone in OEF’s longevity and success story.

A former CPA and private banker, Lane is a native of Charleston but now makes his home in Clemson, South Carolina with his wife Anne. An ordained United Methodist minister, Lane has served as president for OEF-US since its inception in 2016. He is also Professor of Practice at Clemson University, teaching in the area of Nonprofit Leadership. Established in 2012, the One Eleuthera Foundation (OEF) is a nonprofit organisation located in Rock Sound, Eleuthera. For more information, visit www.oneeleuthera.org or emailinfo@oneeleuthera.org. The Centre for Training and Innovation (CTI) is the first and only postsecondary, nonprofit education and training institution and social enterprise on Eleuthera. CTI operates a student training campus in Rock Sound, Eleuthera, with a 16-room training hotel, restaurant and farm. For more information about CTI’s programmes email: info@oneeleuthera.org.