Community Service Award
Homeless Emergency Project, Inc. (HEP)
ProVise Management Group, LLC
NFP Securities
If we spend all of our time with affluent people, eventually that becomes the definition of the world for us,” said Bruce Fyfe, executive vice president of ProVise Management Group in Clearwater, Florida.
“Working at the Homeless Emergency Project has provided an important balance for me,” he said. HEP, also based in Clearwater, provides emergency housing and food, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing.
Mr. Fyfe has served as chairman of HEP’s board since 1992. Over the years, he has taken the organization from two employees and a budget of $100,000, to almost 60 employees with an operating budget of $4.5 million, serving 400 clients per day. Mr. Fyfe raised almost $1.5 million for HEP between January 2011 and April 2012.
Last October, he accomplished a personally significant project for HEP: the opening of a 32-unit complex for homeless veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars. He and his wife raised $3.4 million for the facility in honor of their son, an Iraq war veteran who died in 2009 from the effects of severe post-traumatic stress disorder. “It was a passion for me before my son died, and it’s a double passion now. I don’t want others to lose their children in the same way I lost my son,” Mr. Fyfe said.