Gulf Coast Community Foundation Ups the Quality of Philanthropy

By Sylvia Whitman

You’d need a globe in full spin to follow the peripatetic life of Joe and Nora Stephan. Born in Egypt. Engaged in Lebanon. Married in Switzerland. Based in the United States, with sojourns in Brazil, Greece, and Kuwait. “Although we enjoyed the experience of living in other countries,” says Joe, “we always looked forward to returning to our favorite place—the United States.” One of the reasons? Here, the giving is easy. 

“I do not believe there is any country in the world as philanthropic as the United States,” says Joe. “The care, the empathy—the whole area of philanthropy is second to none.” The Stephans marvel at the time donated, as well as the money. “It’s really very striking. I don’t think many people appreciate how much giving goes on here.” 

The Stephans have joined that tradition. In 1999, when Joe retired, the couple settled in Sarasota. At first, they gave to the usual suspects. Raised Catholic, they support the church and its ministries. Opera lovers, they have embraced Sarasota Opera, with Joe joining and eventually chairing the board of trustees. But the couple considered their other charitable activities “very broad and scattered” until Joe’s friend and onetime colleague Elton White introduced the Stephans to the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. 

“Our giving has improved in terms of quality because it addresses real needs of the community,” says Joe. 

He’s quick to clarify that “there’s never any low-quality philanthropy.” All giving is good. “We are meant as human beings to lend a helping hand to people who are less fortunate and in need.” What Gulf Coast did was draw the Stephans’ attention to “needs closer to us and visible to us.” Among other things, they support Children First, which offers Head Start programs to vulnerable kids from birth to age 5, and Harvest House, which helps people transition out of homelessness. “We would not have learned about these organizations if not for Gulf Coast,” says Joe.

“Whatever the needs are, they find it,” adds Nora. “We are guided by their initiatives.”

Instead of just sending a check, the Stephans often look in on programs that Gulf Coast suggests. “We’re able to monitor the progress that our philanthropy is able to achieve,” says Joe. When the foundation launched “STEMsmart” about a decade ago, he visited a Sarasota middle school piloting the initiative. With new equipment, reconfigured classrooms, and teacher training, STEMsmart aimed to improve students’ expertise in and enthusiasm for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), fields in which American kids sometimes lag behind their peers abroad. 

“I saw its impact,” says Joe. “It was really an eye-opener and a heartwarming experience.”  

Returning Favors

Living in different Cairo suburbs, Joe and Nora met as teenagers. As Coptic Catholics—“a minority within a minority,” says Nora—they shared a similar upbringing. And similar losses. Joe’s circumstances changed abruptly when his dad died while he was in middle school, but he was able to continue his French private-school education thanks to a scholarship from the alumni organization. He went on to the university, earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and came to the United States to pursue more graduate studies. At 16, Nora also lost her father and the attendant security. 

“We firmly believe that if we want to address all sorts of inequality in our society—income, social standing—the best way is to enable equality of opportunity,”

Joe Stephan

“You are formed by the way you grew up and your experiences,” says Joe. “That stuck in our mind. We really owe a lot to the people who helped us.”

Adds Nora, “They really showed us what to do.”

But first the Stephans had to launch their own family. When the multinational NCR Corporation offered Joe a job, Joe headed to NCR’s headquarters, at the time in Dayton, Ohio. Nora joined him there. 

NCR sent them to Rio de Janeiro. Nora, an aspiring interior designer, couldn’t continue her education; she learned Portuguese, but “my language wasn’t good enough to put myself through school there.” The first of their two sons was born in Rio, the second back in Dayton. She didn’t return to school until the boys headed off to college.

 “She was serving as both a mom and dad because I was traveling a lot,” says Joe. “She had a really full-time job to raise the family.” As Joe rose through the ranks to senior vice president of the company’s international division, the whole family moved abroad several times, boomeranging back to Dayton several times over 25 years. Depending on the who and the where, the Stephans switch up among four languages—Arabic, French, English, and Portuguese. (At home, à deux, French wins out about 60% of the time.)

Opening Opportunity

Joe’s boss introduced the couple to Sarasota in 1986, and they vacationed here before the final millennium move. Through Catholic Charities, Nora discovered Our Mother’s House, which shelters and provides childcare for single homeless mothers while they job hunt. “I really love this place,” says Nora. 

But it was a long drive to Venice for volunteering, so the couple started delivering for Meals on Wheels, one driving while the other made the drop. Alas, the pandemic has temporarily halted their 12-year run.

During their globe-trotting years, the Stephans connected, through Nora’s mother, with a network of 30-odd schools in poor villages in Upper Egypt and developed a scholarship program for more than two dozen kids. In Sarasota, as the Stephans became involved with Gulf Coast Community Foundation, they appreciated that it tackled issues by bringing together multiple organizations, nonprofits and government agencies, as well as donors and community leaders. 

“It put those programs to work together to be more efficient,” says Nora. 

As a retired business executive, Joe also approves of the foundation’s systematic process of assessing needs every couple of years, soliciting feedback and producing a “good size report.” 

The Stephans have directed their philanthropy toward children’s development, both education and general well-being. “We firmly believe that if we want to address all sorts of inequality in our society—income, social standing—the best way is to enable equality of opportunity,” says Joe. 

Through Gulf Coast, they have helped underwrite STEMsmart and Children First, obvious choices. Now they’re also backing youth mental health initiatives, something not even in their plans a couple of years ago. 

Nora again credits Gulf Coast with showing her and Joe a need so present but previously invisible to them. “Transforming Mental Health Care for Sarasota County Youth,” a study commissioned by Gulf Coast and the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation and released in 2019, highlighted roadblocks for kids with mental illness. Researchers estimated that more than 17,000 children in Sarasota have had an Adverse Child Experience (ACE), such as abuse and neglect, incarceration of a family member, or substance abuse or mental health issues of a household member. ACEs in turn correlate with present and future problems: mental illness, run-ins with law enforcement, substance abuse, or even suicide. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 37% of students with a mental health condition age 14 or older drop out of school—the highest dropout rate of any disability group. 

“Our main focus,” says Joe, “is helping kids by giving them a chance to succeed in life.” Their sons and five grandkids are doing well up North. So, Joe and Nora are minding the children of Sarasota—and elsewhere through their support of a pediatric project at a major research university. 

“We’ve been blessed in so many ways,” says Joe. “So many, many ways.  People have helped me develop and have a chance to succeed. We truly believe that one has to give back. It’s an obligation.”  

FOR MORE INFORMATIONon Gulf Coast Community Foundation, please visit www.gulfcoastcf.org or call 941.486.4600.