The Facts About Crime in The Bahamas

What is Safe Bahamas?

The Birth of the Safe Bahamas Initiative.

The Role of Safe Bahamas in the Fight Against Crime

The Management Structure

The Nuts & Bolts:
How Will it Work?

Administrative Framework

Board of Directors & Advisory Committees

To ensure appropriate focus on key areas of organizational activ-ities, four Advisory Committees have been established. Each committee is chaired by a member of the Board of Directors and generally includes interested persons from the community who have expertise in the relevant area.

To assure a truly national focus, Safe Bahamas will establish Consultative Committees in the Family Islands. These commit-tees will be made up of volunteers representing religious, civic and busi-ness leaders from within the community. Among other things, their responsibilities will be to advise the Board of Directors of Safe Bahamas concerning the development and execution of programs within their locality and to serve as a point of liaison for communication and dialogue between Safe Bahamas and the residents of the various communities.

The advisory committees and their areas of responsibility are detailed below:

Finance & Fundraising

• Oversee fundraising;
• Ensure appropriate investment and management of funds;
• Be accountable for the expenditure of all funds and in-kind donations;
• Operate and maintain accounts, both program and operations.

Program

• Document and review existing programs and suggest improvements;
• Recommend program resource allocation to the Board of Directors and/or Executive Committee;
• Monitor and evaluate the success/progress of funded programs.

Operations

• Oversee day to day administration of Safe Bahamas, including matters related to office accommodations;
• Develop guidelines for the allocation of program grants;
• Propose, monitor and advise on all operational aspects of Safe Bahamas, including administration.

Public Relations

• Coordinate all matters related to the Public Relation efforts of Safe Bahamas
• Ensure that the public becomes and remains aware of the organization, its mandate and its activities
• The Executive Director serves as an ex-officio member of the Board and all advisory committees. All Board and Committee members serve on a volunteer basis.

Day to Day Administration

The day-to-day administration of Safe Bahamas will be the responsibility of the Executive Director and his or her staff, each of whom shall be engaged as a paid employee of the organization. Safe Bahamas will pay careful attention to mini-mizing the growth of operational costs. Initially, it is expected that the organization will require no more than three (3) full-time staff members over the first two to three years. Considerable emphasis will be placed on the development and appro-priate use of information technologies (databases, application templates, the internet) so as to reduce the person-hour requirements for routine administrative activities.

Additional support, especially on legal, financial and public relations matters, will continue to be provided by Safe Bahamas’ team of professional advisors who to date have provided tremendous assistance to the organization on a pro bono basis. Safe Bahamas intends that administrative expenses will not exceed in any year eight (8) percent of the base of available funds. Stated another way, a minimum of 92 cents of every dollar contributed to Safe Bahamas will be chan-neled directly to projects and programs or to the organization’s endowment fund. This compares favourably with the administrative expenses of U.S. based non-profit organizations which average 13 percent of available funds in any given year.

UTILIZATION OF FUNDS :1ST THREE YEARS
(based on target fundraising effort)

OPERATIONS:6%

PROGRAMME ENDOWMENT: 94%

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