Team Member Highlight: Bruce Percelay, Chair of the NN Advisory Council
What a difference one person has made! Bruce Percelay, NN Advisory Council Chair and Development Chair, joined our team in the summer of 2024, bringing his branding and marketing expertise to steer us to the launch of Nourish Nantucket in April 2025. He honed our mission and messaging to help the community understand the concept of Nourish Nantucket as an “umbrella” designed to coordinate and enhance the work of existing organizations already doing the work of food security. He helped us design a new website that communicates our mission clearly and succinctly, and highlights our partner organizations like the Nantucket Food Pantry.
Bruce understood that articulating the mission was important, but that building awareness of the depth of the problem of food insecurity had to be the first step to garnering the necessary support we needed to solve it. We needed to drive home the message that food insecurity exists and at the same time is a solvable problem.
An advertising campaign in N Magazine and outreach to his regional media contacts set the stage for Nourish Nantucket to grab the attention not only of people connected to Nantucket, but also readers of the New York Times and Boston Magazine, most of whom were shocked to learn that food security is a challenge for 30% of year-round residents.
From awareness flowed fundraising initiatives, another one of Bruce’s superpowers. Nourish Nantucket is pursuing an ambitious fundraising goal of $3,000,000 this year to support our partners in food security, our Nourish Nantucket food programs and the acquisition of a food security hub; our community has heard our call for support and responded with generosity.
If all of the above was not enough, the dream we had to acquire a building for food security programming and a permanent home for the Nantucket Food Pantry became a reality in October. Bruce brought his real estate development expertise to the table as we evaluated and the property at Boynton Lane and he helped us secure bank financing and the pledges to support that loan.
Bruce has been a difference maker for Nourish Nantucket. The entire Nantucket community has benefited from his extraordinary work on behalf of our organization. Thank you, Bruce.
