Eversight

Eversight's organizational goals include:

Goal #1: Continue to provide for every request for a sight-restoring transplant.

Goal #2: Continue providing for 100% of eligible requests through our Gift of Sight charitable program for under- and uninsured patients.

Goal #3: Contribute new and unique scientific discoveries to advance solutions to blinding eye diseases and create safer tissue transplantation outcomes.

Goal #4: Provide training for more local surgeons and healthcare professionals to ensure best practices and best patient outcomes.

Strategies specific to the above goals include:

Goal #1: Continue to provide for every request for a sight-restoring transplant. We expect to achieve this goal through the long-standing relationships we have built with local organ procurement organizations and through all necessary measures to ensure our 24/7 staffing for recoveries, with oversight and close collaboration of our Medical Advisory Committee, ensuring the safety of our recovery staff and the safety of the tissue provided for transplants.

Goal #2: Continue providing for 100% of eligible requests through our Gift of Sight charitable program for under- and uninsured patients. Support from the Eversight Board of Directors, local Lions Clubs, foundation and corporate partners and individual contributions will allow us to sustain this much-needed program.

Goal #3: Contribute new and unique scientific discoveries to advance solutions to blinding eye diseases and create safer tissue transplantation outcomes. Our strategic fundraising plan prioritizes securing funds for research and innovations, to sustain this critical work.

Goal #4: Provide training for more local surgeons and healthcare professionals to ensure best practices and best patient outcomes. We will sustain these services through grant funding that supports our clinical staff experts, training supplies and necessary technology for web-based training.

Our organization has proven past success in exceeding each of the above stated goals:

Goal #1: Every year, Eversight works with more than 6,000 donor families to give the gift of sight to more than 8,000 people across our service areas. As one of the nation's largest nonprofit eye banks, we have the staff, resources and expertise to continue to meet this need for sight-restoring tissue.

Goal #2: To date, we have provided for 100% of eligible requests for Gift of Sight support since the establishment of the program.

Goal #3: Eversight has a long-standing commitment to ocular research. For more than 70 years, we have provided precious post-mortem tissue to researchers investigating eye and vision diseases. In 2021, Eversight distributed 4,109 tissues for research and education worldwide. Since 1980, we have offered micro-grants providing critical seed money to promising research projects at major academic centers of excellence.

Goal #4: In 2021, Eversight provided training and education for 898 surgeons, fellows, residents, coordinators and other clinicians.

Eversight's recent key accomplishments include:

Cornea/eye tissue donation and transplants: We worked with the families of 6,609 cornea/eye tissue donors who gave the gift of sight to benefit vision transplantation, research and education and local surgeons relied on us to provide 8,495 tissues for safe transplantation for their patients. 

Research and innovations: The Center for Vision and Eye Banking Research is where Eversight conducts research into finding cures for blinding eye diseases and improving outcomes in corneal tissue transplantation. In 2021, Eversight was awarded the Eye Bank Association of America’s sole High Impact Grant for the second time in the last three years. This grant will support our work with limbal stem cell procurement. The intended impact of this research is to make possible the eye bank preparation and storage of tissue for use in simple limbal epithelial transplantation to treat limbal stem cell deficiency, a blinding eye condition.

Global humanitarian outreach: Eversight helps establish eye banking, donation and transplantation in developing countries where millions suffer from preventable blindness. Pakistan has been a large area of focus. In 2020, Al Shifa Eye Bank in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, which was established partially due to Eversight’s leadership, recovered its first local donor tissues since the opening of the eye bank. Eversight worked with Al Shifa staff on optimizing donor family and recipient communications and helping them develop their first-ever public outreach campaign to promote cornea donation within the country.  

Education and training: Cornea transplant surgeons and clinical professionals rely on our ongoing training to ensure best patient outcomes. In 2021, Eversight provided training and education for 898 surgeons, fellows, residents, coordinators and other clinicians.  

Gift of Sight: This philanthropically funded charitable program partially or fully offsets the costs of corneal tissue transplants for under- and uninsured patients. In 2020, support for our Gift of Sight program allowed us to waive $204,480 in fees for recovering and preparing transplantable tissue that enabled 91 patients to receive sight-restoring surgeries they could not otherwise afford.