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From Page One Athletes, teams see benefits from boosting their charity efforts charity from A1


said Greg Johnson, executive di- rector of the Sports Philanthropy Project, a nonprofit group that studies the impact of charity ef- forts in the multibillion-dollar in- dustry. “Now it’s a central part of the business model of most fran- chises.” In Washington, the philan- thropic push could get a big boost from the arrival of a new slate of stars and genuine excitement about the prospects of all four professional teams. The Capitals have Alex Ovechkin, arguably the best player in hockey. The Red- skins traded for Donovan McNabb, a Hall of Fame-caliber quarterback. The Wizards draft- ed 19-year-old point guard John Wall with the first overall pick in June. And this summer the Na- tionals unveiled pitcher Stephen Strasburg, considered among the best prospects ever. Their potential success could lead to more than just energized fans, sold-out games and addi- tional revenue for the franchises. It could mean more donors to the teams’ charitable foundations, more volunteers for team-spon- sored charity events, more corpo- rate partners for charity efforts, more athlete appearances for lo- cal nonprofits, and more fan re- sponse to team appeals on behalf of local causes. In other words, more leverage, more clout and more benefits to the city.


More than donations Quantifying those benefits can


be difficult, those who study phi- lanthropy say. How do you put a dollar figure on the influence Ovechkin has when he visits a child with can- cer? What about when the Red- skins encourage fans crowding training camp to donate school supplies to needy kids, or McNabb encourages kids to exer- cise?


If a team gives away tickets for


charity, is that altruism, a way to fill unsold seats or a savvy tax break? What’s it worth to a chari- ty to have NFL-donated ad time during the Super Bowl?


By one measure — contribu- tions to nonprofits — local efforts are dwarfed by the biggest team foundations nationally. The Washington Nationals


In D.C., the philanthropic push could get a big boost from a new slate of stars and genuine excitement about the prospects of all four professional teams.


Dream Foundation, for instance, gave away nearly $400,000 in 2008, a fraction of the more than $3 million the Red Sox Founda- tion donated. But the fan base of teams such as the Sox, with a cen- tury of history, home runs and heartbreak, can’t really be com- pared to a team such as the Nats, with just five years in Washing- ton and a three-year-old founda- tion. The Washington Redskins


Charitable Foundation has long been the largest among the area’s sports teams. It gave away more than $500,000 in grants in 2008, tax records show.


But just up the road in Balti- more that year, the Ravens donat- ed $2.7million. Those contributions, however,


don’t reflect the other ways teams and athletes raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for local nonprofits: By using their visibil- ity to put the word out about good causes, sending players to charity events and donating signed merchandise. (One Cap- itals devotee happily plunked down $5,900 for an Ovechkin- signed hockey stick; another bid $12,000 at a charity auction to sit next to him at a college basketball tournament at Verizon Center.) Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, whose Monumental Sports & En- tertainment took over the Wiz- ards and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics in June, said sports is one of the biggest, most effective plat- forms for spreading a message.


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have had in the past. Organizations such as Athletes


for Hope have made it easier to give back, and so has the rise of the mega-agencies that can help star athletes create and manage foundations as part of their over- all brand strategy. There are plenty of business reasons for the increase, includ- ing tax breaks, and a kind of posi- tive advertising that money can’t buy. “In sports, there’s a lot of cheap


grace,” said Lee Igel, a professor of sports business and manage- ment at New York University. Philanthropy can be a great


way to chip away at ugly head- lines about scandals and big money in pro sports. It can have enormous marketing benefits, too. “You try to capture people to


MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST Ryan Zimmerman with his mother, Cheryl, at Monday’s benefit at Nationals Park to raise fund for MS.


And that influence grows with the popularity of the team. He watched it happen with the Caps, who finished with the best record in the NHL this past sea- son. The team’s foundation had its best season, too, raising more than half a million dollars. Washington Capitals Charities was already ramping up its giving to causes including cancer pre- vention and the Children’s Na- tional Medical Center, nearly doubling its grants from 2007 to just over $300,000 in 2009. Now Leonsis will also be in- volved with the Wizards’ founda- tion, Washington Sports & Enter- tainment Charities, which gave away about $230,000 in 2008 to support the Capital Area Food Bank, a teen-pregnancy preven- tion program and other groups. Leonsis, one of the city’s best- known philanthropists, has re- peatedly encouraged the Caps to use their fan following to gener- ate donations and volunteers, and he has already told the Wiz- ards the same thing. “Every business that I get in-


volved in must pursue a double bottom line,” he said. “I firmly be- lieve that you can do well while you’re doing good.”


With such stars as Ovechkin


and Wall, he predicted an even greater ability to leverage his teams’ success. That’s been the case for the Redskins. The team uses its foun- dation to build and maintain fields at schools in low-income neighborhoods, give away Thanksgiving turkeys, and spon- sor mentoring, literacy and edu- cation programs for children. “The great fan base of the Red- skins allows us to do more than any one person could do alone,” said team owner Daniel M. Sny- der, who also has made large do- nations, particularly to children’s causes, through his family foun- dation. Players including Chris Cooley


have written checks for college scholarships and launched such efforts as London Fletcher’s teen- mentoring program. The team has already seen a surge of requests for charity ap-


pearances by McNabb, who champions diabetes prevention and awareness efforts.


Charitable legacies


There has been a huge jump in the number of athletes who want to create their own charitable leg- acies, said Marc Pollick, who started the Giving Back Fund to advise celebrity philanthropists 14 years ago after reading a Wash- ington Post story about shoddily run athlete foundations. “It’s almost a status symbol


now,” Pollick said. He often urges clients not to


start their own foundations, ar- guing that they will waste money on overhead and staff. Athletes for Hope offers the same advice. The Bethesda-based nonprofit, launched in 2006 by Andre Agassi, Lance Armstrong and Mia Hamm, works with more than 1,000 professional and Olympic athletes whom they con- nect with causes and counsel on effective philanthropy — an at- tempt to avoid the problems some athlete-led foundations


your brand at a young age, and hopefully you have a lifelong con- sumer,” said Jimmy Lynn, an as- sistant professor at Georgetown who runs a sports advisory firm. The Nationals are working to build a fan base after more than 30 years without a team in Wash- ington. Marla Lerner Tanenbaum leads the Washington Nationals Dream Foundation, which start- ed in 2007 after the family of real estate magnate Theodore N. Ler- ner bought the team. Someday, she said, she wants it to be like the massive Red Sox Foundation and have tremendous impact on the community.


One of the major goals is to build a baseball academy in a low-income neighborhood. The foundation also helps fund a dia- betes clinic, donates tickets to military families, hosts baseball clinics and works on improving the neighborhood in Southeast Washington around the ballpark. Tanenbaum, who also runs the


Lerners’ family foundation, is looking ahead: She hopes that Strasburg, their new pitching phenom, will propel their charity work to the next level. “Having Stephen and people being excited to cheer about the Nats really does help the foundation. “Bottom line,” she said, “it real- ly helps to win.” kinzies@washpost.com


Staff writer Rick Maese contributed to this report.


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