The Furyks: Foundation, Family,
Friends and the Fairway By Jacqueline Persandi
Why did you start the Jim and Tabitha Furyk Foundation? Before we started the foundation we had
given to children’s charities here. We just never had the time to create an event to help these charities.
Back in 2010, Jim had a great year. We
decided our kids had gotten to the point where they were a little older [and] that this is the perfect time to start our own foundation—so we could not only contribute money, but try to get the community to join us in raising awareness and really building a better community through helping children’s charities.
What are some of your annual events? Te Furyk and Friends event that we hold
in March, this is our third year. Tat is our big fundraiser where we try to get as many people as we can involved in the golf tournament and the concert. From that, we take the funds and use them throughout the year to help different children’s charities and projects.
Tis past year, near Christmas, we decided
to start an event called Hope for the Holidays. We invited our community to come out to pack a backpack filled with food for a holiday meal for a family in need. We packed over 900 bags that had ham, potatoes, green beans, stuffing—any of those items you would need to create a meal for an entire family. We started out calling it our “first annual” with the intention of doing it every year moving forward.
Another event that we’ve done for the past The Furyk Family, photo courtesy of
susanmichal.com I
n 2010 Jim Furyk won the PGA Tour Player of the Year award as well as the FedEx Cup championship. Along with a successful year on the course, Jim “the Grinder” Furyk and his wife, Tabitha, were successful in starting a nonprofit foundation
centered around helping children on the First Coast. It's been several years since the inception of the Jim and Tabitha Furyk Foundation,
and the organization is gaining both local and national attention with events like Furyk and Friends Concert and Celebrity Golf Classic, and Hope for the Holidays. In 2013 the Furyk and Friends Concert and Celebrity Golf Classic raised more than $300,000 for local children’s charities.
While Jim and Tabitha are First Coast philanthropists, they are also mom and dad.
Tey believe it’s important to teach their daughter Caleigh, 10, and son Tanner, 9, to give back to the First Coast community.
Family! sat down with Tabitha to talk about how the Furyks run a foundation, keep up with the PGA Tour and make time for family.
five years is called the Kids Can Play, and it’s done in conjunction with the PLAYERS Championship and the PGA Tour Wives Association. We invite the children of Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Community PedsCare to come out to the PLAYERS Championship. I invite some of the PGA Tour guys and all the wives to host them for the day. We’ve had the Jacksonville Zoo come out and bring animals, we’ve had Books-A- Go-Go come out and donate books.
Each year we theme it—whether it’s
literacy based or last year we did a “these kids can hula,” and had a hula show and invited the kids. Trough the PLAYERS Championship and the Wives Association we’ve been able to donate about $60,000 to those two organizations.
What do some of the local organizations’ proceeds go toward? Te charities that we’ve touched, thus far
are the Bridge, McKenzie Wilson Foundation, Community PedsCare, Blessings in a Backpack, Wolfson Children’s Hospital, MaliVai Washington Kids Foundation, Operation Shower [and the] Monique Burr Foundation.
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