Football And Philanthropy

Turning rookie football players into veteran philanthropists.

written byPeter Laufer

Philanthropy is nothing new to the monsters who butt heads and entertain you during Monday Night Football. Individual players and teams have been giving back to their communities since the first pigskin was passed in front of a paying crowd. Back in 1973 the National Football League founded NFL Charities, the first leaguewide philanthropic foundation in professional sports, and it's been a model followed throughout the sports world.

David Krichavsky is Director of Community Affairs for NFL Charities, overseeing professional football grant-giving that now totals so me ten million dollars a year. For him it's a dream job. A Wall Street invest ment banker in a for mer life, Krichavsky says his heart moved him to philanthropy. "I wanted to do so mething more, so mething socially relevant with impact" he told when we talked while football fans were looking toward the 2008 Super Bowl. "I've always been a tre mendous sports fan and I understood the power of the NFL in our society." Intriguing for him is the fact that the dollars the league is infusing back into the community are multiplied by the exposure and the visibility of the NFL. "To use that for public good is really a great, great opportunity," he told me, sounding much more satisfied than an invest ment banker looking at a fat year-end bonus check. I started our conversation asking about motivation.

Peter Laufer: I do not mean this facetiously, but the National Football League is a bunch of guys crashing around, playing football and making wads of money. Why philanthropy?

David Krichavsky: Philanthropy is weaved into the fabric of what we do throughout the NFL. There's a definite belief that we're in a unique position as the number one sport in America and that we should be giving back to the communities that support us so strongly. Philanthropy is a natural outlet for the league.

Laufer: Professional football holds a tight grip on the psyche of its communities. But it's a business, not a public service. Why give back?

Krichavsky: We feel that we have a responsibility. We really do. People pay a lot of attention to our game, and we realize it's just a game. A lot people when they're watching on Sunday, it's the highlight of their week. They spend their dollars on our product and give it their time. We know what we're doing every day is not necessarily the most important thing on the Earth. But we can use football to achieve some social good; it's the least we can do.

Laufer: The loyal fan base and the adoration of the players, that's valuable non-cash capital to use for charitable work.

Krichavsky: People are passionate about the NFL and people do aspire to touch and feel our athletes. If you stick an NFL logo or a team logo on something and put into schools, kids are going to pay attention to it.

Laufer: You've created an opportunity to educate, not just pass out cash to those in need.

Krichavsky: Exactly. We know that we have a unique platform and not to take advantage of that platform would be foolhardy of us.

Laufer: Because you can take a fan with a passion for the players and the game, and make it clear that there's more going in life.

Krichavsky: Yes. Our guys play a game with helmets and they're heavily padded. There's certainly a gladiator aspect to the sport of football. To take the helmet off the players and humanize them, to show who they are off the field and how important it is to them that they give back to the communities where they play and where they live is a particularly strong statement.

Laufer: Is this something that the league has to teach players? The players are often a cocky bunch; they're used to being number one ever since they were in grammar school. As pro sportsmen they're at the top of a hierarchy in our society, enjoying huge salaries and stardom. It must be so hard for them to keep their egos in check. Do you have to kind of hold their hands and say, "Look, here's what you can do for somebody beside yourself?"

Krichavsky: I think the spirit of community service comes naturally to a lot of our players, a good number of our players. But we do everything we can to make sure that we communicate to players that this is part of being in the NFL.

Laufer: How do you influence them, how do you teach the value of service?

Krichavsky: We have a rookie symposium every year that brings together all the players that were drafted and who are going to be joining the NFL. We have sessions in that symposium talking about community service and talking about what's expected of players. Primarily we talk about the program that we call Community Tuesdays. The average work week for an NFL player is that you play your game on Sundays, Monday you're back in your practice facility, maybe watching some tape, getting some treatment. Tuesday is your day off, your one day off during the week. Then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday you're practicing, getting ready for the upcoming game and Saturday may be travel. But that one day off is Tuesday and every week, every Tuesday, teams are sending their guys out in the communities, whether it's visiting a school, going to a soup kitchen, going to an old-age home. Every week every NFL team is doing community events and that's what guys are doing on their one day off during that week, which is a pretty big statement.

Laufer: It's a huge statement. All the guys spend their off days doing good?

Krichavsky: Not every player, but it's something that every team is doing every week and so a subset of their players spends Tuesdays doing community service. A number of teams have what they call their Rookie Clubs. They bring all the rookies together and have them go out and do community visits together. Those visits are on Tuesdays over the course of the season. Those visits teach that service is a value that's embedded in the NFL. This is a tradition we expect the younger guys to continue.

Laufer: Do you get any resistance? Do you have some guys who say, "Look, I came here to play football and make some money. You can do this do-gooder stuff yourself, but I don't want to do it."

Krichavsky: No, not at all. There are some people that gravitate toward it more naturally than others. But I don't think you ever get pushed back to the extent of ‘no, this is something I don't want to be a part of.' The vast majority is naturally excited about it. Those that need to be prodded in that direction, once they get out into the community and go to a pediatric hospital and go to the bedside of a kid who has some sort of serious illness, I've never seen a case where a player at that point isn't touched and understands the power and opportunity he has.

Laufer: Of course. How did NFL Charities take shape? Who was it that realized there was something more to professional football than just bashing into each other?

Krichavsky: The mission of NFL Charities is to enable the teams and the players to make philanthropic donations at the national level. Our teams have always been involved giving locally and they continue to do so. But forming NFL Charities gave us the national scope. Also in 1973 we established our partnership with the United Way, which is now the longest running collaboration between a sports organization and a charity. Pete Rozelle, who was the commissioner at the time and also a master public relations man, had the vision of pairing the NFL with a charitable organization as a good way of showing our players in the community giving back.

Laufer: And it's acted as an example for other sports. You can trace other sports creating their foundations from the role model of the NFL.

Krichavsky: There's no question that the NFL was at the forefront of partnering with charitable organizations and developing corporate social responsibility – even if the term hadn't been coined yet – a bedrock principle of what we do. That came later to some of the other professional sports leagues.

Laufer: NFL Charities doesn't preclude individual players and teams from their own philanthropic activities. What is the interaction between national headquarters and the local outlets?

Krichavsky: What we try and do at the national level is really encourage and help promote what's happening at the individual and team level. A good example might be the

Player Foundation Grants that we make out of NFL Charities. We have a million dollars in our foundation every year that goes to support current and former players who have their own charitable foundations. We look at this as a way to support those guys that are doing great work. It's a coordinated effort across the league and obviously we give the largest grants to those players that are doing the best work. We're trying to create some templates that are useful for other players to follow, and then we help spread the word about what those players are doing.

Laufer: So if a player just feels he wants to do something but this is a new world to him, then you'll offer guidance.

Krichavsky: That's a great point. We see the Player Foundation Grants as an education process, and its value is in education probably more than in the dollars that we send to players' foundations. We make our evaluation notes available to the players and their foundations so that they can get a sense of how other potential funders would be viewing them, what the strength of their application is, what the weaknesses are, why we choose to fund them at a certain level. It's really a great education process for those player foundations, giving them a sense of how other funders would look at them if they applied for money.

Laufer: I've looked at several examples of Players Foundations and one that really touched my heart was the one created by Warrick Dunn. To be able to help individuals in such a substantive specific manner is spectacular.

Krichavsky: Yes, I think the personal connection that Warrick has to the work that he's doing is something that's just so strong. Most of our guys get to the passion that they have through some sort of personal connection. Warrick lost his mother, who worked a number of jobs. She was working as a police officer and was killed in the line of duty. He saw his mom, you know, busting her tail working multiple jobs trying to provide for him and his siblings, and he wanted to help those that don't have all the resources. He's developed this program where he helps single-parent families achieve the goal of homeownership for the first time.

Laufer: He provides them with their down payments. It's an incredible idea and a touch of magic.

Krichavsky: Providing the down payments and outfitting the house with all the furniture and necessary supplies. Sixty some odd of them and now he's operating in multiple cities. He's working in Tampa where he used to play and in Atlanta where he now plays, as well as in Baton Rouge. What's really nice is that he develops personal relationships with those families that he keeps up over time. I mentioned before that there are certain template programs that we look to highlight and share those best practices with other players. There are now a good handful, probably between five and ten players, that are running similar programs and helping single-parent families achieve homeownership by providing down payments.

Laufer: That's spectacular. He's one of the Walter Payton Man of the Year award winners, right?

Krichavsky: Correct. The Walter Payton Man of the Year award is the most prestigious award, in our opinion, an NFL player can win. It's for distinguished performance on the field as well as service off the field. It's obviously named after the legend Walter Payton, who embodied excellence on and off the field. Having seen the players when they receive this award, the satisfaction and the level personal gratitude when they're awarded this award, is unbelievable. And Connie Payton every year, the wife of Walter Payton, comes to Super Bowl and presents it to the winner. It really is something that we feel strongly about and that the players understand the significance of.

Laufer: Do you think this emotion translates to the fan? What about the stereotypical NFL fan? He's sitting on the couch and his wife's yelling at him and his beer belly's showing and he's a sixpack in, right? Do you think that in addition to the actual charitable work that you're having a positive affect on the fan base?

Krichavsky: I would say there's perhaps a little bit of the gap between the significance of the award to the players and to the NFL as a league, and to the fans. The fans pay more attention to who wins the MVP and who's the offensive player of the year and who gets the Pro Bowl selection and who doesn't. But I can tell you that within the league, amongst the players when they're talking in the locker room and amongst people at the team level and at the league office here in New York, there really is no more prestigious award than the Walter Payton Man of the Year.

Laufer: That's great to hear. What's your favorite NFL Charities outreach program?

Krichavsky: Our Youth Education Towns is so me thing that I feel passionately about. Those are a network of after-school centers that we built in every Super Bowl city since 1993.We now have thirteen of them across the country. The first one was built in Los Angeles in the wake of the riots there.

Laufer: After the Rodney King beating?

Krichavsky: Yes, and Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said, "Gosh, we can't just come here, play a Super Bowl, have a football game, have a bunch of parties and then pick up and leave. We need to leave some lasting legacy." So the idea was born to build an after-school facility where kids could go and it's in a very under-resourced, under-served area of the city. Every Super Bowl city subsequently we've built an after-school facility. We now have this network across the country where we're serving close to ten thousand kids every day after school. It's really a tangible way in which we're making a difference in the lives of these kids.

Laufer: That's great. There's another thing that you guys are doing that looks intriguing: the partnership with Scholastic that came about after 9/11.

Krichavsky: After 9/11, the NFL and the NFL Players Association made a joint ten million dollar donation to aid in the recovery. The first stage aided people who were immediately or were directly impacted. We made donations to firefighters and the emergency responders fund, helped establish scholarships in the names of people who died in 9/11. The second phase of funding was to help in the rebuilding. We helped build a school in Lower Manhattan and a new park, and we invested in small businesses that were adversely affected by 9/11. But the last piece came about when our Disaster Relief Fund board asked how we can help to make sure another 9/11 doesn't happen. And where they ended up was the impact of people not understanding each other. We partnered with Scholastic to develop a diversity and cultural education program targeting school students that's titled OneWorld. It's been in schools for four or five years. It's one of the most successful programs that we've ever been a part of. Teachers didn't have tools to teach kids that despite some superficial differences we all really share a lot in common.

Laufer: And you're creating a forum around the upcoming Super Bowl for One World.

Krichavsky: This year the Super Bowl is going to be in Arizona and we're running a program that's already kicked off called OneWorld Arizona. We selected ten classrooms in seven schools to participate in this program. They're all going through the One World lesson plans. We have two classrooms on Indian reservations. We have classrooms that are almost exclusively filled with Hispanics. We have other classrooms that are African-American. We have a classroom that's largely Caucasian. We've established pen-pal relationships between these different classrooms. They're all going through the educational curriculum at the same time and then we'll bring all the kids from the various classrooms together during Super Bowl week for a town hall style meeting where the kids will meet their pen-pals for the first time.

Laufer: It sounds wonderful. Congratulations on such fine work. But there are some negative things that come out of football, Michael Vick and his dog-fighting crimes come to mind. Does the charitable work balance that? Is that part of what your job is about, to take away from the stigma of those bad-boy stories?

Krichavsky: I think the important point is that the negative stories are really such a small, small minority and they're just the ones that get the coverage. And you phrase the question as does it balance those negative stories? I would suggest that the seesaw is very much tipped in favor of the players who are giving back and the programs that our teams are running in order to make a positive difference. Yes, like any cross section of society you're going to have a handful of individuals who don't represent the excellence, integrity, respect and other attributes of the community. But the number of players who fall into that category, who fall on the negative side of the equation is really quite small. We're really proud and we point to the vast majority that is doing great things every day, every Tuesday, all off-season.

Laufer: Sure, it must give them an extraordinary sense of satisfaction to know that their talents and their luck can be translated into this direct benefit.

Krichavsky: You mention the work "luck." And while no one wants to describe themselves as lucky, players will tell you that they worked really hard to get where they are. You know they put in a lot of hours in the weight room and studying film and practicing to hone their craft. But once they're there and they've achieved on the field and learn that they have this platform in order to give back, they realize that they're in a position where they're lucky to be able to achieve so much good and to do what they can off the field and possibly affect people.

Laufer: It's a fine story you tell. One of the things we learn with the work we're doing with Aware magazine is that there are so many places where companies or organizations have a business profile in the community but many people don't realize that quietly good work is being done behind the scenes.

Krichavsky: We're really proud of what we do off the field, particularly what our players and teams are doing.