The Next Chapter of Sports Philanthropy: From Community Presence to Civic Power

Created By: Tal Alter
September 26, 2025

In a society with fewer shared spaces for community connection than ever before, one continues to resonate. Sport brings people together across backgrounds, generations, and belief systems. It connects strangers, friends, and family alike in stadiums and arenas, around televisions, and through countless spirited conversations. And in cities across the country, it offers a rare sense of identity, both reflecting and shaping the community around it.

Professional sports teams are cultural institutions. Their brands carry trust. Their voices command attention. Their players, platforms, and partnerships hold influence well beyond the games themselves. This unique position creates not just an opportunity but also a responsibility to help shape and strengthen civic life through intentional philanthropy.

Sports Philanthropy: From Presence to Power

Many teams already support their communities in visible and meaningful ways: youth sports clinics, player-led campaigns, school supply drives, mental health awareness, neighborhood revitalization, and more. These efforts matter. But they also prompt a deeper question:

What would it look like for a professional sports team to fully activate its civic potential?

The answer does not have to involve doubling budgets or overhauling business models. It simply requires a strategy that uses assets all teams already possess, such as brand equity, loyal fans, trusted voices, player platforms, sponsor relationships, and community credibility, to deliver long-term value for both city and team. Teams do not need to “do more”; rather, they should focus on what matters most in their community and commit to it.

Sports Teams as Civic Institutions

For decades, community impact has been seen as an important but largely adjacent part of a team’s operations. That’s beginning to change. The most forward-thinking organizations are treating civic engagement as a core strategic asset, one that drives value for sponsors, fans, and the communities that teams both represent and serve.

Few institutions have the assets sports teams can shepherd:

• A platform that reaches millions across physical and digital spaces
• Deep emotional investment from local audiences
• Facilities and infrastructure that double as community anchors
• Cultural relevance and attention through players and events
• The ability to convene partners, shape narratives, and sustain momentum

When these assets are pointed toward clear civic priorities, teams become vehicles to galvanize philanthropy, build fundraising pipelines, generate public-private investment, and bring people together behind initiatives that benefit entire communities.

What’s Often Missing

Even teams with a strong commitment to community investment tend to fall short of their potential for long-term impact. The reasons are rarely about effort. More often, it’s about focus and integration.

Too many initiatives live in silos or operate without a shared understanding of purpose. Community Engagement and Foundation teams may be doing excellent work, but without alignment across front-office departments and buy-in—or better yet, a mandate—from leadership, the work doesn’t scale. And without defined outcomes, it’s difficult to measure progress or chart a path forward.

Two common patterns emerge. First, a broad set of initiatives with little strategic throughline. Second, a lack of infrastructure to attract and manage external investment from fans, corporate sponsors, or philanthropic partners, even though teams are well positioned to serve as civic fundraising engines.

The shift requires enhanced clarity, not more activity. Team leadership needs to ask: What are we trying to change? Why does it matter to us? How do we use what we have to make that change? And how do we ensure those efforts lead to lasting, measurable impact?

What a Real Civic Strategy Looks Like

There’s no universal model. Some teams may focus on early childhood, others on public health, education, or economic mobility. What matters most is not the issue area, but the intention and the design.

A strong civic strategy includes:

• A shared vision for impact that resonates across the organization
• A range of initiatives that ladder up to tangible outcomes
• Defined measures of success, grounded in both community need and brand alignment
• A structure for delivery, including governance, staffing, measurement, and partnerships, that ensures follow-through and accountability

The goal is to look beyond short-term wins to sustain systemic change. That means designing efforts that shift likely life outcomes — and having the infrastructure to track and support that shift over time.

During my time at the Washington Nationals, I had the opportunity to help build a platform from scratch through the Youth Baseball Academy. It took nearly a decade to see outcomes that validated the original vision. That kind of return requires patience, but more importantly, it requires intentional strategy from the outset, whether that means launching something new or refocusing an existing effort.

Looking Ahead

Most teams have the ingredients. Many have the will. What’s often missing is the connective tissue: a strategy that aligns community work with core business objectives and delivers meaningful civic results.

Professional sports generate enormous impact through entertainment and economic activity, but their civic impact potential remains largely untapped. The opportunity is there. The challenge is to recognize it and take the right next steps to turn potential into lasting action.

Orr Group partners with a wide range of nonprofits, including professional sports organizations, to design and implement civic strategies that are focused, authentic, and long-term. Get in touch to learn more about our unique approach.

Tal Alter is a Managing Director at Orr Group. With over 20 years of experience creating, leading, and scaling programs and teams, Tal brings his passion for sports, leadership, and community development to all aspects of his work.