Blue Jays win philanthropy award after adapting charity plans amid pandemic

The Toronto Blue Jays logo. (Nathan Denette/CP)

TORONTO – Robert Witchel was in Dunedin, Fla., helping the Jays Care Foundation finalize its groundwork for 2020 when COVID-19 forced Major League Baseball to suspend spring training March 12.

The executive director of the Toronto Blue Jays’ charitable arm scrambled home the next day, popped into the office briefly and immediately transitioned from executing a strategic plan in the works since the previous July, to reimagining the uncertain months ahead.

A delay to the regular season’s start and local shutdowns meant that the team’s in-game 50/50 draws along with its annual gala event and golf tournament were at risk. Those streams raise roughly 50 per cent of the foundation’s revenues, and the looming threat of a budgetary collapse forced Witchel to start contingency planning ahead of a March 26 board meeting.

“I’m preparing all sorts of different scenarios and, this was a major factor in why we've been able to achieve what we have this year, the board said, ‘Hey, we've got a rainy-day surplus. It’s not raining, it's pouring, so we want you to look at ways that you can actually spend more than what you had budgeted,” Witchel said. “I was very pleasantly surprised, and it just took off a lot of pressure from the team so we could actually look at what's going to be the most impactful for the communities that we serve. So we basically started getting to work.”

The board, chaired by Melinda Rogers-Hixon, allowed Jays Care to run a deficit of up to $4 million during fiscal 2020 in order to scale up, rather than scale down its operations. The foundation’s work resulted in a $7.5-million pandemic plan that Major League Baseball recognized Monday with the annual Allan H. Selig Award for Philanthropic Excellence, the second time the Blue Jays have won the honour.

Their work in 2020 included:

• Teaming with Food Banks Canada to use the idle Rogers Centre as a makeshift warehouse, ultimately storing, sorting and shipping 8.1 million meals to 750,000 Canadians in need

• Jays Care staff helped design virtual 45-90 minute virtual programs to counter isolation and anxiety that reached more than 14,000 kids, hiring and training leaders, mostly from Toronto Community Housing, to run the sessions

• Jays Care also trained roughly 1,500 front-line youth workers from different organizations including Boys and Girls Clubs, teachers, volunteers and baseball coaches on how to run engaging virtual programs

• The distribution of 2,000 adaptive equipment kits to kids who lost their Challenger Baseball seasons

• The distribution of more than 2,000 hampers filled with nearly $500,000 in winter clothing to kids in need at the 40 schools where the RBI program was supposed to run this year

• The distribution of nearly 13,000 books to youth and families.

“The impact made by the Blue Jays and their Jays Care Foundation in critical issues amid the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada has been inspiring,” commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “All of us throughout baseball are proud of their contributions.”

Once Jays Care received its direction from the board, its 24 full-time staffers began calling more than 1,000 families from the roughly 35,000 kids in its programs to ask how they were faring amid the shutdown and what they were most worried about.

“We didn't jump to conclusions and say, hey, this is what you need,” Witchel said. “You might have thought that food insecurity would have been at the top, but it was second. They were most concerned about their kids being socially isolated, about anxiety, about falling behind in school. The board told us to come back with ideas where we could make the most impact. So we kind of went all-in on virtual learning programming.”

Many of the kids that already were in Jays Care programming are from single-parent homes, racialized and at the low end of the income scale, according to Witchel, often in multi-generational households with tight quarters where the adults work in front-line jobs.

The pandemic has hit them especially hard, which has made any bit of respite and aid particularly meaningful.

Initial success with the virtual programming led to an expansion with the Boys and Girls Clubs, which had to lay off hundreds of front-line youth workers, allowing them to rehire some staff and training them to run remote experiences for the kids who had lost their activities.

The online sessions were more focused on fun than education, featuring activities like storytelling, dressup, crafts and learning a skill. All of it was improvised once the pandemic hit, replacing programming that’s typically settled well before the year begins,

“I would say well over 50 per cent of what we did was unplanned,” said Witchel.

All that work came in what was a challenging philanthropic landscape.

Earlier this month, a report in the Globe and Mail said 372 charities have closed since April, according to the Canadian Revenue Agency, with dire predictions that scores of others currently hanging on will collapse in 2021.

Jays Care didn’t spend all it was allowed to this year due to lower costs than anticipated, as many supplies it received were either donated or provided well below market value, while some of the organizations it services didn’t need all the funds offered.

The foundation also did better from a revenue perspective as many who bought tickets for the cancelled 2020 gala simply donated the money rather than asking for refunds, a virtual 50/50 draw turned out to be the biggest in big-league history with $1.1 million going to the winner, and participation in a scaled back golf tournament was strong despite missing the usual bells and whistles.

Still, the expectation is that fundraising will be more difficult even for successful charities next year with no guarantees that the economy will rebound sharply. There won’t be a gala in 2021, although there’s hope for a golf tournament in the summer, while where the Blue Jays play and whether fans can attend will impact plans for 50/50.

“We're definitely forecasting much lower than we would in a traditional year while the supports needed for under-resourced communities will continue to grow,” Witchel said. “Our board understands these challenges and have once again given us the go-ahead to run a deficit in 2021. We believe it is going to take a long time for families to recover from this – we are preparing ourselves for a tough year ahead.”

When submitting content, please abide by our  submission guidelines, and avoid posting profanity, personal attacks or harassment. Should you violate our submissions guidelines, we reserve the right to remove your comments and block your account. Sportsnet reserves the right to close a story’s comment section at any time.
We use cookies to improve your experience. Learn More or change your cookie preferences. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the use of cookies.
close