With the publication of an open letter by US Quadball Board of Directors member Nathan Digmann on Wednesday, I felt it was time for me to do something that I used to do all the time here at The QuidKid and provide some commentary on a significant piece of news in the community. More importantly, I want to propose a path forward. It is a path that I have not previously seen publicly discussed anywhere and that I have only recently started to learn about myself through my work outside the sport. But it is one that will require the efforts of the entire community -- yet never again by asking players to dig deeper into their own pockets beyond the membership dues they already pay. Stay with me for a second here.
First, I want to acknowledge that the anger of the community is completely justifiable. Even for someone who reads the financial statements and follows league news very closely, it is shocking to hear that USQ has fallen so deeply into the red. The size of the budget shortfalls at US Quidditch Cup 2022 in Salt Lake City and the national team invitational televised on ESPN8: The Ocho in Rock Hill, S.C. this summer are staggering. I get why players are upset, particularly after the community came together to raise $75,000 in an online fundraising drive in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when US Quidditch Cup 2020 was unexpectedly cancelled and in-person activity remained mostly suspended for the entire 2020-21 season. USQ missed two years of ticket sales from its marque event and one year of membership dues because of unforeseen circumstances, and the community rallied to save the sport.
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| Photo courtesy of US National Team. |
I especially understand the frustration of highly-involved community members like Boston University coach Harry Greenhouse, who have been working tirelessly with team captains and club presidents across the country to try to recruit and retain new players at colleges and universities. They have been doing many things to potentially bring a lifetime of joy, fulfillment and belonging to college freshmen in every corner of the country but they are also working extremely hard to guarantee a strong future for the sport by registering new dues-paying members. And none of them are paid staff. The dedication that community members have routinely demonstrated just shows the intense loyalty that the sport tends to inspire. For example, I got a message the other day from Greenhouse inquiring about the status of the program at the University of Iowa. Greenhouse lives 1,000 miles away from Iowa City but he is invested in their success and he is helping to build up the membership base of the sport in the process.
Yet while the importance of recruiting and retention for the financial well-being of the sport literally cannot be understated (reminder to pay your membership dues as soon as possible!), in looking over the financial statements and thinking about the future of the sport, it strikes me as an impossible task to continue to expect membership dues from players mostly between the ages of 18-24 to carry the overwhelming majority of the weight for the annual budget, a position that Digmann and by extension the Board of Directors clearly shares from the open letter. Digmann lists the fact that "USQ is highly dependent on membership revenue (i.e. the community) and should explore additional options to general cash flow" as one of the major ideas discussed in the Board of Directors' interview with current USQ Executive Director Mary Kimball when she was hired in 2019, right before the COVID-19 pandemic upended the world.
Whether the idea originally came from Kimball or the Board of Directors, it is a great one, one that I think the growth of the sport depends upon. It is also an idea that under the leadership of Kimball, USQ has taken bold steps to put into action. Most notably, in close coordination with Major League Quadball and the worldwide governing body that will soon become the International Quadball Association, USQ changed the name of the sport this summer to distance themselves from the anti-trans positions of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and open up the chance to pursue sponsorship and broadcast opportunities. Because Warner Bros, the maker of the Harry Potter films, owns the trademark to "quidditch" and has placed strict limits on the usage of the word, USQ could not explore the types of additional options to generate cash flow that Digmann is talking about, particularly naming rights for competitions at the league level. Now, USQ, MLQ and the IQA can begin to approach potential partners.
But at least for the short- to medium-term -- and here is the payoff finally -- USQ needs to look beyond both membership dues and corporate sponsors as sources of revenue. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a clear and long-standing mission of promoting gender equality and inclusivity, a mission that is distinctive and urgent in the United States today, USQ has the potential to connect with philanthropic foundations and wealthy individuals that are looking to make a difference. In the fields of promoting active and healthy lifestyles, empowering women and securing LGBTQ+ rights, particularly defending opportunities in athletics for the trans and nonbinary community, I am confident that there are donors who would have interest in USQ.
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| Photo courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union. |
If you haven't been able to keep up with state and local news over the past few years, sports have become one of the central battlegrounds in which many issues regarding gender identity are being contested. From more than 10 years around the game, it is my firm belief that USQ is better positioned than virtually any other organization in the country to speak out about the imperative of gender equality and inclusivity in sports with the power of the example that we have set. It is an example that we can continue to set and bring to a much wider audience with the support of generous donors who share our values.
For background, outside of playing and volunteering, I am a second-year PhD student in American politics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. I don't focus on the politics of gender and sexuality but I do study money in politics, including large donors and corporate influence, and I have recently become very interested in the growing role of philanthropic foundations. With the sharp rise in incomes and wealth among the richest Americans, charitable giving has reached an all-time high. Giving USA, the longest-running and most comprehensive annual report on the state of philanthropy in America, found that total donations increased from $466 billion in 2020 to $485 billion in 2021, the highest-ever sum in nominal terms and a number that nearly kept pace with inflation after 2020, when the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to advance racial justice led to a record-breaking year.
Now, in the work that I am doing as a PhD student, I am usually quite skeptical of large donors, whether they are wealthy individuals or philanthropic foundations. I typically have lots of questions about their motives. Historically, red states have given significantly more money per capita to charity than blue states and I spent the summer reading books with titles like Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. There are also many reasons for small organizations who work with wealthy individuals and philanthropic foundations to proceed with caution. They need to remain deeply committed to their values.
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| Photo courtesy of Giving USA. |
But at the same time, with rising levels of political polarization, the state of philanthropy is rapidly changing. The largest Democratic nonprofits spent more than the largest Republican nonprofits in 2020, fueled by a dramatic influx of money from donors who were looking to make a difference with respect to critical political issues but not wanting to directly fund a political campaign. Philanthropic consulting firms like Arabella Advisors have carved out a highly successful business model by helping progressive donors find small, scrappy nonprofits that are engaged in transformative work.
Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican and whether you see the developments in philanthropy as a positive or a negative, there is clear opportunity in the changes for USQ. Like several of the nonprofits that received money from large donors from across the political spectrum in 2020 and like many of the small, scrappy organizations that Arabella Advisors connects with progressive donors, USQ is a 501(c)(3) organization. Not every sports organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit -- it is a restrictive legal status in many ways. But for a sports organization with a goal that is charitable or educational, for a sports organization like USQ that is dedicated by mission statement to serving everybody that wants to play, there are some key advantages, above all the fact that donations are tax-deductible.
Community members who participated in the online fundraising drive at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic might remember that their contributions were tax-deductible. USQ has always received tax-deductible donations from various sources both inside and outside the immediate community, but more recently it is just starting to scratch the surface of the benefits that its legal status can bring. According to a 2021-22 USQ budget slideshow shared with me in the course of doing research for this blog post, in 2018 and 2019, "grants, contributions, and fundraising events" accounted for just three percent of the top four revenue sources for USQ. The low number stood in stark contrast with the much higher share reached by 12 top U.S. sports national governing bodies: 23 percent.
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| Courtesy of US Quadball. |
Predominantly 501(c)(3) groups, the 12 national governing bodies are all members of the Association of Chief Executives for Sport, a professional organizations that USQ successfully joined last year. They have diversified revenue streams that balance membership and events with grants and contributions, something that it seems USQ is clearly striving for. Together, the 2021-2022 budget slideshow and the joining of the professional organization shows that USQ has been seriously thinking about grants and contributions as an area for growth for much longer than I have. They have identified current levels of charitable giving as a challenge and aimed to join the ranks of peer national governing bodies that rely upon much larger shares of donations every year.
USQ has raised a significant amount of money from charitable giving in the past. The donations did not come from large donors or outside the wider community necessarily. One of the biggest came from the Karpoff family, avid fans of the sport in the early years who made a major gift in 2015 to fund a tackling development research project that has made gameplay much safer. It started an important conversation around the league and brought the sport in touch with an outside consultant from USA Rugby, crucial steps that ultimately resulted in the transition from one-hand to two-hand tackling. It continues to pay dividends for players today. All things considered, it is a perfect example of the type of funding that USQ should aggressively pursue, because donors are most likely to give to an organization that is close to their hearts and they often want to fund a specific program that will have a long-term impact.
In short, USQ should have the equivalent of a college alumni office that expertly identifies players, alumni and fans that can afford to make regular contributions or might have an interest in funding larger special projects. It already has several volunteers who have been working hard to maintain a donor database and keep in touch with alumni, but it needs a full-fledged new division. It needs players who maybe have experience working with their college alumni offices or who are interested in careers in the nonprofit sector to volunteer.
Still, to secure long-term health of the organization -- and to deliver upon my promise of never again relying upon players to dig deeper into their own pockets beyond the membership dues they already pay -- USQ also needs to have a routine system for reaching out to much larger philanthropic foundations from outside the community that have a history of working in adjacent areas and share similar values.
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| Photo courtesy of the National Basketball Association. |
Just off the top of my head, an example that might be familiar to basketball fans is the Wade Family Foundation, run by former Miami Heat star and three-time NBA champion Dwayne Wade. For readers who do not know, Wade has a daughter who came out as trans and he has been outspoken in support of her. His family foundation has worked to advance racial justice as well as LGBTQ+ rights and he was named to the TIME Magazine 100 most influential people list in 2020 for his activism and philanthropy. Beyond the Wade Family Foundation, there are entire networks of large donors like LGBT Funders who have been working for years to advance LGBTQ+ causes and more recently, initiatives like Grantmakers United for Trans Communities to support trans rights specifically that have won the support of some of the largest philanthropic foundations in the country, including the Ford Foundation.
In addition to the equivalent of a college alumni office, USQ should have a team of staffers entirely dedicated to reaching out to foundations and writing grant applications. Again, it already has several volunteers who have been working hard to apply for various sources of money but they desperately need reinforcements. This might be the best place for me personally to get back involved with USQ. It needs players who have experience working at large philanthropic foundations, even just for an internship, to facilitate connections and players who have experience working with small, scrappy nonprofits to share their success stories with fundraising. It needs alumni who come into contact with wealthy individuals in any aspect of their personal or professional life to talk about quadball whenever possible and help to direct interested parties toward a well-defined place. It truly asks that everyone who plays and anyone who has ever loved the game is involved as ambassadors for the sport.
In December and once again in July with the IQA, USQ and MLQ reached a massive audience with their announcement that they were changing the name of the sport. The coverage in mainstream media outlets like NPR, NBC News and the New York Post was overwhelmingly positive. But the work is not done. In fact, it is just getting started. Now, it is time for USQ to continue to live out their values and spread their mission as the leading mixed-gender sport that welcomes trans and nonbinary individuals in the world. We have created something special, but we need to recognize that we help to truly fly.
Jack McGovern is the Press Coordinator for Major League Quadball. He worked with US Quadball on media relations for the name change announcement and he is a teammate to USQ Board of Directors member Nathan Digmann on Boom Train Quadball Club in Chicago.
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