The Giving Back Fund (GBF) was established in 1997 by Marc Pollick as a way of combining his love of sports with his longstanding commitment to promoting good in the world; a passion for doing good that he shared with a growing number of athletes and entertainers eager to use their celebrity to improve people’s lives. As a national 501(c)(3) community foundation, GBF was able to provide automatic nonprofit status to these new philanthropists in support of the causes they were championing.
But Pollick’s vision for The Giving Back Fund went far beyond serving as a fiscal sponsor to this new group of celebrity enabled foundations. He saw the opportunity to leverage targeted approaches to cause-driven fundraising and grant-making that soon became the industry standard. The Giving Back Fund is now a recognized leader in creative programming and hands-on foundation management, partnering with a diverse group of athletes, entertainers and successful entrepreneurs wanting to make a difference in the world.
The Giving Back Fund’s first clients were Boston Celtics Captain Dee Brown and his wife Tammy Brown, establishing the Dee Brown Foundation to improve access to educational resources for Boston children. Heisman Trophy-winning Quarterback Doug Flutie, the father of an autistic son, turned to GBF to establish the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism. One of GBF’s first signature fundraisers was Catch for a Cause held on the Boston College football field with Flutie reenacting his famous Hail Mary pass to participating donors. In 1999, the Justin Timberlake Foundation was announced at the first White House Conference on Philanthropy with President and Mrs. Clinton, putting GBF on the national radar as a philanthropic leader.
Building on this early success, GBF has established and managed foundations for hundreds of NBA and NFL stars, including Jalen Rose, Yao Ming, Ben Roethlisberger and Jim Brown, and for more than 10 years served as the exclusive philanthropy consultant for the NFL Players Association. When Rose retired from basketball, he utilized the philanthropic skills he had learned from GBF to launch the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in his hometown of Detroit. One of GBF’s most successful fundraising events was the reunion of the Michigan Fab Four in support of Jalen’s Foundation. Also driven by a deeply personal cause, Yao Ming turned to GBF to create a foundation to rebuild schools that were destroyed following the devastating earthquake that hit Sichuan, China in 2008. The Mandela Institute for Humanity is another international project of GBF.
As a pioneer and a facilitator in several medical areas, GBF has held international summits that brought together the world’s foremost medical experts on Parkinson’s disease, lung cancer, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), all in search of cures. As a result, The Team Gleason Foundation founded by Steve Gleason, the great New Orleans Saints player diagnosed with ALS in 2011, has a $540 MM project to cure ALS in 5 years.
At the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, GBF hosted its own fundraiser, Big Game Big Give, which soon because its signature event. By design, the event features and benefits national and local charities based in the host city, and recognizes participating celebrities by contributing to their charities. The event has raised more than $11 million for national and local charities across the country.
Pollick has long viewed the mentoring of aspiring and emerging philanthropists as an essential part of GBF’s mission. As a leading proponent of nonprofit best practices in high impact philanthropy, GBF has convened highly successful summits featuring industry experts in every area of philanthropy and cause marketing. Nexus Global, an organization of 6,000 next generation philanthropists, impact investors and social entrepreneurs from around the world, works to create promising solutions to global problems. Nexus has partnered with GBF to attract and mentor these new philanthropists.
No other fiscal sponsor was better positioned to respond to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021. Working remotely, the GBF team sponsored and managed more than twenty new foundations addressing urgent needs including food delivery and food assistance, iPads for hospital and health care communication, and support for vaccinations. VAX India Now, an online concert held in 2022 with sponsors and celebrity appearances helped to vaccinate 15 million children in India.
Utilizing its unique Design/Build Philanthropy method, GBF has established close to 1000 foundations and sponsored many of the most creative and effective fundraising and public awareness programs in sports, entertainment, and high impact philanthropy, resulting in almost $1 Billion in grants to non-profit organizations and causes across the world.
Looking toward the future, Pollick said he would like to see GBF expand its reach throughout the world, opening offices in England, China, Israel, India and Singapore.
To learn more about The Giving Back Fund, go to www.givingback.org
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Editor’s Note: The editorial staff of The NonProfit Times did not contribute to this sponsored content.