Dear Friend,
Have you or your child ever played sports?
Then you know, firsthand, the role that a coach plays in mentoring a young person on and off the field. In fact, research conducted by EY found that 94% of women in c-suite executive positions in corporate America played sports and experienced the influence of a coach as a role model in their lifetimes.
But doesn’t it surprise you that despite the fact that coaches may spend more time with your kids than their teachers, there are few opportunities for coaches to be trained on how to be positive role models? In fact, coaches may have the least training of any other adult caregiver in your kids’ lives!
Up2Us Sports needs your help to change that.
We are the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated to providing youth sports coaches with the training they need to reduce violence and bullying, resist substance abuse, and focus on educational achievement. We train coaches to be positive adult role models who inspire kids to translate athletic skills to life skills that help them stay in school and achieve their fullest potential in life.
What’s more, we are the first national service program to recruit and support thousands of coaches to work in underserved areas where kids need more adult role models to inspire them to make better decisions that lead to high school graduation and college.
Over the last ten years, we have supported more than 525,500 youth with almost 3,000 trained coaches. These coaches were there to help these youth when confronted with difficult decisions or circumstances in their lives. They were also there to celebrate when these kids had perfect attendance, got a great report card, or won an award in their school or community. Why were they there for all of these events in our kid’s lives? Because that’s what good coaches do.
This year, we are asking you to play it forward. If you or your child had a coach who made a difference, will you consider a donation in his or her name to Up2Us Sports?
Through our #ThanksCoach campaign, we are asking you to honor a coach by making a donation to Up2Us Sports so that we can recruit and train more coaches for underserved youth. You can make your donation here: give.classy.org/ThanksCoach19 or mail a check to our National Headquarters.
What will we do with your donation?
First and foremost, we will use your gift to recruit, train and support more coaches to mentor kids in communities that may otherwise lack sports and recreational opportunities. Our goal is to support 400 coaches this year to work with more than 30,000 at-risk youth.
Second, we will use your gift to train more than 3,000 coaches to be the best possible role model in young peoples’ lives. That means providing coaches with up to 35 hours of online and in-person training on how to teach critical life skills to every player on the team and how to help their student-athletes avoid negative behaviors and focus on academic success.
Lastly, we will use your support to study the impact of our trained coaches on the health, well-being and academic success of the young people they serve.
Your donation will be a perfect tribute to a coach because your donation will have genuine impact through a coach. That’s truly “playing it forward”.
If you’d like to experience an online version of our coach training and see some of our Up2Us Sports coaches in action, you can do so at www.KeepGirlsInSport.com. Please also visit our website to learn more about our programs and impact: www.Up2UsSports.org.
Your donation keeps kids in sports. We know that this is not just about sports - it’s about ensuring our urban communities are healthy, safe, vibrant and inclusive and that our kids have mentors whose influence will last a lifetime.
Sincerely,
