On the Eve of the Paris Olympics, a Global Sports Philanthropy Reflects on Its Past and Future

laureus academy member Edwin moses at Sport for Good NYC Day of Action in 2018. (Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images for Laureus)

In 2000, the late, great Nelson Mandela delivered a famous speech declaring that “sport has the power to change the world.” As we’ve covered the celebrity and athlete beat at Inside Philanthropy, we’ve written about the unique power and influence that these prominent figures can exert through their platforms and their voices. 

The biggest impact of athlete givers might not be in the sheer amount of money they give away, but in how they are able to galvanize others to give and rally around a cause. Consider Canadian athlete Terry Fox’s marathon across the country for cancer research in 1980, which symbolically raised $1 dollar from every Canadian (for a total $24.17 million), or the New York City Marathon, which has some 14,000 charity runners representing hundreds of causes. 

Through the years, we’ve written about sports stars across the NBA, NFL and MLB and tracked their philanthropic impact. But one subject we haven’t dug into as much is Olympic athletes, who are gearing up to represent the 206 countries participating in the 2024 Paris Olympics next month. 

Laureus is one organization that has long been associated with Olympic excellence. Its Laureus World Sports Awards are an Oscars of sorts, with top athletes like tennis’ Novak Djokovic and others like gymnast Simone Biles receiving awards. In fact, it was at the inaugural Laureus World Sports Awards in Monaco in 2000 that Mandela made that iconic speech.

Founded in response to Mandela’s challenge, Laureus’ charitable arm, Laureus Sport for Good, now supports more than 300 organizations in over 40 countries and territories, each using the power of sport to support young people from underserved communities. Since its founding, Laureus Sport for Good has directly invested over $150 million into youth-serving programs in places like South Africa, Hong Kong and Argentina. According to Laureus, its global network of foundations has collectively supported over 150 Sport for Good programs across 40 countries, reaching over 1 million youth.

Stateside, Laureus USA works as a grantmaking organization that aims to support the growth and deepen the impact of programs that use sport for social change. It invested more than $6 million in youth-serving programs last year and collaborates with the broader Laureus network of partners. It boasts quite the star-studded board as well, including Olympic legends Nadia Comaneci and Edwin Moses. We recently had the opportunity to connect with both of them, along with Maurya Couvares, Laureus USA’s national director, to find more about Laureus USA as it celebrates 10 years of impact, and talk about its goals for the future.

Bottom-up work

Nelson Mandela’s speech really struck a chord with athletes in the room at the time, Couvares said, adding that they felt charged by Mandela to use their platforms to make an impact. This set the stage for Laureus’ philanthropic work. As an intermediary foundation, Laureus USA engages in fundraising, getting support from two main buckets: corporate partnerships from companies like Nike, NBC and Gatorade; and government funding. Couvares also mentioned that it is starting to receive more support from high-net-worth individuals who are interested in funding intermediaries and doing collective action work.

One of Laureus’ main programs is Sport for Good Cities, through which Laureus helps bring local stakeholders together and then empowers them to create long-lasting change in their communities. Sport for Good Cities launched in 2014 for Laureus USA. In post-Katrina New Orleans, Laureus helped bring the community together to revitalize Joe Brown Park in New Orleans East, a densely populated area which, at the time, didn’t have a lot of youth services. Couvares said Laureus USA partnered with local nonprofits alongside the Brees Dream Foundation, a charity started by legendary New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, as well as the Allstate Sugar Bowl and Nike, to help bring programming into the park. “It’s kind of a coalition-based approach to changemaking in communities,” she said.

In addition to the Big Easy, the Sport for Good model has grown to a total of eight cities around the world, including Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Hong Kong and Paris, focusing on areas like health and wellbeing, education, women and girls, and developing skills and pathways to employment. “[We’re] really bringing a community of people together to problem-solve and to create solutions for those communities, using sport as a vehicle for change,” Couvares said.

Laureus has leadership councils in each of its Sport for Good cities, which aim to take a bottom-up approach to grantmaking, talking with communities on the ground and supporting their ideas. For instance, on the heels of COVID, Sport for Good Chicago advocated for gun violence prevention and helped unlock $5 million from the state of Illinois. “It happened because there were a lot of people in the community saying, ‘Hey, we really need to pay attention to this.’ We just acted as a facilitator of this,” Couvares said.

Olympic athletes speak

One of the people in that room back in 2000 when Mandela gave his famous speech was Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses, now 68 years old. Before 400-meter American maestro Michael Johnson, there was Moses, who won gold medals in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. A Morehouse man, Moses also worked in physics and engineering at General Dynamics while he was running and went on to complete his MBA from Pepperdine University in 1994.

Moses admits that he was new to the world of foundations back then, but in the early 1990s, he was asked to run what was then known as the International Amateur Athletic Association, the sponsor and founder of the prestigious Jesse Owens International Trophy Award. “That was my first move into philanthropy,” Moses said.

Years later, in May 2000, Moses thought he was going to just another dinner banquet in Monte Carlo. But he ended up hearing Mandela’s words, being inspired and quickly getting involved with Laureus. “It turned out they had a whole organization planned on paper,” Moses said. He enlisted as a member of the Laureus World Sports Academy, a collective of current and retired athletes dedicated to advancing Laureus’ mission. Moses was invited to serve as inaugural chair of the academy and currently serves as chair of Laureus USA. “I never thought that it would be such a big organization. We started off with two donations of a half-million dollars, one from Mercedes, one from Richemont… [and now] 25 years later, it turned out to be quite an event,” Moses added.

In the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast in Olympics history to be awarded the perfect score of 10.0 for her performance on the uneven bars. The five-time Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics defected from communist Romania in the late 1980s, before its revolution. “I started gymnastics when I was six,” Cormenci said, calling in from her home country, where she still spends some of her time. “There was a little gym that my mom heard about from neighbors. My mom was happy that she could take me there so I don’t break the furniture or hurt myself.”

Comaneci achieved the rare “perfect 10,” and now, Laureus USA itself is looking back at 10 years of impact. Comaneci, a director of Laureus USA and a Laureus Academy Member, is totally aligned with the goal of using sports as a source to spark change. “We are using our time to connect with the young generation in different parts of the world, to use sports to change their lives and teach them important skills,” Comaneci said.

Looking ahead, Laureus USA and Sport for Good intend to double down, hopefully for another 10 years, in the cities that they are in, Couvares said. They might also expand beyond those cities if the opportunity presents. Laureus USA has already invested over $23 million dollars into Sport for Good Cities and aims to raise $10 million over 10 years through sponsorships, and, for the first time, individual donors. It’s also looking at ways to unlock more dollars for the youth sports development ecosystem.

Couvares highlighted Laureus’ coalition-based approach and ability to bring together seemingly disparate organizations and people. “The fact that we can get the police and the parks department and local nonprofits and brands all talking about how to create a solution, when normally they would be in their own silos talking, is really powerful,” she said. “Our ability to bring together a community can really move the needle on community change, and we’re excited to continue to see it grow.”