Starting a League wtih Second Hand Gear
HOOPS 4 HOPE (H4H)
Organizational Vision
Citizen Base Strategy
Lessons Learned
H4H enables children in South Africa and Zimbabwe to play basketball in an organized league while implementing a life skills and HIV prevention curriculum into every clinic, practice, game and tournament throughout the year. Its programs are run by locally trained coaches between the ages of 17 and 25. These coaches are active role models and peer educators who lead by example and impart their knowledge and experience to the children they coach.
Many nonprofits, in particular the smaller ones, can tend to sweat under the burden of converting in kind donations to useful resources. Consequently, in kind donations are sometimes viewed more trouble than they are worth. However, H4H has found a way to make good use of in-kind donations. Basketball is a simple sport but it requires some basic equipment. In addition, Mark Crandall, H4H's founder, realized that the enthusiasm for the game is greatly increased if clubs can provide shoes, jerseys and other memorabilia. From his work with children in the USA he knew of the great amounts of discarded sports gear that American kids accumulate over time. A used pair of sneakers may be almost worthless to an American kid but very valuable in the eyes of a young African ballplayer. H4H therefore started to collect in kind donations of sports gear. It is now the fastest growing area of their activities, doubling each year and outstripping financial donations by a ratio of 2:1.
A small organization based in New York, H4H has had to carefully work out a functioning program. The basic idea is to let donors and beneficiaries take on as much of the task as possible both to relieve H4H staff and to engage this outer network in H4H's activities. Typically H4H contacts the Athletic Director of a school or a school class directly to introduce the idea of collecting sports gear for African kids. Sometimes a group of kids to take on the task of planning, organizing and carrying out the collection drive. Recently a class of 2nd-graders in New York City went through their entire school and managed to fill up two truckloads of gear!
"My vision has grown." Mark Crandall states. "Coming back to the States you realize what enormous resources that just lie idle here." To capitalize on these opportunities H4H aims at even grander recycling projects. The biggest problem for much of the creative activity attempted by H4H and other citizen sector organizations working with youth is transportation. In many cases teams simply cannot logistically get to games played in other cities or even other parts of the city. For this purpose, H4H will try to provide bicycles and, eventually, whole school buses.
This approach engages individual kids who learn about teamwork and social service, it takes advantage of kids' knowledge of how best to raise resources in their environment, and it creates a lasting network of suppliers to whom H4H can return. H4H receives gear from as far away as Oregon and Kentucky but remain focused in the New York area to make sure that there is a feedback to the donors so that the relationship can be continued and strengthened.
H4H takes its donors seriously. It brings photographs and stories about the donated gear back to the American kids. In the future they plan to set up Internet links between American and African kids. The idea is that American kids will get something out of their work and donations as well. That same approach also landed H4H its first corporate donation this year when Spalding donated 500 basketballs. Spalding, by their own estimate, receives 500 requests for donations a week. It is important, in order to survive this selection process, to be able to show that the corporate benefactor also will benefit. H4H did so by pointing to the growing basketball interest in South Africa and the good will from supporting H4H.
Mark Crandall and their regional coordinators in Zimbabwe and South Africa have developed a network of schools and youth organizations to help distribute the donations. Their local contacts have the best grasp of who needs what. H4H concentrates its efforts, currently around Cape Town. For new projects H4H has developed an "opportunity package" which provides a sports club or school with the means to start the activity, where H4H can be a consistent and long-term partner.
Even a small nonprofit can succeed with in-kind donations if it manages to incorporate them into a coherent strategy, stay close to both donors and receivers, and provide careful feedback to all participants. H4H has been able to provide a service to multiple constituencies while at the same time pursuing its mission of building and supporting a local social structure in the form of sports clubs. Local resources has been employed not only to service their mission, but to further and extend the reach of Hoops 4 Hope.
To find out more about Hoops for Hope visit http://www.hoopsafrica.org/.