Philly Youth Sports Fund aims to raise $5 million to support many of the city’s nonprofits

Players on the Vaux Big Picture High School football team call Valencia Peterson “Coach V,” but unlike the other coaches on the team, she’s not drawing up X’s and O’s.

Peterson trains the coaches in a specialized curriculum to teach their players how to recognize domestic abuse and prevent it in their homes and schools through her organization Open Door Abuse Awareness & Prevention.

About 21% of men in the U.S. reported being victims of intimate partner violence before age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When Peterson gathers the boys at Vaux to take a knee, she tells them she wants to create an environment where they’re comfortable talking about problems in their lives.

ODAAP is a small nonprofit that brought in about $141,000 in revenue in 2023. It works with a handful of boys’ athletic programs in the area and operates a separate non-sports mentorship program for high school girls as well as one for all genders.

“I’m pretty much a one-person show, but I don’t want to be,” Peterson said. “I want to be backed by organizations that believe in our cause and see our impact.”

That’s a goal the Philadelphia Youth Sports Collaborative is hoping to achieve, with the establishment of a $5 million fund for smaller youth sports nonprofits, including Peterson’s, this year. The collaborative is raising funds for the Philly Youth Sports Fund, aiming to open applications in the spring. The mission is to provide a boost in funding for the nonprofits as well as training to apply for grants and maintenance for the spaces they operate on.

“As a nonprofit leader, I know how hard it is to get all your bills paid when you are raising money dollar by dollar,” said Beth Devine, PYSC’s executive director. “When you can apply for a grant that knocks $5,000 out, that changes your year with respect to how much time you have to pour into the actual work.”

The youth recreation landscape has improved in recent years, with the city completing or in progress on renovations to dozens of rec centers. Philadelphia Youth Basketball opened a 100,000-square-foot indoor basketball and community center in North Philadelphia in July.

But challenges remain as former Mayor Jim Kenney’s Rebuild Program — originally intended as a sweeping renovation of the city’s rec centers, funded by the soda tax — fell short of its original goal.

» READ MORE: North Philly’s youth baseball fields are in sorry shape. They can’t wait long for MLB’s help.

Meanwhile, some parks like the Athletic Recreation Center in Brewerytown, a historic field that Vaux’s football team practices on, are in poor condition due to their high use by the public and lack of city funding to regularly maintain them. Philadelphia’s public and private investment in parks equals about $109 per person annually, ranking it 62nd among the 100 most populous cities in the U.S., according to the Trust for Public Land.

The collaborative will award grants to benefit as many organizations as possible. The amounts ranged from $500 to $4,000 during a pilot program earlier this year. That amount of money, Devine said, can alleviate pressure on nonprofits to raise their own funds and not pass on the costs of expanding their programs to families.

“At the end of the day, you want a child to not face any type of hurdle when they go to get involved with sports,” Devine said. “Kids should be able to go down to their rec and find a program to play in, and it shouldn’t be so costly that they can’t do it.”

Shannon Gunby, the executive director of The On Deck Circle, a youth baseball training organization, said that the grant could help his organization move away from having to self-fund and ask for frequent donations. The organization received $4,000 from the PYSC’s pilot program, which it used to hire staff and purchase snacks, field space, and equipment this fall, he said.

“Many of us are working other jobs,” Gunby said. “We’re working our butts off, but also we’re literally begging family members and friends to donate to make this happen or struggling to get grants.”

Founded in 2009, the PYSC started as a network for sports-based youth development organizations and became a nonprofit in 2015. In 2023, it had less than a dozen employees and operated with just over $1.2 million in revenue, according to tax records. The collaborative offers a membership program for youth development organizations that includes training for coaches and nonprofit managers. it also advocates for accessible and equitable sports programming.

In PYSC’s pilot fund, nonprofits had to have an annual budget of less than $150,000 and serve children ages 5 to 18. The collaborative may add more requirements in its next round of grants, but it wants to make it as easy as possible for nonprofits to receive funding, Devine said.

“As soon as we saw the number of applications we got, we said, ‘This has to happen,’” Devine said. “We have to move this effort past this initial, small round of funding.”

» READ MORE: One of Philly’s most historic baseball fields is in disarray. Neighborhood activists are asking for help.

Open Door Abuse Awareness & Prevention received $500 in PYSC’s pilot program this year. Peterson said every bit helps, and one day she hopes to get enough funding to provide more training in trauma-informed coaching and provide stipends to the coaches she works with.

“Every year there is something new, every year we want to keep something going and we can’t keep it going without the funds,” Peterson said. “There is so much to be done and little money going around.”

Playing Fields, not Killing Fields is an Inquirer collaboration with the Claire Smith Center for Sports Media and The Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting to produce a series examining the state of Philadelphia’s youth recreation infrastructure and programs. The project will explore the challenges and solutions to sports serving as a viable response to gun violence and an engine to revitalize city neighborhoods.