Cincinnati Reds Community Fund Snapshot

I'm halfway through this project of publishing snapshots on each team, and one of the things that has made it interesting is the ability, beyond looking at numbers on a spreadsheet, to compare foundations to each other.

In my last post, I compared the Brewers Community Foundation with the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club Foundation given their similarities in market size and attendance figures as well as how they both operate as grantors without any programmatic aspects.

Today's snapshot allows us to make further comparisons, though this time with a look at a foundation that is almost entirely focused on running its own programs versus providing grants to organizations to meet its mission.

As you can see, the Reds Community Fund ranks well in my IMPACT+ metric, coming in at 118.8, 11th in all the MLB, and they do it by being much more like the Giants Community Fund, running their own programs.

The biggest investment is the P&G MLB Cincinnati Reds Youth Academy, which offers free, year-round baseball and softball training for boys and girls, primarily in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. It was established in 2009, and in 2014, they opened the Joey Votto Training Center, a state-of-the-art 33,000-square-foot indoor facility.

When we compare them to the Rockies or Brewers' Foundations, they have a similar market size though lower attendance, valuation, and a much less wealthy owner (and maybe the least wealthy owner in all of MLB). Yet, they outraise and outspend both clubs. How?

Well it's not through the 50/50. They actually raise only about half of what the Brewers' raise through that effort, and that revenue stream only accounts for about 20% of their total between 2022-2024. So that means they must be leveraging their sponsors and other donors much more than these other teams, and doing the math shows about $2M they must be raising outside of the raffle and events.

So here we have a team that does a lot relative to its valuation and revenue and has built an organization that drives revenue to support significant capital and operational costs, which is impressive. And not only does the IMPACT+ metric acknowledge their work, so does the MLB as they received the Selig Award in 2023. I think it's safe to say if a team like the Reds can demonstrate such an impact by leveraging its position in the community, then no other team in the league has an excuse not to.