Kansas City Royals Foundation Snapshot
Small market, big impact. The Kansas City Royals rank near the bottom of the league in franchise valuation and team revenue. When I began this research, I expected that these two metrics would correlate most closely with how much a foundation raises and deploys. And yet the Royals Foundation lands in the top 10 across total revenue, grants paid, and total expenses, leading to an IMPACT+ score of 141.8, good enough for 7th across the MLB, and well-deserved recognition through receiving the Selig Award for Philanthropic Excellence in 2021.
When looking at the data, I was immediately drawn to their support for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Once you know the history, it makes sense as the NLBM sits in Kansas City, the same city where the Negro National League was founded in 1920. Given this connection, it's no surprise they have been supporting the museum going back to at least 2020.
This raised the question of what other teams are supporting the foundation. Surprisingly, I found only two other team foundations have supported NLBM at all going back to 2019, in the grantee-level data I've compiled so far. Three teams total, over six years (I want to make sure to caveat this: my data doesn't capture every grant under $5,000, doesn't include some years/foundations where grantee-level data wasn't available, and it doesn't account for gifts an owner or a player might make personally rather than through the team's own foundation).
More surprising is the fact that 2020 was the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues' founding, and teams across baseball leaned into it, hosting events, running commemorative programming, and promoting the league's history throughout the season. I would have expected this to translate into a wave of new foundations stepping up with contributions, but as far as I can tell, the number of team foundations giving to NLBM in the anniversary year was exactly the same as every other year: one.
Let's compare that to the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which tells a different story. Multiple team foundations give to JRF every year, and that number has actually grown over time, from five teams in 2019 up to a dozen by 2024. Every team in baseball already participates in Jackie Robinson Day each April, wearing 42 and running the same pregame ceremony.
With all that said, it isn't fair to say Negro Leagues history goes unfunded by baseball. The league and the players' union have stepped in directly, with documented gifts in 2017, 2020, and 2024, including a $2 million grant last year toward NLBM's new $30 million facility campaign.
With this campaign, perhaps we will see more support for the museum from teams in the years ahead. In fact, last season, Mariners Care announced a $25K contribution to the museum. It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a trend.