The New York Yankees Foundation Snapshot

The New York Yankees are worth an estimated $8.2 billion and take in about $728 million a year in team revenue. Both are the highest in Major League Baseball. Yet, this position as the top brand in the league does not appear to trickle down to the New York Yankees Foundation.

In fiscal 2024*, the New York Yankees Foundation brought in $4.0M, which ranks 13th of 29 teams. It paid out $1.49M in grants, which ranks 18th, in the bottom half of the league. On our Impact+ score, which indexes community dollars against team revenue and franchise value, the Yankees rank 28th of 29 at 31.6.

The Tampa foundation

The Yankees are also the first team I've found with a separate foundation for their spring training home. The New York Yankees Tampa Foundation made $470,900 in grants in fiscal 2024 on $933K of revenue, driven mostly by fantasy camp and 50/50 raffles. I'm not counting it in the rankings, because it is a separate legal entity, and I'm ranking one foundation per team. But it sits under the same organization, so it belongs in the picture. Added to the main foundation, grants rise to about $1.96M and revenue to about $4.94M. If included, this would move the grants rank from 18th to 15th, the middle of the league, and revenue from 13th to 11th, just outside the top 10. The gap narrows slightly but wouldn't change the picture drastically.

To see the gap, compare two other large-market, high-revenue teams:

• Dodgers: $6.8B valuation, $701M team revenue. The foundation paid $4.2M in grants, nearly three times the Yankees' total, and scores 153.3 on Impact+.
• Cubs: $4.6B valuation, $658M team revenue. The foundation paid $2.9M in grants, almost double, and scores 84.5.

We can also look at this by measuring grants paid against team revenue. Yankees grants equal about 0.20% of what the team takes in. For the Cubs that figure is 0.44%, and for the Dodgers 0.61%.

The 2025 Selig Award

MLB gave the Yankees the 2025 Allan H. Selig Award for Philanthropic Excellence for HOPE Week. The program has run since 2009. Each summer, across five days of a homestand, the club spotlights a different individual, family or organization. Its own tally is 78 unique honorees over 16 years and more than $1 million donated to honorees and their charities.

I compared that record to MLB's own description of what the award measures: a club's ability to address an important community need, produce desired community impact and outcomes, and significantly impact the community. HOPE Week is a well-run spotlight, but is it deserving of such an award? It rotates among causes by design, so it does not address a single defined problem. The published figures count honorees and dollars, not what changed for the people or organizations featured. Spread over 16 years, $1 million works out to about $60,000 a year.

And when I surveyed the history of the Selig Award, this one appears, at least to me, to have the weakest case for support. There are a few reasons for this, but one I'll highlight is that the format is not unique to the Yankees. The Braves have run Community Heroes Week since 2016, surprising a different local hero each day of a week. The Royals have placed a community member in Buck O'Neil's seat since 2007.

In summary, the Yankees Foundation does not use the franchise's financial or societal position the way the Dodgers and Cubs foundations do. For a team with these resources and a major platform, its foundation could be doing a whole lot more than it historically has.

*A note on timing: every figure in this series comes from each foundation's fiscal-year filing, not the baseball season. The Yankees Foundation is the only one in the dataset with an April 30 year-end, so its fiscal 2024 filing mostly covers the 2023 season. Tracking each team's year-end against its season was too complicated to do consistently, so I compare filings as filed.