Injured Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin's GoFundMe effort was originally intended to raise a few thousand dollars for a community toy drive.
With more than $8.7 million in donations pouring in from roughly 245,000 donors since Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest during a Jan. 2 game in Cincinnati, the Chasing M's Foundation has taken on an unimagined scale.
And it means the foundation will need to make fundamental changes to handle its newfound scope, charity experts said.
βSometimes a cause starts out very small and one major tragedy can propel a $2,500 organization into an $8 million one practically overnight,β said Laurie Styron, executive director of nonprofit charity watchdog CharityWatch.
βEven with the best of intentions and good faith commitment to manage donations ethically and responsibly, the people capable of running a very small organization may be out of their depth trying to run a big one,β she said.
The GoFundMe campaign, first set up in December 2020 by Hamlin while he was still at the University of Pittsburgh, was not intended to handle donations on its current scale.
That willΒ likely require many changes to the foundation, including creating more controls for Chasing M's, appointing a board of directors, hiring staff or recruiting volunteers and bringing on professionals specializing in nonprofit compliance.
Coordinating the foundation's efforts has been the combination of Hamlin and his family and longtime friend Jordon Rooney, Damarβs brand and marketing representative and CEO of Jaster Athletes.
However, the kind of money thatβs been raised warrants an even bigger scale of operations, which will come with additional cost. The foundation may want to seek expertise from entities with more reach, said Indranil Goswami, assistant professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management.
Chasing Mβs has already taken steps to bolster its operations by partnering with the Giving Back Fund, a national charity umbrella organization, to handle and facilitate all the contributions, activities and allocations made last week and going forward.
βThey have so much more than what they had set out to raise, so they need to think about how to spend this money reasonably,β Goswami said.
Damar Hamlin poses for a photo with Bryce Williams, 3, of McKees Rocks, Pa., after the youngster picked out a toy during Hamlin's Chasing M's Foundation community toy drive in 2020 at Kelly and Nina's Daycare Center in McKees Rocks, Pa.
The original goal when the fundraiser was set up had been to raise $2,500 and βpositively impact the communityβ in McKees Rocks, Pa., where Hamlin was raised, but that has already been expanded.
An update provided last Tuesday β a day after donations began flooding in β shared that Hamlinβs foundation will support toy drives, back-to-school drives and kids camps and will be dedicated to βthe aspirations of youth and community members through sports, education and enrichment opportunities.β
βWith all of your help, that mission is stronger than ever before,β read a statement from Hamlinβs father, Mario, who is the executive director of the foundation.
"Because the situation is evolving, we'll continue to communicate any updates on the fundraiser,β he continued. βWe will also work with GoFundMe to email all donors with more specifics regarding the use of funds as those details are available."
Bills cornerback Dane Jackson, Hamlinβsβ friend and former teammate at the University of Pittsburgh, said Hamlin is passionate about helping people and will do βamazing thingsβ with the influx of money to his foundation.
βHe always wanted to give back, heβs always wanted to help, heβs always looking for the next opportunity to be a light to someone who wants to be in our position,β Jackson said. βThatβs just him and thinking of it makes me smile. Once he gets back to himself, heβs going to be looking forward to helping so many others.β
To do that, Hamlin's foundation will need new staff, additional oversight and reworked plans.
Bringing on a partner
The Giving Back Fund, a California-based nonprofit organization, which works with other professional athletes and high-net-worth individuals, chargesΒ a monthly retainer based on the volume and complexity of the work at a minimum of $2,500, according to Fiscalsponsordirectory.org.
Partnering with the nonprofit is a step that will help the foundation work more effectively as a βvehicle to give back to the people who helped (Damar) get to where he is today and lift up the next generation of youth,β Mario Hamlin noted in his recent statement.
A new structure?
The Chasing Mβs Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, organizers note, which is backed up by the filing of Articles of Incorporation by Damar Hamlin with the Pennsylvania Department of State from May 7, 2020, connected to an address belonging to Mario Hamlin and his wife, Nina, on Amelia Street in McKees Rocks. The M stands for βmillions.β
However, that designation would only be relevant within that state's borders, Styron said.
On the Internal Revenue Serviceβs website, the foundation is not registered as a tax-exempt organization and thus not considered a federal nonprofit charity, so donations made to Hamlinβs GoFundMe may not be tax deductible.
If an organization applies for tax-exempt status with the IRS and is later approved, the IRS typically applies tax-exempt status retroactively to the date of application, Styron said.
Nonprofit corporations in Pennsylvania are held to less-stringent standards than registered charities, but still are prohibited from providing any βincidentalβ income to members, directors or offices, including to Damar Hamlin himself, so donations cannot be used for his care.
Given all the money the foundation has taken in, it may need to register to become a charity, Styron said, and that would create the need for a board of directors, articles of incorporation and bylaws, as well as completing paperwork with the IRS.
More staffing resources
In less than a day after he collapsed on the field, Hamlinβs GoFundMe page had surpassed the value of the 2021 sixth-round draft pickβs first contract β four years, $3.6 million - and with that comes the need to bring the foundation into state and national compliance.
Rooney told Sportico that the Hamlin family is now advancing the process to complete the nonprofit status for the original entity, including the selection of board members.
It may also be important for the foundation to seek out an attorney and accountant to ensure that funds are accounted for, there are internal controls and other governance practices are put in place, Styron said.
The need for oversight
Once the money from the GoFundMe initiative is transferred to the foundation, there will be operating expenses for Chasing Mβs, but it is important to keep those reasonable and make sure people do not act in their own interest over the priorities of the foundation, said SUNY Buffalo Stateβs Joelle Leclaire, professor of economics and finance.
βIt is to ensure that as much of the money goes to the social priorities that the foundation creator put together,β Leclaire said.
Goswami said the foundation may wind up giving grants to other organizations active in the area of giving to children and with the infrastructure to do more.
βOf course the foundation would establish their own criteria for whoβs most deserving,β Goswami said.
Managing expenses
On top of the costs of running a nonprofit organization, there is the expense of working with a company to help manage its money.
In 2018, Buffalo faithful flooded the Andy and Jordan Dalton Foundation, a nonprofit created to help sick and disabled children and their families, with donations as a thank you for helping the Bills reach the postseason after a 17-year playoff drought.
At that time, more than $442,000 was raised, but nearly a quarter of those funds never made it to the intended recipients. Since, Jordan Dalton said the foundation has ended its relationship with Prolanthropy LLC, which took in nearly $100,000 of the funds Bills fans contributed to the cause.
The management company charged the Dalton Foundation 22.5% of all revenue received by the nonprofit for its various services, regardless of how the funds were raised, according to its contract.
CharityWatch has said it considers a nonprofit organization highly efficient when it spends at least 75 cents of every dollar on charity.
With GoFundMe, thereβs no fee to start a fundraiser, but payment processors deduct an operations and transaction fee per donation of 2.9%, plus 30 cents for each donation. That's approximately $250,000 on the $8.7 million raised and $73,500 on the 245,000 donations, for a total of slightly less than $325,000.
