Giving gone ‘bad’: Scott Zagarino on athletic philanthropy

Scott Zagarino is no stranger to grueling effort, having competed as a professional triathlete in more than 100 races. And he’s also accustomed to winning – Zagarino’s talent saw him place at dozens of events, and he was a member of the 1989 U.S. National Tri Team. So it’s no surprise that when Zagarino shifted gears and combined athletics with philanthropy, he’d work hard and succeed at charting his own course.

Sportsgrants, which Zagarino launched in 2007, isn’t your usual event planning firm. The organization creates and runs fundraisers for charitable causes, including Wounded Warrior Project, an initiative to help this generation’s returning veterans. By keeping staff size small, red tape to a minimum and harnessing online networking tools and public enthusiasm, Sportsgrants manages to do what very few charities actually can: donate more than they spend.

Fight Gone Bad is one of Sportsgrants’ biggest successes, and proves that philanthropy need not break the bank. At the heart of FGB is CrossFit, a workout program that’s become wildly popular with military men and women thanks to intensive, effective, quick-and-dirty training tactics. In 2006, Zagarino helped launch FGB, which takes place every September at CrossFit affiliate centers across the country. This September’s FGB IV raised over $1 million dollars, and included thousands of people, from civilians to vets to those still stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Registered participants collect donations year-round, then muster their strength for a 17-minute circuit workout (including – cringe – Sumo dead-lifts, rowing, box jumps and 75-pound push presses).

The sweat and pain of CrossFit, combined with a new paradigm for athletic philanthropy? I’m intrigued. I was lucky enough to talk to Zagarino last week, and he gave me the full run-down on his vision for fundraising’s more effective future.

You’ve had a lengthy involvement in athletics, but what made you change gears and start the Sportsgrants organization?

I was lucky enough that I made a living as a triathlete in my twenties, and I’ve always been involved in charity. But when I was 25, I found myself standing in the AIDS ward at a kid’s hospital. The kids were getting AIDS from the blood supply, and it was killing them. They were being shuffled away into a corner of this hospital, because nobody knew what to do with them.

So, when I did races after that, I would enter in the kid’s names. If I won a small race, the trophy or the medal was for that specific kid. I’d collect it and give it to them. So, while they were dying, they won a triathlon somewhere. And all those kids died, for two years.

I had some baseball coach when I was a kid, and he said “Son, you know the difference between the ham and eggs on your breakfast plate? The chicken had an interest in your breakfast. The hog had a commitment.” That day in the hospital shifted from interest to commitment.

But over the years, I saw a shift in philanthropy that I didn’t like. And that’s what moved me to start Sportsgrants.

Fight Gone Bad '08

There are hundreds of athletic fundraisers every year: road races, jump-rope contests, bike-a-thons, and the list goes on. What makes a Sportsgrants event so different?

There are people who see charity as a great way to make a living. And there are others, working within that system, who just allow charities to get heavier and heavier with expense and bureaucracy.

That’s why there’s this prevailing wisdom in philanthropy that small donors don’t matter. But Sportsgrants operates on small donations. This year’s Fight Gone Bad had 20,000 donors and an average of $50 each. In other athletic events, you might have fewer donations but big money. In 2007, that led to $1.33 in cost for every $1 raised. First you’ve got a foundation that’s charged with bringing in money and raising it. Then you’ve got fund-raising expense and event production. The money never gets to charity.

Sportsgrants does the event for the foundation. We take on the event costs, and we produce at our own cost and then donate the benefits. Instead of nearly a zero donation for $1 million raised, we donate $800,000. We only do charity events, and we take out all the overhead. We don’t have a 1/2 million-dollar CEO salary: there’s no foundation to support, we have a staff of four.

CrossFit has become enormously popular in the last few years. How does the Fight Gone Bad fundraiser work?

Four years ago, I was training with CrossFit, and I was covered in sweat, laying on the floor afterward and said to myself: ‘this is it, this would make a great fundraising event.’ It takes 17 minutes, CrossFitters love to compete, and people love to watch. At first, no one wanted anything to do with it. But we did it anyway, and raised $180,000.

Still, “small donors” was a problem for organizations. They said managing thousands of small donors was just too hard, not enough payoff. But small donors add up, and they’ll grow. This year, we raised over $1 million dollars, with the money going to Wounded Warrior and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. But here’s the thing: we only had $1,800 in marketing costs, and we used a social network of Facebook, Twitter, and on and on. Word of mouth brings in new participants. Everybody who wants to participate has to raise $150. So, you log onto the website and you can send emails, and people can donate online. The highest individual fundraiser this year raised $50,000 that way.

You come and do the workout, you get a score, and you have a party.

That sounds like a terrific program, and potentially a very difficult workout. Is that where the Pukie Awards come in?

Pukie’s been the CrossFit mascot since they started. We wanted to extend interest in the event, after the event. Everyone who does CrossFit makes videos, so we turned that into a film festival, where participants in Fight Gone Bad could submit a tape. Some of these guys do a full-on broadcast with these videos.

But it’s not about puke: some of them are genuinely, really moving. You watch a video with people jumping and sweating and screaming and puking, and then you get something like someone saying “My brother died last month in Iraq, and that’s why I’m here.”