ATLANTA -- The 200 invited guests were all elegantly dressed in stylish suits and cocktail dresses. Inside the Blank Family Offices in Buckhead and outside in the atrium, they ate shrimp and salmon and canapés made by an Affair to Remember, one of the city’s top caterers.
The goal was to raise awareness for the Chauncey Davis Foundation, but the event’s larger purpose was to kick start the group’s efforts, which have flagged since the Falcons’ defensive end first began trying to fight diabetes, from which his mother Glenda suffers, two years ago.
“It’s very hard to run a foundation,” Davis said. “It’s a lot of work. Like I said, I have great people and I have great people on my board.”
Davis said the foundation has been through “a lot of ups and downs, as far as people who run the foundation” and that in those two years his fundraising efforts had been unsuccessful.
However, he is hopeful now he has the right person to run it: well-connected consultant Erik Burton. Burton has worked for Bishop Eddie Long at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia and for former DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones as director of community relations, an organization which had a role in making grants.
“So through that you see best practices,” Burton said of his experience. “You see people really moving forward to advance their missions, whatever they may be.”
The Sept. 10 event certainly had the look of a success.
Sponsors included Georgia Power and Davis’ foundation honored an influential member of Atlanta’s nonprofit community, Michael Anderson who runs the Georgia Power Foundation.
Davis is one of a number of Falcons who have their own foundations and, as he has learned in a short amount of time, the desire to do good works in the community is not always as easy as it seems.
According to Mark Koretzky, chief operating officer of Atlanta-based AAG Foundation, a player in athlete foundations, 90 percent of NFL players’ foundations run into difficulty within two years of retirement.
That is why fund-raising and friend-raising efforts -- raising awareness about one’s cause to increase potential donors -- is so important.
For Falcons players, staff at the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is available in a consulting capacity.
Falcons linebacker Mike Peterson, an 11-year veteran, had been doing community work informally for years in Jacksonville when he played for the Jaguars and in his hometown of Alachua, Fla., near Gainesville. In the early years, he would go to a grocery store near his hometown and ask to pay for meals for needy families at Thanksgiving.
“I’m big, big, big on motivating the kids and showing them a different way than the easy way out,” Peterson said.
Five years ago, Peterson decided to incorporate the Mike Peterson Foundation with the IRS and received 501c3 status as a nonprofit. Peterson said that once he incorporated, it was easier to attract sponsors.
“I’m a Gator, so I went back home and had a lot of Florida alumni jump on board,” he said. “They were seeing what I was doing and seeing the money’s going in the right place.”
According to the foundation’s 2008 tax records, which are public documents, Peterson’s foundation spent $15,117 on a literacy program that works with local schools to encourage and motivate reading among children ages 8 to 14.
He also spent $42,725 on the Mike Peterson Bring It Youth Football Camps for boys and girls ages 8 to 18. The camp, for which Peterson recruits NFL teammates to help run, is free. At the camp, he preaches the importance of education and positive life skills.
The foundation also spent $13,091 on Thanksgiving dinner for 80 families and a holiday shopping spree for another 50 families.
Like Davis, Peterson has a professional running his foundation, Liz Willyoung, who has the title of secretary and treasurer and is based out of the Tampa area.
Peterson said he has staff on the ground in Jacksonville and Tampa and is in the process of getting things going in Atlanta.
“The market is a little bigger up here so it might be a little easier,” he said.
By “showing love” to the kids he is trying to help, Peterson said he only aids his cause.
He said it’s easy for kids to imitate “that guy doing wrong” whom they see every day.
“But it’s kind of hard to imitate that guy on TV that you don’t see,” he said. “But when you get a chance to see him, it’s like, ‘I want to be like Mike.’”
Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli also has put a lot of work into his foundation.
Like Peterson, he runs a free football clinic in his hometown of Charleston, S.C., but he also wanted to find a unique mission.
He had an idea when attending an event for the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
There, he met Laura Turner Seydel, the daughter of Ted Turner who is a noted environmentalist in her own right. She and her husband Rutherford, who also is a part owner in the Atlanta Spirit group which owns the Atlanta Hawks and Thrashers, founded the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
“I just wanted to say ‘hello’ and she asked me, ‘What are the Falcons doing for the environment?’ “ Mughelli recalled. “And I was like, ‘Why would I be doing anything? It’s not a big deal.’ I shrugged it off. She was shocked and appalled almost. She sat me down and was like, ‘This is what’s going on in the environment. Be concerned. You have such a strong influence on the kids. You should try to do something.’
“She had that light bulb click [on]. I’m basically just trying to have that light bulb click [on] in all these kids’ heads that I talk to.”
Mughelli said his goal is to get urban youth thinking “green” -- to educate them about issues and help teach them about careers in green industries.
“Unfortunately it’s their neighborhoods where the landfills are, it’s their neighborhoods where the air quality’s the worst; unfortunately it’s their neighborhoods where the water pollution, lakes and streams are poor quality,” he said.
He said the concept is to teach kids to “make green by going green” and learn how they can get involved in solar and wind companies.
“All types of things they can do in their house -- and all of these things will be practical lifestyle changes,” he said. “Things that don’t cost them any money.”
Mughelli said earlier this year a fundraiser helped raise about $20,000 that paid for the football clinic. Recently, his sister and his foundation director attended the Emmy Awards where they were invited to a “swag suite” and obtain items for a fund-raising auction.
He said he is looking to work with potential partners like The Coca-Cola Co. and the Ron Clark Academy, a nonprofit school in Atlanta run by the famous educator.
“We’ll have some fundraisers coming up and hopefully we’ll get some people behind my cause,” Mughelli said.
While Mughelli put research into his before getting it up and running, Davis came to his foundation from a more emotional perspective.
He learned the hard way.
Davis’ mother, Glenda, had to have a leg amputated two years ago because of diabetes, which is why the cause is so important to him.
“To see her going through that pain it really put me… I really can’t describe the pain I had to go through to see her suffer,” he said. “But she was just so upbeat and cheerful and hoping to let me get through it and let me know she could get through it. She has a prosthetic leg now and she’s doing well.
“She’s walking, she’s going to be here tonight and hopefully everyone will get to see her and see the reason why I started this foundation.”
Among the recipients of grants from Davis’ foundation is Camp Kudzu, a camp for children with Type 1 diabetes in Smyrna.
The night of Davis’ big event, he was just happy that everything came off successfully -- even if he had not set a fundraising goal.
“We’re just trying to get started,” he said. “… So anything I can do tonight is better than what I had started two years ago.”
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