Team players

One is an 88-year-old retired coaching legend who lives in Washington. The other is a vibrant Boston sports institution with annual revenues greater than $100 million.

Yet Red Auerbach's modest charitable foundation contributed far more to children and the needy in Massachusetts from 1997 to 2003 than the foundation operated by the franchise he long led to glory, the Boston Celtics. While the Red Auerbach Youth Foundation distributed more than $1.3 million to Massachusetts charities in the seven-year span, the Boston Celtics Charitable Foundation meted out only $317,086, an average of $45,298 a year.

By 2003, the Celtics foundation ranked among the least charitable in the National Basketball Association and dead last among the four major sports teams in Boston, according to federal tax records. The once-mighty franchise's direct grants to charity that year totaled $23,500 -- the cost of about six season tickets.

But it's a new day on Causeway Street, where the latest owners of the Celtics have shaken the doldrums from a foundation they inherited in late 2002 with a bank balance of $41. Aspiring to the multimillion-dollar charitable gains the Red Sox and the Patriots have achieved since they last changed hands -- and amid a new philanthropic effort by the Bruins -- the Boston-based Celtics owners personally have pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the foundation and made it a significant player again by approving cash grants in the last two years greater than $900,000.

''We've come a long way," said Wyc Grousbeck, CEO of the Celtics, ''but we still have a long way to go."

After rolling up combined revenues of $580 million and operating income of nearly $70 million in 2004, according to Forbes magazine, Boston's four major sports teams this year are expected to return nearly $6 million to community charities and more than $1.3 million to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. The teams are on pace to achieve a sizable boost from the $4.2 million they contributed in 2003, the most recent year for which tax records for all four teams are available. And their giving will be supplemented by the Yawkey Foundation II, which controls nearly $420 million, most of it proceeds from the 2002 sale of the Sox. (The Yawkey foundation's 2003 tax report lists charitable contributions of $17.3 million.)

The largesse has become a welcome boon to the city's nonprofit institutions, many of which have strugged to keep pace with their previous fund-raising.

''The new generation of team owners is deeply, personally committed to giving back and they want their organizations to stand for something beyond sports performance, as important as that is," said Linda Whitlock, executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, which received $265,000 from the Sox, Patriots, and Yawkey foundations in 2003. ''They are philanthropists who see an opportunity to extend their personal commitment to make a difference."

While the Celtics and Bruins strived to revive their philanthropy in 2003, the Red Sox Foundation led Major League Baseball in charitable giving, spreading more than $3.3 million throughout the community. The New England Patriots Charitable Foundation ranked among the leaders in the NFL by contributing $670,789 to local charities, while the Bruins, who launched a new foundation in 2003, distributed $175,384.

''Having three of the four teams with new owners breeds a new energy around wanting to be wedded to the community we're involved in," said Rena Clark, vice president of community affairs and corporate philanthropy for the Patriots. ''There's a lot of need out there right now and folks are stepping up to do their part."

Yet specialists in charitable giving said even such titans of giving as the Patriots and Red Sox could find better ways to use their resources for the community's benefit.

''There's a lot of work to be done in terms of doing their philanthropy in a more strategic, impactful way," Greg Johnson, executive director of the Sports Philanthropy Project, said of professional teams in general. ''There's a lot of untapped potential out there and it hasn't reached its zenith in any form or manner."

Teams can make a greater impact, Johnson said, if they develop a focused plan for their philanthropy rather than ''using their assets in helter-skelter fashion."

While the Red Sox list nearly 5,000 nonprofits they support, for example, the team's new owners have targeted concerns such as the Jimmy Fund, the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury, and a scholarship program for Boston public school students, among their cornerstone programs.

The Patriots have made major grants to the Boys and Girls Clubs, the United Way, and the ROSE (Regaining One's Self Esteem) Fund for survivors of domestic violence, while the Celtics have chosen Children's Hospital, Horizons for Homeless Children, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children as their core charities. The Bruins gave the bulk of their charitable dollars ($125,959) to the Star House in Beverly for abused and neglected children.

However, Johnson suggested every team could learn from the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1996, the Eagles Charitable Foundation teamed with medical specialists and a rookie lineman, Jermane Mayberry, in launching a mobile vision clinic to provide free eye exams for low-income children. With Mayberry initially donating $100,000 and the foundation since contributing nearly $1.5 million, the Eagles Eye Mobile has provided free prescription eyeglasses to more than 7,500 children who otherwise may not have received them.

The money was far better spent, Johnson suggested, than had the Eagles distributed $5,000 grants to hundreds of charities, as many team foundations do.

''If teams and players all spend their philanthropy in different directions, you have nothing," Johnson said. ''But when they put it together, you have something very special."

Charitable specialists said teams also could learn from the Cleveland Indians, who pioneered a program in 2000 to enlist players in their philanthropy. Under the program, players and executives who sign multiyear contracts must accept a clause that requires them to donate a portion of their salaries to charity through the team's foundation.

''It makes them fully aware they have a unique opportunity to make a positive difference in somebody's life," said Bob DiBiasio, a spokesman for Indians owner Larry Dolan. ''It's important for our athletes to embrace that responsibility."

Fifteen players and general manager Mark Shapiro have since contributed to the Indians foundation, with Ellis Burks topping the list at $205,000, followed by Jim Thome ($110,000) and Bob Wickman ($101,000). Thome's contribution went toward saving the high school baseball and softball programs in the financially-strapped Cleveland public schools.

Tax records show that a small number of other players have made substantial contributions to their team foundations, including Lance Berkman ($100,000 to the Astros in Action Fund), Chris Chelios ($100,000 to Ilitch Charities for Children), and Vlade Divac ($50,000 to the Sacramento Kings Foundation).

In Boston, players rarely have made major donations directly to team foundations, though they have contributed their time and money to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to aid victims of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, among other causes. David Ortiz of the Sox helped promote the team's Katrina relief effort by donating $50,000, for example, while Curt Schilling has bought dinner tables at events to benefit the Red Sox Foundation and Bronson Arroyo has helped to raise money for the foundation with his musical appearances. Players for the other three teams also have donated time and money during the fall and winter holidays (Patriots players, for example, joined forces to donate $15,000 in 2003 for Thanksgiving baskets for Morgan Memorial).

The Patriots, under owner Robert Kraft, have come closest to the Indians model among Boston's teams by requiring every player to make at least 10 community or charitable appearances a year. The Celtics enforce a similar requirement under the NBA's collective bargaining agreement, though Grousbeck said the players generally have been willing to exceed any mandated number of appearances. The Sox seek only voluntary assistance from their players, though their foundation received a major boost when several team leaders -- Schilling, Tim Wakefield, and Johnny Damon -- endorsed management's plan to raffle three official World Series rings to fans. The raffle raised $2 million for the Red Sox Foundation.

Sox general manager Theo Epstein also has adopted a novel approach to sports philanthropy by forming ''A Foundation to Be Named Later" as a fund-raising arm of the Red Sox Foundation.

As for the Bruins, they expect to receive more cooperation this season than they have in the past. The NHL's new collective bargaining agreement eliminated a clause that prohibited teams from requiring players to appear at more than two events a year, according to Paul Stewart, director of development for the Bruins Foundation.

''Under the old CBA, we had to pick and choose very carefully," Stewart said. ''Now the players will be less likely to say, 'Call my agent.' "

Stewart said he detected a trend among NHL players to resist requests for public appearances before last year's lockout.

''With all the money they were making and all the agents involved and all the demands on their time, all of a sudden you started hearing, 'Who's paying me?' " Stewart said. ''Then we started to see [fans] emptying out of our buildings because of that kind of attitude. Players were getting too big for their britches. I think that's going to change now."

The Bruins hired Stewart, a former NHL player and referee, two years ago to launch their charitable foundation. The effort involved consolidating the team's various fund-raising events, including the popular annual Bruins' Wives Carnival. Though owner Jeremy Jacobs endowed the foundation with an initial gift of $100,000, the team recognized the longtime role of the wives by making its largest donation that year to the Star House, a favorite charity of player Sean O'Donnell's wife, Allison Dunbar.

Many other players' wives serve as significant fund-raisers, as the Sox wives demonstrated this year with numerous events, including a fashion show that generated $100,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Stewart said the Bruins will continue to weigh ideas from players and their families about the foundation's giving so long as the proposals fulfill the team's mission of helping children in the community.

''We can't give to Save the Whales just because it's the pet project of our star defenseman," Stewart said.

The Bruins, unlike any other team in Boston, receive a boost in their charity work through an organized effort by their alumni. The Boston Bruins Alumni Association pays former player Bob Sweeney $50,451, according to its 2003 tax return, to manage its schedule of old-timer games, golf tournaments, and other fund-raisers. The association pockets almost none of the proceeds from its events, instead permitting designated beneficiaries to collect the revenue, as the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress did last year in netting more than $100,000 from an old-timers game.

As a result, the Bruins Alumni Association made direct grants of only $7,400 over a five-year period from 1999 to 2003, according to its tax returns. (The association also spun off $205,000 to the newly formed Bruins Alumni Foundation, of which only $34,124 went to charity.)

Sweeney said it would be shortsighted to judge the association solely on its direct grants, since it has helped raise millions of dollars through its annual events to benefit other organizations.

''If we had an ego, we'd tell everyone to make the checks out to us and then we'd write a check to each organization," Sweeney said. ''But that would be more administrative work for us. The way it works now, it works great."

Anne Lynch, a spokeswoman for the new alumni foundation, said the group has given relatively little to charity because it has focused on building a solid endowment, a strategy endorsed by industry watchdogs.

Indeed, Sweeney said the Bruins alumni have been so effective in their fund-raising that former Sox and Patriots players have approached him about creating similar foundations. (The Boston Celtics Legends Foundation dissolved several years ago because ''it got to be a nightmare to manage," said team spokesman Jeff Twiss.)

Meanwhile, one Boston sports venue has joined its teams and players in giving back -- if only a little -- to the community. When FleetBoston Financial Corp. bought the naming rights to the new arena on Causeway Street in 1995, it formed FleetCenter Neighborhood Charities with Delaware North Companies, the venue's owner. The charity started with a measure of promise as the bank helped to finance the foundation by donating $50,000 a year. But after the bank stopped giving in 1999, the foundation made direct grants of only $43,010 over the next five years, focusing instead on distributing free tickets to children through nonprofit groups.

''What started all grand and great in 1995 dissipated significantly after Fleet's interest in the charity tailed off," said Jim Delaney of Delaware North.

A spokesman for Bank of America, which last year bought FleetBoston Financial, declined to comment.

Delaney said better days are ahead for the foundation under a new partnership with TD Banknorth, which purchased the arena's naming rights this year and pledged to contribute $5 million to the charity over 20 years. The foundation, renamed Garden Neighborhood Charities, also benefited earlier this year from Delaware North raising $150,000 by auctioning single-day naming rights to the arena.

''Now we'll have the resources to go out and be more active," Delaney said. ''We'll go well beyond giving out 20,000 tickets a year."

For their part, corporate sponsors also have made a charitable impact on the community. Bank of America, for example, which sponsors the Sox, Patriots, and Major League Baseball, among many other sports properties, gave $250,000 during the World Series last year to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund for wounded US soldiers. It also has distributed nearly $4 million in the 25-year history of the Bank of America PGA Championship in Concord, primarily to Emerson Hospital and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and Assabet Valley.

Local giving by sports teams and their sponsors has been supplemented by a number of charities operated by the major leagues and their players' unions. NFL Charities donated $100,000 last year to Massachusetts General Hospital, while Major League Baseball Charity Inc. gave $20,000 to the Jimmy Fund, and the National Hockey League Foundation distributed nearly $17,000, including $10,000 to the Cam Neely Foundation.

In addition, the MLB Players Trust donated $40,000 to Rockland-based Medicines for Humanity for an aid program in the Dominican Republic. The contributions were made through the foundation by Julio Franco, who plays for the Atlanta Braves, and Alfredo Griffin, a coach with the Los Angeles Angels.

Tim Bilodeau, executive director of Medicines for Humanity, said attempts to enlist Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Sammy Sosa, and Alfonso Soriano, among other Dominican players, in the project have been unsuccessful.

''It's a difficult process because there are so many organizations pursuing these athletes," Bilodeau said.

He said he hopes to reach Ortiz and Martinez through Juan Luis Guerra, a popular singer in the Dominican, who is a friend of both players.

''It helps to have a good relationship with someone like [Guerra]," Bilodeau said. ''Otherwise, you have to get lucky."

Many local charities have been lucky that Kraft and the new owners of the Sox and Celtics personally have opened their checkbooks in addition to supporting their team foundations. Members of the Celtics ownership group, for example, have written personal checks for more than $4 million, primarily to the team's three core charities. In addition, Grousbeck's family foundation gave $2.4 million in 2003 to nonprofits in Massachusetts, including $702,500 to Children's Hospital.

Kraft's family foundation gave $575,000 to charity in 2003, including $100,000 to the Boston-based Teen Action Campaign to curb abusive relationships, while Sox chairman Tom Werner's family foundation donated $113,200 to nonprofits in the state. Werner's partners also have established themselves as major players in local charitable giving.

The team owners, through their personal commitment to charity, have influenced their teams' philanthropy.

''If we had owners who weren't engaged in the community from a philanthropic aspect, you might see us behaving very differently," the Patriots' Clark said.

In some ways, the owners compete with each other in returning their sports dollars to the community. Steve Pagliuca, a managing partner of the Celtics who serves as chairman of the revamped Celtics Shamrock Foundation, considered the friendly competition as he sat recently with Grousbeck in a 35th-floor board room on Huntington Avenue overlooking the city. When Grousbeck said the Celtics are striving to match the Sox in charitable giving, Pagliuca joked, ''We've got 86 years to catch up to them."

As a reflection of their heightened commitment, the new Celtics owners directed their foundation to donate $150,000 to each of the team's three core charities over the last two years. They helped raise $200,000 for tsunami relief, $250,000 for the Katrina cause, and $50,000 to aid Hector Paniagua, the Lawrence High School basketball player who was shot last March and paralyzed. They also pledged $50,000 to the WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon.

''We care about this stuff," Grousbeck said. ''We're the only team in town that has won 16 world championships. We're a community asset, and we want to share it."