014: Youth Sports—A Foundation for Racial Reconciliation and Leadership
In this episode of The Social Leader, Fr. Justin Mathews talks with Bill Brandmeyer of 810 Sports Radio and the new ShareWaves Foundation. They discuss the potential for youth sports to advance racial reconciliation in the region—as it has in other countries—and make a positive impact on kids. They also discuss Bill's thoughts on social leadership and making non-profits self-sustaining.
EPISODE 14 — TRANSCRIPT
Father Justin Mathews: Well, hello everybody and welcome to The Social Leader podcast, episode 14, where our goal is to help you learn to lead with greater social impact. Hi, I'm Father Justin Mathews and real quick before we begin, I wanted to let you know that this podcast is presented by Reconciliation Services, which is a nonprofit social venture in Kansas City, working to cultivate a community seeking racial and economic reconciliation to reveal the strength of all. You can find out more about Reconciliation Services programs, and even support our work at rs3101.org. Here we go into Episode 14!
Fr. Justin: Welcome! My guest today is Bill Brandmeyer. I'm very excited to welcome him to the program! Bill has been the VP of Community Relations and Impact for Sports Radio 810, as well as the Executive Director of a brand new foundation called the Share Waves Foundation. Bill, welcome to The Social Leader podcast.
Bill Brandmeyer: I'm honored to be here. I'm so excited that I get a chance to talk with you and really just kind of open up about what's good about Kansas City, what Kansas City does to really reach out to one another and lift each other up, so thanks for having me.
Fr. Justin: Absolutely. It's great to have you on. We've had a great partnership in the past with 810 Radio and I’m excited to talk about the ways that 810 is going to be using Share Waves, powered by 810, to really advance the mission of sports and what can be done. So Bill, I really want to jump in here and begin by asking you to tell us about this new foundation that you've started with Sports Radio 810, called Share Waves, what's the mission and what's the purpose of the Share Waves Foundation?
Bill: Well, 810 has been a part of the Kansas City sports complex for 21 years. They're the largest sports talk radio station in the Midwest. They've done so many different things to reach out to the community and make a difference. They're always opening up their airwaves to different nonprofits, helping tell stories about what makes Kansas City special, promoting events. Their on-air personalities are constantly helping emcee events and bring attention to events. We offer our support through PSA’s, which are public service announcements, and other things. So it's not like this is anything new. Share Waves is just something that we came up with that would allow us to focus our attention on something specific, to have our own cause. Something that 810 and Union Broadcasting as a company could all get behind and try to make a difference in the community. We felt like by joining around and getting ourselves focused on one purpose, we become a purpose driven organization that really does greater impact. And that's what Share Waves is all about.
Fr. Justin: I know that you come from kind of a marketing background before you did this. You've done a lot of that. Now that means that you know how to write awesome mission statements. And when I went to your website, I noticed that you had a great mission statement. Tell us about the actual mission of Share Waves and make it tangible. What are you hoping to do with the Share Waves Foundation?
Bill: We want to advance opportunities for kids to engage with sports throughout the metro. In our community, sports is such an important part of the fabric of a kid's life. When they engage with sports, they engage with something greater than themselves. They learn how to work together to achieve goals, they learn life skills, emotionally their intelligence is increased by the social skills they learn, they learn to listen. There's also a lot of practical life metrics. You can measure the difference sports makes in a child's life through measuring their grades or their dropout rate. Screen time goes down when kids engage with sports. But there are some issues in youth sports. And the biggest question I got from 810 when I asked them if I could move forward with creating a foundation focused on youth sports was: is it a big enough issue? We're not curing cancer here. Why would we be engaged in helping kids play sports? Everybody seems to be fine. They're playing sports. What you find out is that there's really the haves and have nots, and that's where Share Waves is really focused. Our platform is set up to address the situations in our city that allow kids to play certain sports because they can afford it and other kids have no access to those sports because they're priced out of it. They can't afford it and they go on and play soccer and basketball. Those are great sports for kids to play and those are easily accessible, but that's not the end of the line. There's so many other great sports out there that we should be able to offer to all kids. The playing field should be leveled. And so Share Waves has this mission to advance opportunities, specifically in low income houses, to help them find ways to get into the sports they want to play.
Fr. Justin: But I want to get deeper into the mission and what could be possible, particularly right now because of COVID and the shutdown of so many different camps and sports. But before we jump into that, I want to jump back a little bit and ask you: where did your passion for youth sports come from and your passion for using sports to transform the lives of kids? Is there a story from your childhood or from your philanthropic work with your family that you've undertaken that you can share with us that would illumine that passion?
Bill: Well, it's funny. I look at this as an awesome opportunity to do something that I've always loved. I've always loved sports. I used to wake up early in the morning, I'd be the first one to get to the sports page, and I'd comb through it. I was a stats guy. I never was going to play anything at a high level. Athletic wise, I've got some good skill, hand coordination, whatever, but I wasn't going to be a pro anything. But I always had this passion for sports. I got to know the guys at 810 WHB through my other nonprofit that I started about 10 years ago, called KC Creative. And KC Creative basically drew upon my marketing background to try to help nonprofits with their marketing expertise, their services, create websites, and collateral, try to help tell their story in a more concise way. And really, we ended up being a video production house for nonprofits to use and won some Philly Awards through the Nonprofit Connect and did some great work with some awesome organizations, but the best thing that KC Creative ever did was a one hour radio show once a week called KC Cares. And that was basically our opportunity to interview nonprofits, similar to what you're doing, telling stories about what makes Kansas City so special. We would have three different nonprofits on every single week. We’d tell their story. It'd be a nice little 15 minute segment about Ronald McDonald House or Operation Breakthrough or Della Lamb and we dig into the story and try to tell it and offer that up as a service. I'm not sure anybody listened, but I think you probably kind of feel that, like who's listening? Every now and then you get an incredible message from someone that said “that program changed me” or “that program gave me an insight that I didn't have,” which always felt good, but I always was looking for more. I saw the opportunity to use the platform that Union Broadcasting and 810 have worked so hard to create over 21 years. I wanted to commandeer that. I wanted to harness the power of sports at 810 and use it for good and that's pretty much what Share Waves is trying to do. We share our airwaves with nonprofits that use sports to connect to kids. We also help promote events that use sports to connect to their donor population, their donor group. And then we also look for ways to create programming that will help level the playing field for kids that don't have access to the country club sports. They can't find a way to play golf or baseball or hockey or lacrosse. All of those price kids out of their access because access is privileged and it's one of those things that in today's world and this environment, Black Lives Matter, what we're looking at with social injustice, how this is playing out in the consciousness of our culture. Realizing that access is privilege is one of the key things that we want to drive home to everyone who's listening or who's trying to understand what's happening. It's about access. It's about opportunities.
Fr. Justin: Well, by the way, if people are listening online right now on Facebook or YouTube, please comment live and we’ll see if we can bring you in on the podcast and get your comments in. Now, you know, Bill, as I hear you talking about this, I gotta be honest, my mind, my heart has been full with the Black Lives Matter protests, then with COVID before that, and there's so much good that's happening right now, to begin to change and to address and to illumine the structural racism, the economic injustices that have existed for so long. And there seems to be a groundswell. I have to think about sports. And as I was getting ready for our podcast, I thought, ‘Oh gosh, how is sports gonna really play into the common zeitgeist right now? What's happening?’ But there's evidence from all over the world that sports can be a powerful tool for community healing. I found a quote by Nelson Mandela who once said that sports has the power to change the world. And I'd love for you to share: how do you think that youth sports can benefit the lives of the kids in our community and the city as a whole? And what are some of the tangible outcomes that you've seen or that you hope to see, especially in these difficult times?
Bill: Yeah, the power of sports to connect us as a community is witnessed by the world champion Royals, the world champion Chiefs. Our city comes together a million people showing up to celebrate winning and we're all one, we're all together. Everybody was on the same page, high fiving, loving one another. The Chiefs are number one! The Royals are number one! What an incredible experience. We know the power of sports here in Kansas City. For the fabric of our youth. For what the opportunity is for us to be able to connect with our kids through sports. It’s such a great mechanism for ability to talk about things that are real, authentic conversations about how you pursue goals, how you achieve greatness, how you lose, how you win, all of those small little life lessons and there are thousands of youth sports organizations that are helping in different ways, to do different things, to impact kids with sports. Share Waves isn't the only one. We have a unique opportunity because we can partner with nonprofits that are already programming youth sports, already using sports to connect to kids. We can bring attention to them through our airwaves and that's why Share Waves has a unique position. I think to understand what is happening throughout our community at different levels, understand the enormity of the issue of racial justice, you have to break it down into the individual aspects of what people experience. My life was incredibly blessed. I could tell my story to you and it would sound like I had a lot of issues to overcome in my life, a lot of things that gave me trial and tribulation. What worketh patience? Tribulation worketh patience. I have a lot of patience, I promise. But I have no idea what it's like to live a life where the color of your skin dictates the way someone speaks at you, or talks to you, or positions you, or puts you in the right chair, or make sure that you sit next to the right person, or any of that. That's not how I think. I think about connections, I think about how I'm going to interact with someone. One of the things that I carry around as part of my life mission is I want to meet someone and I want them to teach me something about their life. I want them to tell me what they've experienced in their life as a master of something that they've experienced, so that I can take that into my life and I can learn and grow. And I think if we did more of that, as a community, if we sought to understand rather than to be understood, if we kind of took what St. Francis of Assisi just kind of gave to us as just this incredible gift of ‘let's make it better than we found it,’ that's kind of how I live my life.
Fr. Justin: Sports has been used all over the world. Not only Nelson Mandela and his quote, but I can find story after story of the way that sports has been used in Israel, in South Africa, even in Canada. And like social leadership, using sports for reconciliation is all about bringing people together, rebuilding relationships, creating a dialogue that can lead to greater understanding of the roots of conflict. And as I think about South Africa and Canada and how they've used sports as a part of their Truth and Reconciliation Commission and that work, particularly in this time where we're needing to address structural racism, call it out, I think we need to find creative ways to sustain and then advance the cause of reconciliation. We can't just talk about it. So how will youth sports, really even here tangibly, how will it advance that effort for reconciliation though?
Bill: Well COVID has given us a really unique chance with youth sports because it's drawn everyone into what can I do myself, at home, alone to improve and stay ready? Because I know we're going to play again someday, I don't know when that is, but we're going to get back out on that field. And I need to take personal responsibility for my physical fitness, my skill development. I need to find access to different opportunities to keep working on my skill set. So COVID's had that unique impact on us. I think it's also given us a chance to really appreciate what it means to be together for an event, a sporting event, together as a team, together in the stands as fans. It's really kind of brought a spotlight on what the meaning of sports has been to our community because we've been without it for three months going on four. And I think that it's never been more apparent how much we miss that social interaction. Kids miss it. I think it's the result of being away, separated, alone, isolated in your home, we’re still going to feel the repercussions of those traumas on kids for many years. We're not gonna really understand them for a while, but they're present. People who are studying that, they see that as a really clear outcome to this separation from social interaction. It's gonna do some damage. And I think that we have an opportunity as we kind of re-approach the re-engagement with sports to maybe set a different criteria or expectation of what we want to get out of sports. The most incredible stat about youth sports that I've come across as I dug into this is that at age 13 we lose 65-70% of young athletes to other activities. It's their eighth grade year. They're going into high school and they basically tell themselves or the world, sports are not going to be a part of my high school experience. They're not going to be a part of what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, because I'm not good enough, or it's not fun anymore, or my dad's been pushing me too hard, or hey, I like music, I just want to play music, or I want to play chess. Those are awesome endeavors. But to think that we lose 70% of our kids from this unique opportunity to learn so many important life skills and so many different things that will help drive us into success. It's a really staggering stat. And it's something that we at Share Waves want to do something about. We think that rec sports, sports for the fun of it, free play for kids, opening up fields and letting kids just do what they normally would do on a playdate outside, those are great opportunities. It doesn't have to be structured. It doesn't have to be competing for the national championship or the citywide championship. All of that is really important and competitive excellence is certainly intrical to us, but I also think we could take a step back and really enrich people's lives, kids’ lives, if we can create sports opportunities, participation opportunities that are a little less pressured and little more about what you can get that's good from sports.
Fr. Justin: Well, I know you're not doing this in a vacuum either. There are a lot of people that you've partnered with already. I think you partner with Boys and Girls Club of Kansas City, you've partnered with Girls on the Run. There are a lot of other organizations that are already involved in this. And I'd like to sort of transition our conversation a little bit to kind of dive in a little bit to social leadership. I know one of the things that you and I have talked about, before the COVID-19 pandemic, you'd shared with me that one of your goals in Share Waves is that in 2020, you wanted to become really self-sustaining as a foundation through those partnerships. And I know that you and I both share a passion for social leadership and social entrepreneurship, social venturing. So why is that important to you, that self-sustaining aspect to this work, and how do you intend to achieve that goal, Bill?
Bill: Well, we entered 2020 with that as our key objective, becoming self sustaining. And the reason why is because you really cannot take an organization and build it with a wish and a prayer. It has to be structured in a way that allows it to grow through the process of creating strategies and understanding what it is that you're trying to get accomplished with your eyes on that outcome, the goal, what you're trying to get produced. And there's so many aspects of it. You just don't do what you need to do to be successful because you can't afford it. And so you're always just picking it, like the cousin that got a new camera to shoot a video or my nephew was studying web design, and so I'm going to have him build my website. And I'm going to piece this all together. And what you end up with is almost an organization that operates and looks a little bit like Frankenstein. It's very tactical, it doesn't really have any long range play, because it doesn't really understand what it's trying to get accomplished in the long term. It's very short sighted. It doesn't mean it doesn't do good work. KC Cares was a great program. It was awesome, but I funded it and that's not the way you're supposed to do this. It's got to be a way where people embrace it, and the community can embrace it, and you can build a group of donors that are dedicated to the outcomes that you're trying to achieve. And so, it's been quite a process. We started 2020 with a really good plan. We had three awesome events that we were going to pull off. We're partnered with Charlie Hustle, which is an incredible organization here in Kansas City. We had two other nonprofits, Noah's Bandage Project and The Battle Within. We were all working together to present these three awesome events that use sports to connect and they all got canceled.
Fr. Justin: COVID’s wrecked a lot of plans. And I think actually that's why it's important if people want to go online and they want to help impact the kids lives in our community, if you have a passion for youth sports and changing kids’ lives, bringing people together, you want to do something tangible in order to foster racial and economic reconciliation here in the community, the website is ShareWavesFoundation.org. And I know you can go to the website and make a donation. Bill, I wish we could talk for an hour and a half because I think this is a really important conversation. But before we go, I want to ask you, what is the potential negative impact if we don't have sports this summer? We've talked a little bit about what can happen, impacting academics, impacting leadership development, but if we don't figure out how to have kids in sports this summer in light of COVID-19? What's the potential negative outcome? Why is this such an important issue, especially right now?
Bill: Well, you think of an under-resourced house that is trying to figure out what the next phase of opening is. They're going to have to go work but they've got kids at home and the normal network of support that would be there for them, organizations like The Upper Room, Operation Breakthrough, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Club, they're operating at less than full efficiency there. I think Dr. Dred Scott said that Boys and Girls Club is operating at about a third capacity. The Upper Room, which normally serves between 2,500-3,000 kids a summer is not offering any services this summer. Operation Breakthrough has been limited. There's probably 15 organizations that serve youth in terms of childcare that are either not functioning at full capacity or not functioning at all. So there's a tremendous fear on my part, it's a personal fear
and I don't have anything to back it up. But I think that we're going to have some situations where anxiety, stress, depression are all impacting our kids at different levels of impact and in different levels of acuity. I think that we do need to stay aware of emergent issues, emergent situations. I would like to raise money and help support opportunities to provide individual help to individual cases where there are moments where we need to find out ‘hey, this family needs a thousand dollars for rent or they're gonna lose their apartment’ or ‘this family has to get connected to the internet, they just need $50 a month in order to stay connected.’ I think that as we kind of go through this summer, we're gonna learn a lot about what it means to not have sports. I think in a lot of families that is something that they've not been able to access. There’s also sports opening up. Kansas City's a little bit looser than other communities, in terms of letting kids get back out on the fields, and so we are opening up. But once again, opening up in Kansas City means the kids in Johnson County are playing and the kids in Kansas City, Missouri aren't. That's a big issue. And that's something that I want to try to do something about.
Fr. Justin: It takes leadership in order to bring a community to where there is equity. And I think sports offers us an opportunity, starting with our kids, to really begin. Even if it's just one particular small segment of what really needs to be done. I think it is one way that we can, no pun intended, level the playing field. And I appreciate your leadership in it. I know that you've been involved, as you've indicated, in some form of social leadership in various different sectors for many years. And I want to end our time together with this question, because there are a lot of people listening who are wanting to do something, they are wanting to get involved and make a difference. So if there are leaders out there who are wanting to embrace social leadership and increase their social impact, what advice would you give to them based on what you've learned? Where do they begin?
Bill: I've researched a lot about purpose driven organizations, purpose driven transformation, social entrepreneurship. I think it has to start with your own passion for what it is that you want to see changed in this world, what is this world to you in terms of what's right and what's wrong, and find something that you feel like you can make an impact in given the talents and the gifts that God has given you. I've done a lot of soul searching about who and what I am and what God's blessed me with. I have a lot of great talents that have been shared with me and I think of those that have been given abundantly, a lot is expected of them. And that's something that I believe that we all need to kind of hold on to is that idea that we've been given a lot. You live in America, you live in freakin’ Kansas City, you live in the heart of America that has this beautiful space. And we all need to use our time, talent, and treasure to make a difference in this world in something. Make a change. Make something better. Make it better than you found it. And so the other thing I want to do before we leave is I want to invite everybody to join us next week for Ready To Play week. Ready To Play has been a campaign we've worked on for the last 10 weeks, creating little videos for kids to access to help stay fit and ready when games begin again. “Stay Ready To Play” has kind of been our mantra. We're going to have a whole week talking about the safe return to sports. We're going to talk to experts, high school and college coaches. We're going to have all stars on. Will Shields has stepped up to be our partner and the Ready To Play week is just about to take off. Quinton Lucas is going to be on, Bill Self, but we're also going to get the doctors from Children's Mercy and KU to talk about youth sports and the guidelines of how we safely re-engage. And we're going to raise money all week to help create a camp for kids. Will Shields has donated his indoor space and we're going to create camps for kids that don't have access to sports camps and try to give kids at least some sense of summer.
Fr. Justin: Where are we going to find that campaign? Where are we going to find the Ready To Play campaign?
Bill: We're going to be on live every day on 1510 AM and 94.5 FM. Those are the sister stations for 810 WHB. So we're going to be on live from 1-3pm from Monday, June 29 until Friday, July 3. Every single day a different topic. We're going to cover the science of the safe return to sports on Monday, youth sports on Tuesday, high school sports on Wednesday, college sports on Thursday, and the professionals on Friday. We'll have different guests on all week. I'm getting a lot of help from 810 to put it together. It's going to be an incredible week for us. We're going to be all over social media. Ready To Play week is our opportunity to get ready to get back out on the field. So that's what we're excited about.
Fr. Justin: That's an awesome campaign and a great way for folks to get involved. And I think Kansas City is the greatest sports town in the entire country. We’ve got the best baseball, the best football, we've got a home grown decades old sports radio show that we've partnered with at Reconciliation Services, and I love what you're doing. And again, my focus and my passion is around racial and economic reconciliation and I wanted you to come on the show, not only because of your social leadership in the community for so many years, but I was hoping to be able to lift up the idea that we have seen in so many other countries that things like sports, these creative applications of things that are really a part of the fabric of everyday life. These things can be creative ways to bring folks together to make a difference, to lead in social change and make a greater impact, particularly as we look at racial and economic reconciliation, at dismantling structural racism. This is a fantastic way to bring our kids together in a new modality and to make sure that everybody has access to that opportunity. So Bill, I really appreciate your time today. I want to throw the Share Waves website up again. So if you're not able to tune in to the campaign next week on the radio, make sure to go to ShareWavesFoundation.org, make a donation, get involved, and reach out to Bill and see how you can volunteer, how you can help. Bill, anything else that you want to leave us with today before we head off into our day?
Bill: No, I think you summed it up. I think everybody needs to check out what Reconciliation Services has done down on Troost. It's just amazing. If you haven't been to Thelma's Kitchen, you have to go there. I really appreciate you, your heart. From the moment we met, I knew that we were going to be good friends. And I'm just excited about what the future holds for us. So, thank you so much.
Fr. Justin: Thank you for taking the time to come on today. Hang with me for a minute. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody, thank you so much for joining us today and for checking out what Bill is working on. Thank you for listening today. And if you like today's podcast I have a favor to ask of you. Please follow this podcast on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, smash that like button, follow us. This is going to really help us share the show with more people. And also I wanted to let you know about a brand new program that's launching soon. If you like today's show and you want to learn about how to lead with greater social impact, if you want to learn about social leadership so that you can figure out how to do the things that Bill and others in our community are doing to make change right now, I want to ask you to visit TheSocialLeader.org and sign up to find out more about our new e-course called Social Leader Essentials, which is launching very soon. You can answer a few short questions and then one of our team members will reach out to you to see if that course is right for you. So friends again, thank you for joining us on The Social Leader podcast and until next time, I encourage you to learn to lead with greater social impact. See you soon.