Matching Sports Celebrities With Causes Can Itself Be an Exercise

As female athletes claim spots as top celebrities and earners, charities are

looking to them to become donors and to speak out in behalf of their causes.

But persuading sports figures to support a specific charity is not always easy. Sports agents and other experts on athletic marketing offer the following advice on how to overcome the obstacles:

Do research. Charities should investigate an athlete’s background and interests before trying to establish a long-term relationship, says David Schwab, director of media and business development at the McLean, Va., office of Octagon, an international sports-marketing company. A partnership between an athlete and a charity “has got to make sense for both parties,” he says. “Especially for athletes who get inundated all the time, you’ve got to find something that an athlete wants to do and will sustain over time. Otherwise it becomes a one-time photo opportunity.”

Mr. Schwab suggests reading newspapers as well as athlete biographies in publications available to the public, such as the Women’s Tennis Association’s Sanex WTA Tour player guide. “It pays off to do the research, even though it takes a long time,” he says. “You may make three calls instead of 30.”

In some cases, sports agents and other representatives make it easier for charities by contacting the organizations that their athletes have an interest in helping. Mr. Schwab, for example, called the national 4-H headquarters recently to see if charity officials would like Jackie Stiles, a player for the Portland Fire women’s basketball team, to be a national spokeswoman for the group. Ms. Stiles was a 4-H participant while growing up in Kansas.

The charity, which teaches young people about science, agriculture, and technology, jumped at the offer. Ms. Stiles will soon be appearing in television and radio announcements for the group, encouraging young people and adults to get involved in community service.

Keep an open mind. David Bober, president of a New York sports-management company that bears his name, says charities should not get discouraged when the particular athlete they sought declines to help, because another athlete represented by the same company might easily be able to fill in. For example, the American Library Association, in Chicago, asked Mr. Bober to arrange for the soccer star Mia Hamm to appear in a poster to encourage young people to read. Ms. Hamm declined because she tries to keep her charity work focused almost exclusively on sports programs for girls and on charities that help people with bone-marrow disease. Mr. Bober recommended Kristine Lilly, another soccer player, who appeared in the poster holding her favorite book, The Catcher in the Rye.

“If you are calling on a company that has multiple athletes and you are looking for one and they don’t accept your invitation, you would be remiss if you didn’t entertain their other clients,” says Mr. Bober.

Kathryn Leide, director of the American Library Association’s graphics department, says Ms. Lilly was a “successful alternative.” Before the association pursued the relationship, it interviewed young female soccer fans about who their heroes were, and Ms. Lilly’s name was often mentioned.

Be specific about time. Athletes and charities need to be very clear about how many hours the sports figure will commit to the charity, says Leigh Steinberg, chief executive of Assante Sports, a sports-management company in Newport Beach, Calif. If those details are murky, the charity’s and the athlete’s images can become tarnished if the athlete does not appear at an event or meeting. “It can end up being a not-fun experience,” says Mr. Steinberg.

Be willing to pay. Many athletes, especially those who compete in the Olympics, don’t earn much money, says Evan Morganstein, president of Premiere Management Group, in Raleigh, N.C., a sports-management company. Therefore, he says, he often asks for payments for the athletes he represents. “I tell them that my kids are self-employed, they are funding their own training,” he says. People who work for nonprofit organizations make money, he adds, yet don’t always understand when an athlete can’t participate free.

Work with teams. The Sports Philanthropy Project, in Newton, Mass., which was created three years ago with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has found that working with teams can often be a more stable source of support than working with an individual athlete, says Greg Johnson, the group’s executive director.

While athletes may get traded and move from city to city, teams are more likely to remain in the same place and can offer the resources of a corporation, he says.

“They are generally large, highly visible corporate structures that are very interested in having positive relations with host communities,” he says.

Think beyond cash. Mr. Johnson says that “sometimes the cash grants are the least of what these teams are able to do for you.”

Among the other assets they may be able to share: tickets to sports events, the celebrity cachet of players who can serve as charity promoters, marketing signs in arenas, the ability to hold events in their stadiums, assistance raising money from other sources, and the power to bring together community leaders.

His group advises teams on how to creatively use all of the assets they have to offer to charities and community groups.

For example, the organization helped the Jacksonville Jaguars football team transform a basic ticket-giveaway program from a “feel good” project into an effort that has sparked deeper change. Rather than just donate free tickets randomly to Jacksonville organizations, the team has set up a program with local youth organizations to use free football tickets as an incentive to promote good behavior by the kids the charities serve. Through the team’s “Honor Rows” program, children earn tickets to a Jaguars game if they meet certain goals, such as doing well in school or participating in community service.

Once they complete the program, in addition to the game tickets, they receive a T-shirt, a hat, and a completion certificate, and they are publicly honored at a lunch and during a Jaguars game.

“If you can help the teams use [the tickets] in a strategic, rather than a dispersed, fashion, you can effect a more comprehensive and substantive change than might otherwise occur,” says Mr. Johnson.