Philanthropy Through Fantasy Football

With football season in full swing, a local business man came up with an idea that’s a touchdown for both fantasy football fanatics and an important fundraising effort.

Nick Hoyng, Director of Business Development for Danis Building Construction, is also a member of the Ronald McDonald House Development Committee. “Caring for 78 guest families a night while their children receive medical treatment, Cincinnati’s Ronald McDonald House provides an opportunity for companies or individuals to sponsor one of the 78 rooms in the RM House for an entire year through the ‘Adopt a Room’ program,” Hoyng explains. “Adopting a room means that for an entire year the company or individuals who have chosen to sponsor a room are able to provide support, home-cooked meals and relief from a family’s stressful situation while their children are critically ill.”

While Hoyng and the rest of the committee were brainstorming new fundraising ideas for the Adopt a Room program they came up with an idea that has never been done before; a football fantasy fundraising league. “The Ronald McDonald House development committee was trying to come up with new ideas to fundraise while at the same time bringing more youth into the house,” Hoyng says, “We came with the fantasy football league as a group.” After Hoyng pitched the idea to the committee he immediately reached out to 10 different companies, which included young leaders in their industry looking for non-for-profits to help out, to see if they wanted to participate in the fantasy football league.

Nick Hoyng

“Each team/company paid $300 to be a part of the league, in which all the proceeds from league would go to sponsoring one of the rooms in the house for a year,” Hoyng explains. “The fantasy draft took place at house with all 10 teams/companies present on September 4th. A tour and presentation about what the house is all about was given after the draft was completed.”

There are three levels of room sponsorships in the Adopt a Room program. To adopt a small room one must raise $3,000, a medium sized room $5,000 and to adopt a transplant suite $10,000. In the first year of Hoyng’s fantasy football league fundraiser $3,000 was raised, enough to sponsor a small room for a year. Since all of the proceeds of Hoyng’s fantasy league goes to the RM House the winner of the league will receive the naming rights to the adopted room.

“It is a fun way to raise funds for such an amazing place. We took something that is already so popular and used it to help the house,” Hoyng says, “The best part is that we gave several new companies a better perspective on what the house represents.”

The fantasy football fundraiser has been so successful that Hoyng plans on promoting it and hopefully making it bigger next year so that more companies and individuals can get involved. Thus far Hoyng says the neatest part about starting up the fantasy football league fundraiser is teaching all the participants about the Ronald McDonald House.

“Most people are surprised to hear that McDonald’s only provides about 10% of the funds required to support the house. The rest is from private donations and other corporate sponsors,” Hoyng says. “We also have several participants that have never played fantasy football before, so they are loving it!”

In the near future Hoyng hopes to continue to try and spread the word about the wonderful work that goes on at the RM House by growing the fantasy football fundraising league.

If you would like to learn more about the Ronald McDonald House of Greater Cincinnati and the Adopt a Room program/fundraisers go to www.rmhcincinnati.org or call (513) 636-7642.