Yawkey Foundation Youth & Amateur Athletics Support

In 2018, the Yawkey Foundation was approached by longstanding partner, the Boys & Girls Club of Boston’s Yawkey Club in Roxbury, to support a Small Capital project of installing lights around the athletic field.  The Yawkey Club serves thousands of youth each year, and the field hosts softball and baseball practices, drills, and league games. The addition of field lights allows the Yawkey Club members to participate in evening softball and baseball games, as well as other outdoor activities after dusk, while providing more flexibility in scheduling and accommodating a wider variety of health-promoting Sports, Fitness, & Recreation activities.

Youth Enrichment Services (YES) inspires and challenges Boston youth with physical and mental activities that foster life-long respect for self, others, and the environment through enriching programming for thousands of children and teens, primarily from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. The Yawkey Foundation has provided Program Support to help YES deliver on its mission of offering unique, active outdoor experiences essential for healthy development, in addition to the soft skills, academic support, and careers exploration necessary to succeed in school, work, and life. YES youth are faced with many systemic disparities that directly contribute to poorer outcomes, including less access to health-promoting resources, and the Yawkey Foundation is proud to support YES’s out-of-school-time programming and safe outdoor spaces for the youth they serve.

Special Olympics of Massachusetts provides year-round sports training and competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, prepare for entry into school and community programs, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in the sharing of gifts, skills and friendships with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community. Tom and Jean Yawkey valued the role athletics played in the lives of young people, and particularly for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities. In honor of the couple’s commitment, in October 2009 the Yawkey Foundation made a Transformational Capital grant of $2.5 million to Special Olympics Massachusetts for construction of a new headquarters building in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The Yawkey Sport Training Center provides training and meeting space for the 1,600 coaches and 11,000 volunteers who work with more than 11,000 athletes in 26 team and individual sport programs and 126 organized competitions across the state. This relationship continues to this day and in 2022, Yawkey Foundation awarded Special Olympics of Massachusetts a $300,000 Strategic Investment grant to support technological upgrades throughout the organization in order to improve program accessibility.

The Yawkey Foundation is the presenting sponsor of the PMC Kids Rides Program. The Yawkey Foundation is committed to helping the PMC develop the next generation of riders while instilling a sense of community service and athletic fitness in young people. Since 2010, the Yawkey Foundation has supported the PMC Kids Rides program with grants totaling $1.3 million.

A longtime supporter of athletics at Boston College, Yawkey Foundation committed $15 million to fund construction of the Yawkey Athletics Center and other athletics-related improvements. Opened in 2005, the Yawkey Athletics Center serves as the home of the BC football staff and players, as well as the Office of Learning Resources for Student-Athletes. The completion of the Yawkey Athletics Center marked the first of several facility improvements across the campus. Yawkey Foundation’s commitment to this capital project builds upon the Yawkey’s legacy - in 1986, Jean Yawkey established the Thomas A. Yawkey Scholarship Fund to provide tuition support for racial and ethnic minority student-athlete baseball players from Greater Boston.