The Olympic Nonprofit Worth A Gold Medal

I still watch the Olympics.  I expect I always will watch that, and the NCAA Basketball tournament every year.  Even though I think the golden age of amateurism is long gone.  Call me old fashioned, but the fantasy of athletes competing only for the love of it (like kids) seemed to make Olympic and college sports qualitatively better.  Better than anything else, even if I have come to see that students who play sports are still accurately described as indentured servants.  To be indentured is necessarily to be exploited, probably.  NCAA athletes might no longer be exploited, but its hardly amateur anymore.  I am close to accepting the notion that sport is not invariably charitable, and in fact it is most often non-charitable.  But one charitable effort manifested in this year’s Olympics restores some of my faith in concept that sport is charity.

You might have seen the headlines after the South Sudan Men’s basketball team – the “Bright Stars” – nearly upset the Dream Team.  The 2024 Dream Team includes LeBron, KD, AD, and Steph, all coached by Steve Kerr.  Still South Sudan lost to USA by only 1 point in a friendly, before knocking off Puerto Rico in a stunner but then losing to the Joker and his Serbian team. The South Sudanese are bitter about that loss but they are just like any other team complaining about the refs.   This is especially remarkable if you picture South Sudan when people speak of African civil war.  A country so ravaged by war and poverty that it doesn't have a single indoor basketball arena. The civil war was so devastating that 72% of the population is under the age of 30.  The grown folks are mostly all gone.  

So how is it possible that the South Sudanese could even field a team, never mind nearly beat the Dream Team and then advance to within two games of the final?  The answer starts with Luol Deng, pictured below.  The former NBA basketball star is 6’9 and weighed 237 pounds when he played for 15 years.  He averaged 15 points per game with 6 rebounds and 3 assists over his career.  Basketball is what helped him escape war and know life.  When he retired from the NBA, he formed the Luol Deng Foundation:  

The Luol Deng Foundation equips the youth of our nation to be the leaders we need today. Through sport, we build character and instill a sense of belonging. Through education, we empower young people to go further. Through wellness, we secure people’s most urgent needs. Through equality, we ensure these opportunities are for everyone.‍ We believe youth are the key to transforming our country and our world. Because that’s what young people do.

Luol Deng’s NBA-funded donations are what makes this thing work.  He is the obvious substantial contributor that makes the LDF a private foundation if it were organized in the United States.  That’s the first interesting thing about this.  The LDF exists in the United States only as a fiscally sponsored organization.  It "partners with MATTER, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, as a fiscal agent for all US donations.”  Can what would otherwise be a private foundation avoid that status by operating via a fiscal sponsorship?  Undoubtedly yes, if the fiscal sponsor is a 501(c)(3).  And Deng no doubt gets the best deductions because his contributions are made to the fiscal agent instead of to his own private foundation.  Which fiscal agent turns around and funds Deng's LDF activities in the South Sudan.  I don't see anything nefarious about any of this, by the way.  I am just sort of admiring the imagined tax planning the way I might admire a beautiful sports car.  I would love to write the opinion letter.  

In the UK, the LDF is a registered charity. Somebody must have given Deng good advice -- this is no amateur operation -- and I just wonder what it was.  And then finally, the LDF is registered in South Sudan.  Yes, even that war torn country has a tax code that exempts charities and other nonprofits from business tax.  Because Civil Society is necessary to a rebuilding community.  Section 69 of the South Sudan Taxation Act of 2009 exempts “income of organizations registered with the appropriate government entity as non-governmental organizations with public benefit status to the extent that the income is used exclusively for their public benefit purposes.”  Another provision, Section 59(8) authorizes a deduction for “contributions made to organisations for humanitarian, health, education, religious, scientific, cultural, and environmental protection.”  So LDF is a corporation recognized as a charity in the UK, a registered charity in the South Sudan and a fiscally sponsored organization in the U.S. 

All of that is interesting but I am mostly impressed by the example that LDF sets.  It is the perfect example of how purely amateur sport is so related to civil society that it is still somewhere in the world unquestionably considered charity by itself.  The LDF is all about sports.  And it is the exclusive sponsor of the South Sudan Bright Stars.  Most of the players, by the way, are South Sudanese NBA, or D league players with NBA potential.  In addition to funding and training the national men and women's basketball teams, the LDF funds boys and girls sports, and the national soccer teams, all to rebuild Civil Society.  It also funds schools, health care and emergency relief but even if it didn’t, nobody would challenge its charitable bona fides based on its focus on sports.

I bet only a country ripped asunder by war can appreciate the simple joy of kicking a ball or shooting a basket.  Or the charity in enabling others to do so. 

darryll k. jones