The Boston Celtics historically have strived to break new ground in the NBA as the first team to draft a Black player, the first to start five Black players and the first to have a Black head coach. But even the Celtics had to look inward after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and ask if there was more they could do.
“You know, at first the conversation was, immediately from our ownership … ’Hey, we’re gonna do something significant. What are we gonna do?’" said Dave Hoffman, vice president of Community Engagement for the Celtics.
Hoffman participated in the conversations that led to an initiative called Boston Celtics United for Social Justice. It’s a 10-year, $25 million commitment that focuses on six specific pillars: education, economic opportunity, healthcare, criminal justice and law enforcement, building bridges between communities and voting.
Last month, the team launched the Power Forward Small Business Grant, a combined commitment of $1 million from the Celtics and Vistaprint, one of the team’s main sponsors, to award $25,000 grants to multiple Black-owned small businesses in New England. The money can be used however the businesses want. Grant recipients will also have opportunities to be featured on the Celtics' platforms as well as get design and marketing assitance. Applications for grants opened last month.
The Power Forward campaign, which the Celtics put together with the local NAACP, is one of the initiative’s first big projects. Tanisha Sullivan, the president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, said the Celtics have been doing racial equity work with the civil rights organization since 2017 but came to understand over the summer they needed to do more.
“What we saw and heard very clearly in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd is that specifically within the Black community and other communities of color that that is no longer enough," she said. "Those statements, the t-shirts, the commercials were in many respects, I think, the warm up, if you will. It is now time to get in the game.”
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