Backyard Sports Cares

I’m Danny Bernstein, Founder and Executive Director of Backyard Sports Cares. I have a master’s in physical education, a bachelor’s in economics, and more than a decade of experience running a small nonprofit that changes lives. I got here purposefully: after 25 years in the family business, I knew that the garment industry wasn’t for me. So, I set out to create a mission-driven career. I loved sports from a young age. Not just the physicality, but the self-esteem, leadership skills, life lessons. It seemed that some of that spirit was missing from kids’ sports today, and I thought I could start a program to bring it back. I quickly learned that this was not something to sell to those who could afford it, but critical to provide kids who otherwise would not have access. So that’s what we do at my nonprofit, Backyard Sports Cares. 

Income, zip code and athletic activity dictate whether a child has access to the valuable benefits of high-quality sports and recreation activities, which leads to vast inequities for children from economically disadvantaged communities and those with special needs.
Backyard Sports Cares corrects these inequities by partnering with school districts and community organizations to deliver sports programs led by professional coaches and volunteer peer mentors from surrounding communities. We have proven our ability to improve school attendance and academic performance, and keep kids out of trouble, and to finally provide the coveted team/peer social dynamic that is craved but so often denied to kids with special needs. 
Our project can be grown in our own region, brought to other locations, AND copied in other industries, like the arts.  The benefit to humanity at large: we’re tearing down walls and building bridges between cultures, races, zip codes, ability levels, school districts, communities. 

Lack of access to quality sports and inter-community team play is  the cause and the symptom of the inequities between the have and have-nots. Westchester County NY is one of the richest counties in the nation, but the wealth disparities between zip codes is drastic. Our program has peer mentors from Scarsdale, where the median household income is $250,000 and provides services to youth in Mt. Vernon, where the median is less than $55,000 and more than 10k people live in poverty. This situation – people of vast wealth living next to, but completely separate from, fellow humans in poverty – is common nationwide. Youth from the less affluent areas are isolated, because the majority do not have the resources (parental supervision, money, transportation) to travel, play on organized sports teams, engage in cultural activities, volunteer/participate in unpaid internships, etc. How can they dream of a life outside this poverty if they have no exposure to it? If these young people have special needs, the inequities grow to include denial of even the most basic joys of childhood. Correspondingly and also detrimental, youth from the affluent areas have almost no exposure to peers who have different life experiences, cultures, etc. 

We deliver safe, professional, well-organized sports and recreation activities including soccer, basketball, hiking, baseball, golf, tennis, swimming, yoga, and more to youth ages 5-20 who would otherwise not have access. That is, those from economically disadvantaged households or communities, or those with special needs. We do this primarily by partnering with schools and community organizations who understand the benefits our programs provide and bring us in to run before and after school activities, nighttime or weekend leagues, summer camps, and special excursions, like hiking trips. Our employees are experienced, professional coaches who oversee trained, committed teenage volunteers ranging in age from 13-18. Families pay very little to participate. In our special needs program (Backyard Sports Plus), which is marketed directly to families, approximately 30-35% of participants receive some form of scholarship/financial aid from us to make it affordable.  

Our project serves youth from economically disadvantaged communities in Westchester County, NY by giving them opportunities they would not have otherwise. It’s not just the actual physical experience, but all that goes along with it: enjoying the outdoors, learning about teamwork and sacrifice, mentoring from the coaches, and perhaps most importantly, the opportunity to play alongside peers from other communities. This is a benefit that goes both ways. It is SO essential that young people do not grow up in silos without exposure to people who look, sound, behave, believe, think differently from them. We are bringing them together in the most positive environment possible: sports. And not cutthroat, competitive sports, but “backyard” sports – where fun, teamwork and cooperation are the guiding principles, just like they should be in life. 

In a literal sense, benefits we produce in partnership with schools and community organizations include increased school attendance, better academic performance, and fewer behavior issues. For individual kids, there is confidence, self-esteem, friendship, mentoring, and a wider worldview. For kids with special needs, we provide a simple thing: the opportunity to PLAY with FRIENDS. Their parents tell us this is a joy they believed their kids would never have.  

In the early 2000, when I was in my mid-40’s, I saw the deterioration of the garment industry where I was working in a third-generation family business, and started thinking about how I would extricate myself. I wanted to create a career that meant something to me and contributed something positive to the world. When I thought about how I might earn a living from one of my passions, sports naturally came to mind. I realized that most of my best friendships and experiences, and my character, came from sports. It also occurred to me, having young children myself at that time, that there seemed to be an unfortunate degeneration of the values I prized in “backyard” recreation activities (team over the individual, growth over victory). I said to myself: I can fix this! I struck out to build a profitable, mission-drive company that brought those values back to team play. I failed! Perhaps too many people felt values and profit were mutually exclusive, or maybe I was too focused on the kids who could not afford what I was trying to sell. After years of providing services on scholarship, I officially launched my 501c3, Backyard Sports Cares, in 2010.

I don’t like inequity. I can’t live with the fact that children born into certain circumstances do not have the same opportunities as others. It’s is unacceptable that the cycle of poverty is often repeated not because children lack intelligence, talent or motivation, but simply because they don’t have access to the same resources. Another problem born out of this is that kids from the disadvantaged and affluent communities have very little opportunity to engage with one another, learn about one another, and learn to respect and understand one another. How can we ever address systemic racism, justice, and equality if we do not destroy these silos that our kids grow up in? 

This can and should be addressed in many different ways – sports, in my case, is merely the delivery method I’m positioned to use. So, that’s the angle I attack from. I do it here in Westchester County NY because it’s where I chose to raise my kids and where there also happens to be a truly vast gulf between different communities within the same county. 

I wasn’t, when I started out, but I am now! When I decided to launch Backyard Sports, I knew I didn’t have what it takes to be successful. So, I enrolled in Manhatanville College, and spent 6 years getting my masters. In and out of school, I spent time networking, listening, and learning to understand what the community really needed. I launched my very first program for special needs in partnership with one of my professors. And that’s when I learned what I AM really good at: understanding the needs in my community, scouting out resources (including donors, volunteers, professional coaches and Board members), and connecting them to create impactful programs. My nonprofit, Backyard Sports Cares, now runs 30 programs in the Westchester County with 20 different school/nonprofit partners. We have 250 volunteers (mostly teens) helping serve 3,000 participants. 

My business failed. To some extent, it still bothers me to this day. I look at others who have been able to launch a company, make a lot of money, and seemingly never look back. But I have learned a lot about myself in the last 15 years, and I know that nonprofit is my calling. I was not able to build that big business, but I am able to make a real and lasting difference for kids in my program, and for the communities where they live. And if my program can be scaled up, or replicated in other geographies or industries, that impact will continue to grow. 

10 years ago after an after school soccer program ended, I was waiting with two boys, cousins, whose ride home was late. They took out a ball they had made out of layers of masking tape and began kicking it around. I admired them for a moment, remembering making a ball like that when I was a kid, and pleased that they were still playing soccer and practicing their skills after the official session had ended. 

But when I got a closer look, I realized it was not a ball of tape they had made for fun, but an ancient soccer ball being held together by tape. In a world where my kids’ peers would get a new ball every few months, these boys had been trying to preserve this one, a gift from grandma, for five years. I asked if they would trade me for one of my soccer balls from practice, and they agreed, excited I would fall for such a silly deal. But their ball is much more valuable. 10 years later it sits in my office as a reminder that every child has potential, and to change lives, we need only provide the tools.

What makes our model unique is the fact that we use peer coaches, thus "blending zip codes" and using play, rather than just adult-child mentoring, to build skills, relationships and confidence.