MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, MN – The Minnesota Twins, a catalyst for change in the community for more than 60 years, today announced that Major League Baseball has selected the Minnesota Twins Community Fund’s unique and encompassing approach to adaptive programming as a finalist for the prestigious Allan H. Selig Award for Philanthropic Excellence. MLB is hosting an online fan vote from today (Monday, October 7) through Friday, October 18 at mlbtogether.com/selig to help determine this year’s most distinguished club social impact program.
The Twins Community Fund’s innovative and industry-leading approach to adaptive youth sports programming is the both the culmination and next step of decades of supporting young athletes with disabilities through adaptive baseball and softball opportunities. This approach – which is unique across Major League Baseball – involves meeting the individual needs of athletes through partnerships with nonprofits including Deaf Equity, Special Olympics Minnesota, Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute and Nubability. The MTCF, alongside these partners, hosts adaptive baseball and softball clinics tailored to individual communities, allowing athletes of all ages and abilities to learn the fundamentals of the game, experience the fun of the game, and learn life skills including leadership and resilience.
“The Minnesota Twins believe that participation in diamond sports changes lives for the better,” said club President & CEO Dave St. Peter. “Beyond that, every child should have access to play the games they love, without restriction. The Twins Community Fund’s industry-leading adaptive programs are one of the ways we demonstrate our longstanding and ongoing commitment to an inclusive sports landscape across Twins Territory.”
The Allan H. Selig Award for Philanthropic Excellence, formerly known as the Commissioner’s Award for Philanthropic Excellence, was created in 2010 to recognize the charitable and philanthropic efforts of MLB clubs. This is the second consecutive year the Twins have been named a finalist for the Selig Award.
Ball for All: Minnesota Twins Community Fund Adaptive Programs
By meeting athletes where they are, supporting them with individualized instruction and leveraging relationships with nonprofit partners to ensure accessibility, the Twins Community Fund has cultivated a unique, industry-leading approach to adaptive youth sports programming that is changing the game for youth across Twins Territory. Over the past several years, these efforts to level the playing field have reached new heights via expanding partnerships, adding new events and increasing donations to reach more young people with a variety of disabilities.
Alongside the Twins’ team of trained and certified youth instructors, each adaptive clinic is intentionally staffed so that athletes are surrounded by instructors and athletes who play like them, learn like them and move like them; this results in clinics that meet the same standards as any Twins Community Fund program, regardless of the setting. For example, the MTCF’s partnership with Deaf Equity has resulted in clinics for deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing kids, with each station staffed by a Twins instructor and a sign language interpreter. The partnership with NubAbility has created camp opportunities in both Minnesota and Florida for limb-different kids staffed by limb-different athletes. These clinics also feature opportunities for Twins players, coaches and staff to volunteer and enhance the experience.
In addition to clinics, the Twins Community Fund has also invested in equipment and safe places for kids across Twins Territory to play baseball and softball. In 2010, the club secured grant funding for the first softball field in Minnesota dedicated to competitive wheelchair play; since then, 14 Miracle League fields across Minnesota have been either constructed or are in the works to improve access for the more than 7,000 kids with physical disabilities across the state. In 2023 alone, the Twins and the MTCF provided funding for two new Miracle League fields in Minnesota and worked with six additional nonprofit partners across Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa to donate 57 sport wheelchairs.
The Twins Community Fund was also recognized as a 2024 Project Play Champion by the globally-renowned Aspen Institute for Sports & Society Program, for the strides made in the space of adaptive programming; the honor further emphasized the MTCF’s commitment to innovative partnerships, commitment to quality coaching, exposure to new sports and increasing opportunities for underrepresented youth across Twins Territory, from the Upper Midwest to Florida.
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