ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando Magic chairman Dan DeVos and his family started implementing a plan about how they could help even before Hurricane Ian crashed ashore days ago.
And then as he watched the footage of the devastation and the destruction of the homes that were ruined and the lives that were taken by one of the worst storms in history, DeVos, his family and the Magic did what they do best.
They opened their hearts — and their wallets.
The DeVos Family Foundation on Friday donated $1 million to assist with Hurricane Ian relief efforts in Central Florida and across the state.
“Everyone was expecting the worst and praying for the best,” DeVos told me Friday evening. “Sadly, though, we expected the worst and got the worst in this case. We all need to pitch in and do what we can do to help the relief effort.”
And what sports franchises and their owners do is they use their wealth, their clout and their fame to help fund the recovery.
We saw it firsthand right here in Orlando in the aftermath of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub six years ago. The Magic and Orlando City quickly stepped up to lead the effort to raise money for the city-sponsored OneOrlando Fund to aid the victims of the tragedy.
Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer picked Magic CEO Alex Martins to lead the effort because Dyer realized the forum that sports teams have when trying to raise money.
“We have a network of teams and leagues in this community and throughout our entire country who stand ready to use the power and forum of sports to help us rebound from this tragic situation,” Martins said then as he spearheaded the campaign that raised more than $30 million for OneOrlando Fund.
It looks like we are seeing the genesis of the same sort collective effort now. Like the DeVos family in Orlando, the Glazer family — owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — donated an initial contribution of $1 million on Thursday to help hurricane victims in southwest Florida. The NFL has since matched the Glazers’ donation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the NBA does the same with the DeVos donation.
“When you talk about perspective — it’s more important how much we give back and take care of people and take care of lives that have been impacted and affected by the hurricane,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said after practice on Friday. “You just want to make sure that we can do as much as possible so they know we care and we are willing to do what’s necessary in order to make sure that people feel that from us.”
If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a bajillion times: there are two things that unify a city like nothing else — tragedy and sports teams. Sports teams bring us together when they are winning and competing for championships. Tragedy brings us together for obvious reasons: Because it is innate human nature to want to help our friends and neighbors and who, through no fault of their own, are having to rebuild their lives.
Maybe someday the Magic will once again bring together the community for a championship run on the basketball floor, but you cannot deny that they are a championship organization on the streets of our community.
The list goes on and on:
— The Orlando Magic Youth Foundation has distributed nearly $30 million to benefit an estimated 2 million at-risk children over the years.
— A donation of $9 million to UCF to start the DeVos Sport Business Management Program and $1.5 million to the UCF Downtown Campus project.
— To celebrate 30 years of ownership in Orlando, the DeVos family is in the midst of distributing 30 grants totaling $3 million to 30 different non-profit organizations.
— Annually, Magic players, coaches and other employees make more than 1,000 community appearances and donate more than 7,000 volunteer hours.
— The DeVos family has contributed more than $529 million to nonprofit causes in the last six years, which, according to Forbes, makes them one of the nation’s top givers to charitable organizations.
This culture of giving back to the community is ingrained in the Magic way and came from late owner Rich DeVos, who said when he bought the organization more than three decades ago: “Don’t call us the owners of the franchise; call us the caretakers of the franchise. The real stakeholders of this team are the fans and the community.”
“Dad believed that and we believe it,” Dan DeVos says of his father. “It’s our responsibility to make sure we do our best to be an asset to the community. We live in West Michigan, but our second home is Orlando. Our heart and soul has been in the Central Florida community for a long time.”
A a longtime Orlandoan, I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the DeVos family.
It’s this spirit of giving in times of trouble that figuratively — and literally — can make us feel like a million bucks.
