Organizational Overview City of Basketball Love
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Philly Basketball 24 • 7 • 365 610.937.0353 [email protected] www.cityofbasketballlove.com ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW CITY OF BASKETBALL LOVE Last Updated: June 2, 2021 CONTENTS OVERVIEW 3 Our Story 4 CoBL 3.0 5 Mission 5 Vision 6 Women’s Coverage 7 Why Now? NON-PROFIT OPERATIONS CoBL Board of Directors 8 Fundraising Plan 11 Expenditures 12 Budget Breakdown 13 Contents • 02 OUR STORY ...SO FAR Co-founders Josh Verlin and Andy Edwards started CoBL in 2012 as a website designed to cover all things basketball in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. Two young writers who loved the college game, Verlin and Edwards initially intended the site — built on a custom-yet-simple WordPress template — to cover everything from preps through pros, but quickly narrowed in on the high school and college scene. The initial staff consisted of more than a dozen college students and recent college graduates, all of whom were learning on the job everywhere from offseason events to the NCAA Tournament; CoBL’s first year of operation saw its writers travel across the country to cover La Salle in the Sweet 16. At first, the organization focused its coverage on the ‘City 6’ and the area’s prep powerhouses, but by the second year of operation the site covered Division II and Division III hoops as well as more thorough coverage of the region’s quality high school scene. By 2014, they’d run their first CoBL College Exposure Camp, and the following year they began running multiple camps each spring and fall, as well as the inaugural CoBL PA/NJ Shootout, which ran annually from 2014-2018. In 2015, CoBL relaunched its website on the SportsNgin (now NBC SportsEngine) platform, with improved player profiles, high school standings, stat pages, and more. It continued on that course until Oct. 2018, the CoBL staff running multiple successful camps and generating thousands of stories, but the organization wasn’t able to sustain a successful business model, and so in Oct. 2018 the site closed down, though not permanently. CoBL reopened the following summer, operating in a reduced capacity from Aug. 2019 until April 2021, when Verlin had the opportunity to make a necessary pivot in how CoBL operates to attempt to rebuild the organization, utilizing the community and its support of local hoops to grow bigger and better than before. Our Story • 03 CoBL 3.0 As of June 2021, CoBL has filed its Articles of Incorporation with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to become a nonprofit corporation, and an IRS Form 1023 to seek tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) charity, which it expects to receive in late 2021 or early 2022. We’re relaunching with a new vision and a renewed sense of purpose: to reflect the history and passion for the sport of basketball in the greater Philadelphia region, with a community-supported organization that provides high-quality journalism and exposure for the area’s amateur basketball scene. With our new board of directors in place, CoBL will make a strong push to raise funds, form corporate partnerships, grow its group of writers and editors, and expand the site to cover a wider radius than ever before, including South Jersey, Delaware, the Lehigh Valley and the Harrisburg/ Lancaster area, as well as expanding into women’s coverage for the first time. We will also form an advisory board of high school and college coaches to help us garner feedback from the community we cover, and ensure our coverage is fair, impartial, and of the highest quality. CoBL 3.0 • 04 MISSION City of Basketball Love (CoBL) exists to provide high-quality coverage of amateur basketball in and around Philadelphia. To help accomplish this goal, CoBL is also devoted to furthering the development of young journalists, training the next generation of sportswriters to contribute alongside its professional staff. VISION CoBL’s will be the go-to source for boy’s and girl’s high school and men’s and women’s collegiate basketball coaches, players and fans in the Delaware Valley and surrounding region. Its writers will maintain a website with news, scores, stats and player profiles, running camps and events year-round. Mission & Vision • 05 WOMEN’S COVERAGE Up until the summer of 2021, CoBL had covered only the boys and men’s side of the Philadelphia basketball landscape. Getting into the girls’ and women’s side was something we had wanted to do over time, but only in a significant and comprehensive manner. We wanted to make sure we had the resources to give the women the coverage they deserved. Now, that time has come. Starting July 1, CoBL will be launching girls’ and women’s coverage for the first time. We realize this is long overdue, and all we can do is try to make up for lost time. CoBL has retained former Philadelphia Inquirer writer and current Rowan University professor Kate Harman to spearhead our women’s coverage and has already added several women’s hoops writers to the organization, with more to come. As this coverage grows and our fundraising grows, we pledge to grow our women’s coverage until it equals our men’s coverage in scope and scale. Women’s Coverage • 06 WHY NOW? The Philadelphia basketball community is one of the oldest and most storied in the sport. This region has produced some of the game’s all-time greats, from Wilt Chamberlain to Kobe Bryant, with the history of Philly hoops dominance dating back to the early days of the 20th century. The local college teams are rich with talent, from Villanova’s recent pair of national championships and recent NCAA trips by each of the other five Division I programs in the city, along with impressive small-college programs at the Division II, Division III and junior college levels. Around the region, Philadelphia’s public and private high schools regularly challenge for state championships, produce dozens of college prospects each year, and often have at least a handful of teams considered amongst the best not just in the Northeast but the entire United States. The Philadelphia Catholic League semifinals and championships draw nearly 9,000 fans to a sold-out Palestra, and games around the region regularly see thousands of fans in the seats to see their favorite players or support their local programs. However, the state of basketball coverage in the region does not match the quality and quantity of teams and fans in the region. The state of local newspapers, as is the case with newspapers around the country, is unfortunately getting worse and worse, and sports coverage has borne a disproportionally large share of those cuts. The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t have any full-time high school sports staff anymore, and several other regional papers have pulled back on their local hoops coverage. If the Philadelphia basketball community wants a hub to turn to for stats, standings, news, analysis and more, it has to come together to support an organization that’s there for that precise purpose. That makes this the perfect time for CoBL to make its comeback. It’s also why it makes sense for us to become a non-profit organization. As a non-profit organization, we’re showing that we’re fully devoted to our purpose to cover and support the local basketball community. Our Board of Directors consists of a group of individuals for whom basketball has been a major influence in their life and their career, and who understand the importance of having an organization like CoBL existing in Philadelphia. This move allows CoBL’s supporters and those in the basketball community who want to see coverage return to its peak levels have a more direct say in where their support goes, to make us more accountable to the community and better serve our mission and see our vision come to life. Why Now • 07 OF DIRECTORS BOARD JOSH VERLIN PRESIDENT One of CoBL’s co-founders, Josh has been running the organization since its inception. A graduate of Temple University with a degree in broadcast journalism, he made CoBL his full-time job after leaving Temple’s Beasley School of Law in early 2013, developing it into the area’s go-to source for high school and college basketball news and information. Since then, he’s covered thousands of games and events while mentoring well over 100 high school and college students who have contributed to CoBL over the years. He currently lives in East Falls with his wife, Aurora, and their two cats. DICK JERARDI SECRETARY One of the most respected writers in college hoops, ‘DJ’ spent more than 30 years with the Philadelphia Daily News, covering the Big 5 as well as horse racing, some professional sports, a decade of Penn State football, the Olympics, and everything in between. In his career, he’s covered more than two dozen Final Fours, more than 30 Kentucky Derbys, over a thousand local hoops games and a few professional championships along the way. A native of Baltimore, Dick now lives in Bucks County. SHELLEY VERLIN TREASURER A graduate of Emory University with a degree in accounting, Shelley has spent her career in a variety of settings, from corporate accounting to managing the books at several small businesses. She’s been with CoBL since its inception, keeping the organization’s financial matters in order as well as managing logistics and apparel and other behind-the-scenes tasks. A native of Havertown, she currently lives in Penn Valley with her husband, Mark. CoBL Board of Directors • 08 DIRECTORS-AT-LARGE ANDY EDWARDS One of CoBL’s co-founders and former staff writer, Andy has served as director of athletic communications at Ursinus College since 2015, overseeing all aspects of publicity and media relations for the college’s 25 varsity athletic programs.