Track Your Glove was created to show donors the impact of their donation. The program tracks exactly where the glove the donor grew up playing was shipped to, by using a barcode system. During 2014, to fundraise for Pitch In For Baseball’s Executive Director’s 50th birthday, I created the campaign “50 for 50”. The goal was to donate equipment to every state in the United States within the year. Donors were guaranteed to have a contribution to a local youth baseball league near them.

Promotional Materials

Website and Social Media Banner

CMS  Website  Experience  Using:  Squarespace  WordPress  Wix  Adobe  Dreamweaver    

Blogs

Events - Coordinated the distribution event for 56 Philadelphia high school baseball and softball teams. - Managed equipment collections at the annual Philadelphia Phillies Baseball for Tomorrow event. - Set up the information and equipment collection station in Omaha, NE for the Triple Crown Slumpbuster tournament that is held in conjunction with the College World Series. - Spoke at Major League Baseball's Reviving Baseball in Inner-cities (RBI) conference.

Warehouse Improvements - Created the equipment locker for when donors want to drop-off equipment when staff members are not present. - Redesigned the layout of the entire warehouse and built pallet racking to better maximize the limited space. - Improved how equipment is stored by utilizing netting for equipment like helmets.

Donor Experience - Built the signature board where equipment donors can autograph a chalkboard after they drop-off and pose for a picture for the organization's social media sites. - Developed the Track Your Glove program where glove donors are informed exactly where their donation is shipped.  

Internship Program - Developed the internship program by recruiting more than 15 interns, which led to over 3,000 volunteer hours. - Trained interns on equipment safety and how to properly put away donations, which led to the organization being more productive and efficient.

Pitch In For Baseball was once called the "Red Cross of Baseball". Throughout my time as Program Director, I was responsible for replacing the equipment that was lost in natural disasters. In many circumstances the disaster struck during the baseball season, which led to the needed equipment to arrive within a short time frame. When tornados struck the Midwest in areas like Henryville, Indiana; Joplin, Missouri; and Moore, Oklahoma, the much needed equipment arrived within two weeks of the disaster. Because the season was not lost, the children could regain some sense of normalcy in their lives. Hurricanes that struck the East Coast caused thousands of dollars in damages to Little Leagues were in risk of losing their seasons. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, 23 leagues were without all of their equipment. A donation of that size required it to be delivered with a box truck. After driving the truck full of equipment, I delivered 10,000 pieces of equipment, ensuring that all their seasons would take place and no child's season would need to be cancelled because they did not have equipment.

In 2012 the Uganda Little League made history by becoming the first team from Africa to ever qualify for the Little League World Series. They qualified playing with equipment donated by Pitch In For Baseball. Three months after the LLWS, I organized the donation sent to Uganda to grow the sport throughout the entire country. The donation was shipped in a 20-foot sea container that consisted of over 6,000 pieces of equipment.  

Donation to the Uganda Little League

1.     Overall Evaluation:  Tom is a strong performer.  He has taken complete ownership of the operations side of the organization, including improvements in the organization and shipping of donated equipment.  Tom has also added significantly to the content and appearance of important communications like the quarterly newsletter.  His creativity is a real asset to the organization.   2.     Personal Contributions to the Organization:  a.     Tom has taken a continuous improvement mentality to the warehouse operations.  He is constantly challenging the status quo to achieve the maximum efficiency of the physical layout.    b.     Tom initiated our intern program.  This increase in manpower will enable the organization to take on additional mission critical work while not increasing our budget.  Tom placed the classified, attended the Temple Career Day event and interviewed, trained and supervised the interns. c.     Tom has upgraded and expanded our Social Media presence.  Through creative entries, videos and pictures he has kept our Facebook and Twitter sites relevant and consistently expanded our followers to these medium.   3.     Strengths: a.     Tom is willing and in fact excited to take on new challenges.   His catch phrase is “I’ve got this” and he means it.  Tom jumps into any situation with a positive and infectious attitude that helps attract others to our mission and our organization. b.     He is a creative problem solver.  Recently he identified a need to have drop off capability to meet the needs of equipment donors who are dropping off during non-business hours.  Tom shopped for and assembled a portable shed to wheel out on an as needed basis.  We used the shed the first two weekends we had it on hand. c. Tom adds value with his vast creativity. Tom has upgraded the appearance of our newsletter, is working on an updated version of our development video. His stamp of creativity and professionalism adds greatly to our public image.

4.  Weaknesses: None 5.  Opportunities for Improvement: a. Tom has willingly taken on anything I have thrown his way. In this coming year, I expect him to develop his own ideas further and to bring more things to me based on his experience and instincts for growing the organization. b. Tom can take a more holistic view on the planning and implementation of new initiatives. One example of this is our planned outreach to “local” high school coaches to encourage them to become a more active part of our equipment donation program. I would ideally like to see Tom lay out his ideas in terms of not just how to initiate a project but how to implement all aspects of the program including measurement of success. c. Managing and developing people. Tom will have the opportunity to train and delegate in the coming year. With the expansion of our intern program, Tom will have to shift more of his focus to maximizing the time and talents of new staff vs. doing everything on his “to do list” by himself. d. Pitch In For Baseball has not had great success at getting back photos/letters from recipient programs. Tom will be taking on the challenge on increasing the response to this important

6. Development opportunity: a. Tom has a very bright future. The overall challenge with Tom is to help lay out a career development plan so that Tom can continue to grow professionally and see himself staying with Pitch In For Baseball. The plan to help accomplish this will involve exposing Tom to a greater array of the non-profit world. Beyond the projects that Tom is currently involved in, he will take a more active role in the fundraising planning and implementation to gain experience in various elements of this critical component of the non-profit world. b. Tom will be given the chance to travel and network on behalf of the organization to gain further exposure as a key player within the organization and also to expand his circle of contacts. c. Tom’s role as the coordinator of the interns will give him valuable experience in the aspect of managing and developing people. Completed by: David Rhode Executive Director Pitch In For Baseball