By Mena Mirhom, MD, FAPA Chief Wellbeing Officer, Athletes for Hope
Twenty years ago, a group of the world’s greatest athletes asked a seemingly simple question: what if winning was not just about the scoreboard?
In 2006, Muhammad Ali, Andre Agassi, Mia Hamm, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Alonzo Mourning, Warrick Dunn, and Jeff Gordon founded Athletes for Hope because they understood a fundamental reality in the athlete world. Athletes hold a platform that most people will never have, and that platform carries a responsibility that outlasts any championship.
Their vision was to educate, encourage, and empower athletes to find their philanthropic passions and channel them toward genuine, sustained community impact. Two decades later, AFH has educated more than generations of athletes through its Causeway workshops and positively impacted thousands of lives. It is now the largest athlete-led sports nonprofit in the world.
As we approach our 20th Anniversary Celebration this November at American University in Washington, D.C., I find myself looking to New York, and specifically my New York Knicks, as a living case study in what service, done right, looks like.
Service Is a Decision Made Before the Season Starts
Research on prosocial behavior consistently shows that meaningful, lasting service is not reactive. It is a posture that is sustained through decision-making. A way of orienting yourself toward the world that precedes any single moment of need.
Jalen Brunson is someone who understood this early and I got to learn this from him up close in our conversations. Long before he became the face of the Knicks’ resurgence and the team’s first captain since 2018, Brunson had already built the Second Round Foundation around a clear mission: advocacy, opportunity, and impact for young people through academics, sports, and outreach. When he received the NBA Cares Bob Lanier Community Assist Award for December 2024, it was not for a one-time gesture. It was recognition of a sustained ecosystem of giving: co-hosting Family Dinner and Game Night events for nearly 500 DREAM Charter School students and their families, purchasing 250 winter coats for students at campuses in East Harlem and the Bronx, and partnering with single mothers from Covenant House to provide holiday shopping experiences.
“The greatest gift the game has given me has been the ability to give back to those in need,” Brunson said upon receiving the award.
Those are not the words of someone performing generosity for the cameras. That is someone who decided, early and deliberately, who he wanted to be.
Scale Your Commitment the Way You Scale Your Game
One of the most underappreciated dimensions of athlete philanthropy that AFH has worked to cultivate for 20 years, is the willingness to scale personal commitment rather than simply write a check and walk away.
Karl-Anthony Towns has operationalized this principle in a way that is worth examining carefully. In 2024, he pledged $1 million to help break ground on a youth sports facility in the Dominican Republic. That alone would have been significant. But Towns did not stop there. Ahead of the current season, he traveled to the Dominican Republic and met personally with President Luis Abinader to fundraise an additional $2 million in contributions toward the facility. At the same time, he ran a digital coat drive this winter, donating 500 coats in partnership with Operation Warm and an additional 162 coats through Target, supporting families across New York City.
For these efforts, Towns was named the NBA Cares Bob Lanier Community Assist Award winner for February 2026. The NBA and NBPA Foundation donated $20,000 to the Dominican Women’s Development Center in his honor — an organization that provides daycare for mothers and children and mental health and healthcare support for new mothers and their families.
“Giving back to the community is very important to me,” Towns said. “Partnering with the Dominican Women’s Development Center in New York City will provide daycare for the mothers and kids as well as mental health and healthcare support to new moms and their children.”
That is the model AFH has always pointed toward. Not philanthropy as a transaction, but as a long-term relationship between an athlete and a cause.
Service Honors the People Who Made the Platform Possible
One of the deepest principles of service that is found in a variety of cultures, faith traditions, and the most enduring institutions, is that we serve not only our contemporaries but also the memory of those who came before us.
Towns demonstrated this when he played a central role in the 2025–2026 NBA/NBPA Pioneer’s Campaign, honoring the first Black NBA players, including former New York Knick Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton. Towns contributed digital storytelling content highlighting the legacy of those pioneers and participated in a meet-and-greet with a recipient of the Knicks’ Sweetwater Clifton City Spirit Award.
This is intergenerational service. Sweetwater Clifton broke through barriers not for recognition, but because the moment demanded courage and the game demanded presence. For a current Knick to use his platform to amplify that story is an acknowledgment that none of us built this alone. Gratitude, expressed through action, is one of the most underutilized tools in leadership psychology. Research consistently links it to sustained prosocial behavior, stronger team cohesion, and greater long-term wellbeing — for both the giver and the recipient.
Community is a System of Care.
One of AFH’s core insights over 20 years is that athletes are most effective when they move from visibility to infrastructure. Anyone can show up for a photo. Far fewer are willing to build something that outlasts the moment.
Brunson’s Second Round Foundation reflects this kind of systems-level thinking. Beyond holiday giving, the Foundation committed $328,000 to DREAM’s Scratch Food Program in March 2025, an investment designed to ensure that students at DREAM Charter Schools have consistent access to fresh, nutritious, scratch-made meals. The logic was not charity for its own sake. It was a recognition that food security is a precondition for learning, athletic development, and long-term health. The Foundation has also established the Jalen Brunson Patriot Wellness Initiative at Stevenson High School, pledging $300,000 to provide resources to more than 300 financially under-resourced students and their families, covering physical wellness, mental health, nutrition, and access to essentials.
That is a community care system built by a basketball player who understands that the platform he has been given is bigger than points per game.
As someone who works at the intersection of athlete performance and mental health, I see the downstream effects of this kind of investment. When young people feel seen, supported, and fed, the neurobiological conditions for learning and resilience are actually present. Service at this level is not separate from performance science. It is performance science applied to the community around the athlete.
What the Next 20 Years Require
As we celebrate AFH’s 20th Anniversary this November, the Knicks remind us that the principles our founders built this organization around in 2006 are not abstract ideals. They are lived, practiced, and modeled every season by athletes who choose to use their platforms for something larger than themselves.
The question AFH has always asked is not whether athletes can make a difference. That question has been answered, comprehensively, by two decades of evidence. The question is how. How do we educate athletes who are new to philanthropy? How do we connect them to causes that align genuinely with their values? How do we build the infrastructure that transforms a single act of generosity into something durable?
The AFH Athlete Leadership Council, now led by Stephen Curry, Gabby Thomas, Katie Ledecky, Nathan Chen, and Elena Delle Donne, carries the founders’ vision into the next generation. And across the NBA, the NFL, the WNBA, and the Olympic movement, athletes are proving what Muhammad Ali, Mia Hamm, Andre Agassi, and their fellow founders understood from the very beginning.
The greatest play you will ever make is the one that outlasts the game.
Athletes for Hope’s 20th Anniversary Celebration takes place on Saturday, November 14, 2026 at The Alan and Amy Meltzer Center for Athletic Performance, American University, Washington, D.C. To learn more or get involved, visit athletesforhope.org.
Dr. Mena Mirhom, MD, FAPA is a Columbia-trained, Sports and Performance psychiatrist and Chief Wellbeing Officer at Athletes for Hope.