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On Wednesday, it was announced that 10 Indiana men's basketball players, along with one Indiana women's basketball player, would be partnering with Hoosier For Good which is the NIL collective that partners with charitable Indiana organizations with Indiana University student-athletes.
With the announcement, Hoosiers For Good is up to 25 total student athletes that have partnered with them with 12 of 13 scholarship players on the men's basketball included.
Executive Director of Hoosiers For Good Tyler Harris took time and joined Indiana Sports Beat Radio with Jim Coyle powered by TheHoosier.com to discuss the additions, matching the student athletes with certain organizations, raising awareness, and more.
When Hoosiers For good started this past April, it was originally thought that there would be two classes of student athletes each year with one in the spring and the other in fall. However, it was a nice surprise that a class, especially of this caliber, was announced in the summer.
“Yeah you know it was certainly sooner than expected," said Tyler Harris. "When we initially launched our first class we thought having a spring and fall class would make sense and really that’s still the plan. We thought it would be neat to do something this summer.”
The 10 Indiana men's basketball players that were announced this past Wednesday included Malik Reneau, Miller Kopp, CJ Gunn, Kaleb Banks, Logan Duncomb, Jordan Geronimo, Tamar Bates, Xavier Johnson, Jalen Hood-Schifino, and Trey Galloway. They joined Trayce Jackson-Davis and Race Thompson as the 12 of 13 scholarship players that are associated with Hoosiers For Good.
The other student athlete that was announced as part of this recent class was Indiana women's basketball player Sydney Parish, who recently transferred in from Oregon and was the 2020 Miss Basketball in the state of Indiana. She will be working with Riley Children's Foundation.
”One of the best components of Sydney is how great of person she is," said Harris. She’s just a great person, really cares about all the important things."
"One thing with Sydney is that she has an unbelievable social media platform. I think she is pretty close to 200,000 TikTok followers, got nearly 60,000 Instagram followers and so she is really going to be able to raise awareness through her platform and exposes everyone to all the great work Riley does.”
When partnering with Hoosiers For Good, student athletes are divided up and parted with multiple different charitable organizations. Certain athletes request certain charities to work with whereas the others are paired based with their platform along with multiple others factors.
“The first things I look at is one, the platform that each student athlete has and then the charity’s platform and see where we can pair the student athlete with them to make that platform for the charity grow," Harris said. "I certainly ask the student athletes where their passion is. We try to add value and raise awareness and while they can do that with their platform, it just makes it a lot better, easier is they are supper passionate about that specific charity."
“So Trey Galloway for example, he picked Little Star. He’s got a real personal connection to autism though his family so he is supper passionate, he requested that. Sydney certainly requested Riley and wanted to do something for the kids."
When NIL became a thing, Hoosiers For Good was really one of the firsts of it's kind which really opens up the possibility of other schools from other areas continuing this trend of having an NIL collective that compensates the student athlete while also contributing to great causes.
"I've talked to about 20 individuals that are associated with a school, loosely like we are, in their respective area asking for our forms (Form 990-N) and talking them through the process so it would not surprise me is see 15-20 organizations similar to ours pop up around the country soon,” said Harris.
“The one thing I always like to remind people is we are only four and half months old. We’re still new, we are still getting our feet wet. I think as we continue to get a handle on all the nuances in this space, its only going to be better, it’s only going to benefit the student athletes even more.”
Even if you are not supporter of NIL, Hoosiers For Good is still a great cause and raises so much awareness while also boosting a charity's overall platform on a greater scale, something that most of us can certainly be supportive of.
“The one thing I love about Hoosiers For Good is that it really caters to any preference," Harris said. "A donor could absolutely hate NIL but through Hoosiers For Good it’s certainly a palatable way to support NIL cause you are exposing these young people to just really important things and allowing their platform to really raise awareness to those important causes.”
Fans looking to donate to the collective can follow this link.
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