KBHC Board of Directors

Scott Zagarino

Scott Zagarino, founder of Sports Grants Foundation, is a passionate and determined advocate for all those who need a champion. After discovering his passion for triathlons and a regimen of fierce training In the 80’s he became a member of the Pioneer Electronics Triathlon Team. It was during a particularly painful and long bike ride when he was ready to quit and get a ride home that his enlightenment began. There on the side of the road he stopped. He looked up out of his own pain and self-absorption and was awakened by the sun glistening off of the Pacific Ocean, the good soreness in his legs, the feeling of being in his own body. He was overcome with an emotion he would later come to know as gratitude. This was followed immediately by the question, “Why me?” Why do I get to do all of this when others are suffering? What good comes from that? The faint sound of the bell turned into inquiry as I tried to figure out what to do with the gift. Accept it, deserve it, say thank you? To whom shall I thank?
His road to enlightenment escalated quickly during a trip to Japan finding himself lost in the heart of the city, outside of the Chokokuji Zen temple. He asked one of the monks if he could come inside. Having only tried meditation from what he’d learned in books, and for no more than a few irregular minutes at a time, he was suddenly being directed to a cushion where he was told he would be sitting in silence for 45 minutes if he chose to stay. Sitting still for 45 minutes made the Ironman pale in terms of discomfort, but it was there he was first introduced to the statue of Quan Yin, the very embodiment of the inquiry inside his heart, for she was said to have been able to hear the suffering of the entire world.
Back in California he made his way to the Los Angeles Children's Hospital asking for a way to work with terminally ill kids. He found his way into a ward for children who had contracted a yet unnamed and mysterious virus that was destroying their immune systems (AIDs). He sat down on the edge of the bed of the first kid he saw and struck up a conversation with Jimmy Knowlten, who had gotten sick from a transfusion during a surgery for his Cystic Fibrosis. Soon there was a circle of kids sitting around in chairs and on the floor asking him what life as a triathlete was like.
It took several weeks before his visits were disclosed with great concern to the head of pediatric oncology, Dr. Siegal. To his credit, in addition to signing one of the longest waivers in history, he just needed to be sure Scott understood what he was getting into, as the disease had a 100% mortality rate and he would need to be prepared for each and every one of these children to get worse and die. The time was unknown, but their fates were certain.
He proposed a unique arrangement with his sponsors at Pioneer that would allow Scott to enter smaller races using one of the kid's names in place of my own. If he won or placed in any of these races, he was identified in the newspapers and awards as "Jimmy Knowlten" or “Marianna Gonzales”. The day Jimmy died, Scott laid the trophy and the clippings next to his bed, hugged his mom and drove home alone. No one could have known that was the day Sportsgrants actually began, or the circuitous route Scott would take to arrive there, but what started as a spark of inspiration on a bike ride in the 80’s was a faint ringing in his head that has never been able to be un-rung.
First came Athletes for Kids, a larger program that matched athletes with terminally ill children in hospitals in six cities. That program lasted until September of 1992, when the last of the original kids from Scott’s first visit passed away. Then Scott went to work for Mike Milken’s Prostate Cancer Foundation, creating the Athletes for a Cure initiative, and moved from Santa Monica to Hood River, Oregon. To his surprise, he saw first hand how suffering was moving way faster than any foundation ever could. His response to that observation has evolved slowly, but it became the genesis of the Sportsgrants Foundation.
Today Sportsgrants, with a staff of three (one of them his long-suffering wife), has managed in three short years to raise $4.2 million for charity, and has delivered 90% of that directly to programs and services, when the national standard in event fundraising is a staggeringly inefficient $1.31 spent for very $1.00 raised. His vision of Sportsgrants is to make personal fundraising personal again. His vision is of a world where large organizations no longer waste funds on fundraising efforts, but deal with global issues and the “big picture”, while we empower an army of grassroots fundraisers to solve today’s problems today. Imagine a world where the small donor and fundraiser are empowered to see effective results in other people’s lives through their efforts, rather than as one line in a twenty page annual report? Imagine that global bell? Sportsgrants has created a new choice for grassroots fundraisers and their donors. Now, anyone who wants to raise money for the people and causes they believe in by participating in an activity can effectively do so.