2019 has been a milestone year for Advocacy for Fairness in Sports! After over 3 years as a predominately solo enterprise, Advocacy for Fairness in Sports incorporated as a nonprofit in April of this year, receiving 501(c)(3) status by the IRS in August, retroactive to our incorporation date.
Sheilla has done groundbreaking work in investigating the NFL Concussion Settlement over the past couple of years and especially this year when dangerous appeals threatening to unravel the settlement began appearing on the private and secretive settlement portal, inaccessible to the public. She was relentless in obtaining documents to expose the abuses and has worked tirelessly to support and inform the retired NFL community of issues of vital importance.
As this work continues, she is also undertaking a large scale investigation on NFL Disability abuses and together with other Advocacy for Fairness in Sports reporters strives to keep both the public and retired players informed of recent developments in current litigation as the larger investigation unfolds.
It’s nice to reference “other reporters.” While Derek Helling has contributed to Advocacy for Fairness in Sports for some time now, he’s officially a regular contributor, helping us to greatly increase our coverage of the NCAA and other sports bodies. We’ve also recently welcomed attorney Kelsey Trainor to our reporting staff, as well as Habiba Youssouf, who was instrumental in breaking the real story behind Kamrin Moore’s arrest, “When the Victim Becomes the Accused.”
In addition, we’ve featured informative medical articles by Dr. Randolph Evans and Dr. Girard Gianoli, financial security advice from certified financial fraud examiner David Byrne and players’ perspective from NFL veteran Irv Eatman.
We’re expecting to bring even more highly respected and well-qualified writers on board in 2020.
We’ve also expanded our “resource room” to enable us to stay on top of the latest developments in sports (and related) law with the following:
- Expanded access to PACER federal court documents. (Advocacy for Fairness in Sports is currently tracking over 100 active cases and reporting the most important developments.)
- Expanded tracking of certain State Court cases
- Legal research subscriptions including case law research capabilities
Thousands of the documents we’ve obtained have been made free to the public through our Document Cloud account. None of this is cheap, however. We have assembled the tools and assets of a professional newsroom with a law office on the side! We’ve finally reached the point of being able to very modestly compensate our regular contributors (who wants to be like the NCAA? Ugh!) but our officers work uncompensated on a 100% volunteer basis in order to steer funds where they will accomplish the most. Our goal is ambitious–to continue to grow until we are known as the “ProPublica of Sports Law” harnessing the moral force of investigative journalism that spotlights wrongdoing and invokes accountability and reform.
Let’s do this together. Please consider donating whatever you can spare to help us meet the expenses necessary to do our work.
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