In 2003, Christy Keswick (B’97) drove a U-Haul from western Massachusetts to Boston. In the again of the field truck have been 500 Spalding basketballs.
Per week prior, Keswick had trekked to Spalding’s then headquarters armed with only a PowerPoint presentation. She left together with her first donation pledge. The solely factor left was to choose up and retailer a truckload of basketballs, all inside per week.
Keswick is the co-founder and president of Good Sports. The nonprofit group collects and donates new sports activities tools for underprivileged youth round the U.S.
More than twenty years since that cross-state drive, Good Sports has donated to greater than 10 million kids throughout the nation.
“Good Sports is trying to break down barriers to access for kids to play youth sports and to get involved in physical activity,” Keswick stated. “We know that sports have an impact on social, emotional, physical, mental and academic [well-being]. We can’t start saying certain kids have access to something like that while certain kids don’t. That is what drives us as an organization.”
The Roots of Good Sports
Keswick grew up in a small city in Connecticut and cherished sports activities from an early age. When she was somewhat woman, she joined her city’s new youth soccer league. She was the solely woman on her workforce and felt misplaced, however her father saved encouraging her.
“Soccer ended up being a sport that I gravitated toward. It was always a safe place to be,” she stated. “Sports was something I did every day, spent a lot of time on courts and fields. I learned a ton from sports in terms of teamwork and just life skills.”
She took her love for sports activities together with her to the Hilltop.
Keswick cheered on her buddies enjoying for Georgetown’s basketball, soccer and soccer groups. She additionally coached a Little League workforce together with her finest good friend and stayed lively by operating round the hilly streets of the Georgetown neighborhood.
In the classroom, Keswick valued her liberal arts training. She took to coronary heart the Jesuit worth of cura personalis and the significance of creating each a part of herself.
“It’s not one thing that makes you successful. It’s many things and experiences over time that make you successful,” she stated.
Keswick studied finance and advertising and marketing in the McDonough School of Business, the place she developed the enterprise acumen she would later use as a nonprofit founder. During her junior 12 months, she interned with Ernst & Young and its Entrepreneur of the Year program. She discovered about what it takes to construct a start-up firm, classes she would use a number of years later as the co-founder of Good Sports.
Launching a Nonprofit Start-Up
After graduating from Georgetown, Keswick labored in administration consulting in Boston. On her first day of labor, Keswick met her colleague Melissa Harper, who would grow to be a very good good friend and the co-founder and CEO of Good Sports.
Keswick cherished to analysis, create methods and resolve issues for her purchasers. But she additionally wished to implement the methods she was creating and construct one thing herself, not hop between tasks each few months. She wished to do one thing extra significant, she stated.
During a scuba diving journey with Harper in Key West, Florida, the two buddies dreamed about constructing a enterprise collectively. It was the first play in what would ultimately grow to be a sport plan for Good Sports.
Keswick and Harper wished to channel their love for sports activities right into a enterprise in the Boston space. Through analysis, they acknowledged that participation in youth sports activities had been declining, and plenty of kids have been being priced out of sports activities.
The two additionally realized that Massachusetts was a hub for sports activities tools firms and manufacturing, together with corporations resembling New Balance, Reebok, Puma and, at the time, Spalding.
“If we could build a model where these companies could provide their excess equipment they weren’t selling, maybe we could redistribute it to organizations that need it and help solve this problem,” Keswick.
In 2003, Keswick and Harper based Good Sports and put their enterprise mannequin to the take a look at. Back then, entrepreneurship was not as widespread a path as it’s in the present day, Keswick stated. Quitting their consulting jobs was an enormous threat.
“You can’t build a business on the side, but you quickly learn that no one wants to give you any money to do it until you prove the business model,” Keswick stated. “As scary because it was, it felt so energizing to have the ability to take into consideration constructing one thing by yourself.
“If you’re going to build a nonprofit, you’ve got to be passionate about the mission. We just felt really good about what we might be able to build together if we could get this right. That kept us going.”
Making Sports Available for All Kids
Today, Good Sports has donated virtually $130 million value of sports activities tools to high-need communities in the U.S.
When Good Sports obtained its first donation, Keswick and Harper had no thought the place to retailer 500 basketballs. They stuffed their automobiles, flats, buddies’ houses, wherever they may discover till they may determine communities that want sports activities tools.
Now, the nonprofit operates a forty five,000-square-foot warehouse to type donations. The group has additionally grown to 30 full-time staff.
As president, Keswick leads the group’s technique, enterprise growth and advertising and marketing. Over the final twenty years, Keswick has fashioned partnerships with outstanding manufacturers like Gatorade, Under Armour and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Good Sports additionally usually collaborates with skilled athletes resembling Steph Curry and Paige Bueckers.
In November, the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Alliance awarded Keswick with the 2025 GEA Entrepreneurial Excellence Award for Best of Social Impact. Keswick stated she was proud to be awarded by her alma mater and to see Georgetown recognizing social affect entrepreneurship.
“I think recognizing that there are people who are doing this for a different kind of return and a different kind of impact, that made me proud as a Georgetown alum that they’re thinking in that way,” she stated. “It was a pretty incredible experience.”
In trying forward, Keswick is concentrated on positioning Good Sports to thrive nicely into the future, past her management.
“We have built the foundation of a company that is going to thrive beyond the founders. That is something that we care deeply about and that we are focused on as an organization,” she stated. “There’s more to do here, and the work we are doing is critically important.”
For Hoyas trying to get into entrepreneurship, Keswick recommends leaning on others, particularly Georgetown alumni, and having persistence whereas constructing a powerful enterprise basis.
“There has to be some unmet demand, some unmet need that makes this make sense. Or, you need to figure out how to be a disruptor around something you can do better,” she stated. “If you can identify that, then you can be creative about how to approach it. Just know that you’re never going to be able to do this alone. Building a business is definitely a team sport.”