Bekah Salwasser, executive vice president of the Red Sox Foundation, which she joined as its executive director in 2018, says the goal of 2023 is similar to 2022: Keep hitting it out of the park.
Last year, the public charity, which is powered through the legions of Fenway Park fans known as “Red Sox Nation,” celebrated its twentieth anniversary.
By the numbers, twenty years of the foundation have resulted in 1,500 scholarships for students entering college; 325 Boston Public Schools students who received support from the “Red Sox Scholars” tutoring and mentoring program; 5,000 grants to nonprofit organizations; support for 30,000 veterans and family members through the “Home Base” program; assistance for more than 20,000 state residents every year at the Dimock Center; and access to clinics, equipment and organized games for coaches and youth softball and baseball players.
Those all fall into three buckets for the foundation: health, education, and recreation. “Red Sox Scholars,” in particular, is a program that has been replicated across Major League Baseball. The program includes a $10,000 scholarship in addition to a mentoring network. “We’re in the process of soliciting a new cohort,” Salwasser said.
The foundation prioritizes three core partners: The Jimmy Fund, which focuses on cancer research and care; the Dimock Center, where Red Sox employees donate food and help with cleanups, and the Home Base program, which holds its largest fundraiser at Fenway Park every year.
“Whatever’s left over after we fund our people, programs, and partners, we’re able to give away to nonprofits that are also working in health, education, and recreation,” she said.
A Cambridge native who graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, Salwasser got her start in the nonprofit world as executive director of the Charlestown Lacrosse and Learning Center. She also played sports professionally in 2003, when she was a player on the Boston Breakers, the women’s soccer team.
She moved to Dorchester ten years ago, and lives there with her husband Zac and their three children. “For me, living in Dorchester is important for my work because it grounds me in the community for whom we dedicate a lot of our resources,” she said.
She and her husband, who came from Los Angeles, both wanted to be in an urban neighborhood. “We really loved the idea of being able to walk to restaurants, walk to commerce, walk to the train station, walk to nature,” she said. “Dorchester is one of those unique neighborhoods that offers all of that.”
Salwasser pointed to Carson Beach, corner stores, and tucked-away restaurants. “People don’t recognize how big Dorchester is,” she said, adding that its proximity to Fenway Park is a plus. “I’m privileged to be just a few miles away.”
She recalls house hunting in multiple neighborhoods. “What ultimately landed us here was the house that we found,” she said, referring to a single-family Colonial home in Uphams Corner, across the street from three-deckers, the iconic Dorchester housing stock.
Salwasser has also worked for the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation, as well as the Celtics themselves as their community relations director. She is also a founding member of the New Commonwealth Racial Equity and Social Justice Fund, the creation of 19 Black and Brown executives who are seeking to eliminate systemic racism in Massachusetts.
“For me, sport has always been a vehicle for success,” she said. Nonprofits that have leveraged sports as a carrot for academic success were always of interest to her.
“I want to pay it forward to as many young people as possible,” she said. “It’s always going to be a part of my world no matter where I live.”
