Charities the Brotherhood Supports

A collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches, Coaches vs. Cancer has raised more than $70 million for cancer research and awareness. Kenny Dennard, a 30+ year testicular cancer survivor, donates a portion of his business profits to the program.

The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is the institutional home of Jim Suddath's current ministry. As Bible Teacher and Chaplain at McCallie - one of the most academically distinguished college-preparatory schools in the American South - Suddath has spent more than a decade reaching the spiritual lives of McCallie students. His four-decade ministry career has been built on Christian education and pastoral care; the McCallie chaplaincy is the institutional expression of that ministry calling. For a Brotherhood member whose entire post-Duke career has been spent in Christian ministry and chaplaincy and Bible teaching, the natural Brotherhood charity is the school that hosts his work and trains the young men he serves.

The Johns Hopkins Brain Tumor Center is the institutional home of Dr. Jon Weingart's clinical neurosurgical practice. As Professor of Neurological Surgery, Professor of Oncology, and Director of the Neurosurgical Operating Room at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Weingart has spent more than three decades operating on patients with primary brain tumors, glioblastomas, meningiomas, schwannomas, and the most complicated central nervous system cases that get referred to Hopkins from around the world. The Brain Tumor Center is the patient-care institution his career has built and continues to advance. For a Brotherhood member whose Duke School of Medicine training, Hopkins neurosurgery residency, and three-decade Hopkins faculty career have produced the kind of clinical impact that touches thousands of brain tumor patients, the natural Brotherhood charity is the patient-care center where his work happens.

Mac Dyke's medical career was launched at the Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his MD in 1987 with election to Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society reserved for the top decile of each medical school class. The four-year Duke School of Medicine experience, followed by his Trinity College undergraduate degree from Duke in 1984, are the educational foundation that produced his subsequent VCU surgery residency, his Harefield Hospital London Evarts Graham Fellowship, his Houston cardiovascular surgery practice, his Sanford Health attending career, his UND Department of Surgery chairmanship, and his inaugural Wadhwani Family Endowed Chair of Translational Research. For a Brotherhood member whose four-year Duke School of Medicine experience produced the credentials and the academic discipline that have defined the rest of his medical career, the natural Brotherhood charity is the institution that trained him.

Dr. Loel Z. Payne has a uniquely deep relationship with the Hospital for Special Surgery, the elite orthopedic specialty hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He completed his one-year fellowship in shoulder surgery and sports medicine at HSS in 1994-95, training alongside the legendary HSS faculty (Russell Warren, Edward Craig, David Altchek) and working with the New York Mets baseball organization during his fellowship year. Twenty-seven years later, in 2022, he returned to HSS as a patient for his own hip replacement with Dr. Alexander McLawhorn. He has published as a co-author on multiple papers in the American Journal of Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy that originated from his HSS years. For a Brotherhood member whose entire orthopedic surgical career rests on the methodology he learned at HSS during his 1994-95 fellowship year, the natural Brotherhood charity is the institution that trained him and that, three decades later, fixed him in turn.

Bill Jackman serves as Chairman-Elect of the University of Nebraska Foundation Board of Directors, the alumni-led foundation that supports scholarships, faculty, and capital projects across the University of Nebraska system. For a Brotherhood member whose transfer back to his home state in 1983 was driven by family obligation - his widowed mother and two younger brothers in Grant, Nebraska needed him near home - the Nebraska Foundation Board service is the natural anchor of his post-business-career philanthropy. Gifts to the Nebraska Foundation support the institution that welcomed Jackman home in 1983 and the broader system that has educated multiple generations of Nebraskans through tuition assistance, athletic support, and academic programming. The Brotherhood, as Bill Jackman has lived it, runs through Duke for one year and then through Lincoln for four decades. His Foundation chair seat is the Brotherhood gesture his own life has prepared him for.

Wheaton Academy is the classical Christian college-preparatory school in West Chicago, Illinois that was founded in 1853 by abolitionists who wanted to start a school that would train their kids to fight the evils of society. Weldon Williams serves on its Board of Trustees and was the parent of an alumnus (Evan Williams, Class of 2015). His son's experience at Wheaton Academy was, in his own framing in the published 2020 Voices on Race and Justice interview, the moment a sixth-grade child finally felt that all of his teachers liked him - the kind of Kingdom Community moment Williams had spent nineteen years preaching about as senior pastor of Triumph Community Church. For a Brotherhood member whose post-Duke path went through Westminster Theological Seminary, the Triumph Community Church pulpit, and the HAVI corporate engineering executive office before arriving on the Wheaton Academy Board, the school where his own son finally felt fully known and accepted is the natural recipient of his time, talent, and treasure. Gifts to The Warrior Fund and the broader Wheaton Academy mission support the financial aid and Kingdom Community programming that allows students of all backgrounds to be fully known and fully accepted at the institution Williams has chosen to serve.

Andy Berndt serves on the Board of Trustees at Davidson College, the liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. Davidson, the alma mater of Stephen Curry and a national academic and athletic institution within a few hours' drive of Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, is the institution Andy Berndt has chosen to invest his governance time in - a fitting Brotherhood gesture from a man whose own career has been built on the intersection of liberal arts thinking and the most consequential American corporations of the past three decades. Gifts to Davidson support a tuition-free promise for families with annual income under a certain threshold, financial aid for all admitted students, and the small-college residential liberal arts education that has produced so many of the leaders Andy Berndt would have read about as a Duke English Literature major.

Dave Colonna has represented the Miami Rescue Mission, the Wynwood-based homelessness services nonprofit, in real estate transactions tied to its Wynwood properties; per CRE-Sources, the proceeds from those sales have been directed to expanding the Mission's services throughout Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The Miami Rescue Mission has operated for more than a century, providing emergency shelter, food, clothing, medical care, and addiction recovery programs to homeless men, women, and children in South Florida. For a Brotherhood member like Dave Colonna - whose three-decade-plus career has been built on the transformation of Wynwood from light-industrial neighborhood to one of the most desirable real estate submarkets in the country - supporting the Mission that has served Wynwood's most vulnerable through all of that transformation is the kind of Brotherhood gesture his own career has prepared him for.

Rey Essex graduated from the American School in London in 1985, the K-12 international school in St. John's Wood that educates the children of American expatriate families stationed in the United Kingdom for diplomatic, military, or corporate reasons. ASL's Annual Fund supports financial aid, faculty development, technology, and the international educational programming that shapes graduates like Rey Essex into the global thinkers they become. For a Duke Brotherhood member whose path from London to Duke to Apple to a Greenville, SC RFID startup is now reaching back to London via the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's, supporting the school where the journey began is a fitting Brotherhood gesture.

Jon Goodman is the founder of millionaireME, a personal finance app designed to help people from all walks of life reduce debt, build emergency savings, and invest toward both short- and long-term financial goals. The premise of millionaireME is to translate the financial coaching that JCG Advisory Partners provides to high-net-worth clients into a mobile tool anyone can use to build long-term financial security on a regular salary. The app's mission — turning users into the millionaires of their own future — is itself the work of supporting financial literacy in the broader population.

Clay Buckley is the founder and President of CauseNetwork, a McLean, Virginia–based fundraising platform that lets consumers route a percentage of their everyday online shopping at over a thousand national brands to more than 150 causes. CauseNetwork's partner organizations include America's VetDogs, the American Parkinson Disease Association, United Cerebral Palsy, the Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer's, the MedEvac Foundation International, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Latino Student Fund, and Special Olympics. Supporting CauseNetwork directly supports the marketplace Clay Buckley built to keep money flowing to the causes that need it.

Founded by Mike Krzyzewski in honor of his mother Emily, the Durham-based Emily K Center supports first-generation, college-bound students from communities historically underrepresented in higher education. For a Brotherhood member like Joe Cook — whose family produced three D-I basketball players across two generations out of a town of fifteen thousand people in central Illinois — the Emily K Center's mission of keeping doors open for the next generation of small-town and first-generation kids is the kind of work that the Cook family's own story validates.

Marty Clark's second career has been built in the addiction recovery and behavioral health industry, where he works as a Recovery Advocate and Business Development professional helping families find treatment. Shatterproof is a national nonprofit dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in America by transforming addiction treatment, advancing federal and state policy, and ending the stigma of addiction — the work Marty's own public story has helped move forward.

Erik Meek was inducted into the Escondido Boys & Girls Club Hall of Fame in June 1995, the week he was drafted by the Houston Rockets. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego serve more than 18,000 youth across San Diego County, providing the same kind of after-school programs, mentoring, and athletic facilities that helped shape the Escondido kid who became a Duke basketball player, a European pro, and eventually a CIF championship-winning coach in the gym where he started.

Perry's two highest-altitude expeditions to Mount Everest (2019 and 2022) and his 2021 expedition to install the Western Hemisphere's highest weather station on Tupungato were all supported by the National Geographic Society and Rolex's Perpetual Planet Expeditions initiative, which funds exploration of the planet's most extreme environments and the people who depend on them. Perry is a National Geographic Explorer.

Heaps has served on the Board of Directors of AmericaSCORES New England, the national network that combines soccer, poetry, and community service to support underserved students in Boston, Brockton, Lawrence, Lynn, Lowell and the surrounding region. He was the Revolution's MLS Players Union representative as a player and has been involved in the New England soccer community as a giver-back for two decades.

The Corey Cares Foundation works with Boys & Girls Clubs to provide youth basketball programs, mentorship, and community support. The Flight 50 camp has grown from 50 kids to hundreds.

Carlos Boozer’s son Carmani was diagnosed with sickle cell disease in 2006. The Boozer family’s IVF story, documented in ESPN’s Blood Brothers, raised awareness of sickle cell disease and the importance of bone marrow transplant research.

Kyle founded the Southern Oregon Open as his high school senior project. All proceeds benefit Kids Unlimited, serving vulnerable children and families in southern Oregon.

In honor of Delois Edwards Williams (1959–2013), Elliot's mother, who battled breast cancer for years and made every Memphis home game her son played in. Susan G. Komen is the largest breast cancer organization in the U.S., funding research, screening, treatment, and patient support.

As a Gonzaga College HS student in Washington DC, Tyler Thornton volunteered serving meals to the homeless through McKenna's Wagon, the iconic mobile soup kitchen run by Martha's Table that has been distributing free meals from a wagon on the streets of DC since 1983. McKenna's Wagon is the kind of small, hands-on, community-rooted charity that defines Gonzaga's Jesuit social justice tradition — and that aligns with what Tyler's coaches and teammates have always said about the kind of person he is off the court. Martha's Table operates the Wagon plus broader food security and educational programs across DC, including in the same city where Tyler now coaches the next generation of Duke basketball players from his hometown.

Michael Gbinije now coaches at Virginia University of Lynchburg, a historically Black Christian university in central Virginia. The UNCF is the nation's largest private organization supporting historically Black colleges and universities, providing scholarships and operating support to 37 member HBCUs and helping over 60,000 students annually.

Amile Jefferson grew up in Philadelphia and has spent his entire basketball life as a mentor — three-time captain at Duke, the upperclassman who shepherded the Tatum/Giles freshman class through their first college season, and now an NBA player development coach in Boston. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Independence Region is Philadelphia's leading youth mentorship organization, matching local kids with adult mentors who help them navigate school, life, and the path forward.

The Dallas Mavericks Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise and has been a leading supporter of youth programming, basketball court development, and educational opportunity across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — including in southern Dallas County communities like Matt Jones's hometown of DeSoto. The Foundation has built or refurbished dozens of basketball courts in DFW, supports Boys & Girls Clubs across the metro area, and funds scholarship and mentorship programs for young people who, like a sophomore version of Matt Jones, are working hard at a craft and dreaming of playing the game at the highest level. The Foundation's work in southern Dallas County — the corridor that has produced Matt Jones, Marques Bolden, and dozens of other Division I basketball players over the last two decades — represents the exact community investment that gave Matt Jones his start.

Grayson routinely volunteered at Duke Children’s Hospital and the Emily K Center during his four years in Durham.

Tyus Jones’s initiative refurbishes technology labs for underserved kids and runs basketball camps. Inspired by his mother Debbie’s cancer fight, Tyus partners with Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer awareness.

In 2001, Justin Robinson's parents David and Valerie Robinson founded The Carver Academy in San Antonio's east side, a private school for underserved students in their hometown — a project they personally seeded with a reported $9 million donation. The school later joined IDEA Public Schools as IDEA Carver Academy in 2012, expanding from a single elementary school into a tuition-free K-12 college-prep program serving thousands of San Antonio students. The school remains the most visible philanthropic project of the Robinson family, and the values it represents — academic excellence, character development, opportunity for kids who might otherwise be overlooked — are values that shaped Justin Robinson's own path from Texas walk-on to Duke captain to Lakers coach.

Jack White's basketball career was shaped by Australian youth development pathways — local junior basketball in Traralgon, the Australian Institute of Sport scholarship in Canberra, and the kind of educational and athletic infrastructure that turns a country kid from Gippsland into a Duke captain and three-continent professional champion. The Smith Family is Australia's leading children's education charity, helping disadvantaged Australian kids access learning opportunities and break long-term cycles of disadvantage.

Home of the Cam Reddish Room. Cam donated $10,000 to create a gaming and community space for Norristown youth. The non-profit recreation center offers basketball leagues, camps, and community programs in his hometown.

Hurt has volunteered with the Salvation Army in his hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, and served as a youth basketball coach for local initiatives.

The Emily Krzyzewski Center is a Durham, North Carolina educational nonprofit founded in 2006 by Mike and Mickie Krzyzewski and named after Coach K's mother, who instilled in him a lifelong belief in the power of education. The Emily K Center serves over 1,800 Durham students each year through academic enrichment, college access programming, and mentorship — exactly the values that defined Michael Savarino's own Duke career, where he won the NCAA Elite 90 Award for the highest GPA at the 2022 Men's Final Four and the Dr. Deryl Hart Award as Duke's top scholar-athlete.

AHBAP is a Turkish charitable organization that provides disaster relief, including aid following the devastating 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake. Stanley Borden organized a Duke campus fundraising run for earthquake relief.

Dariq Whitehead has volunteered as part of fundraising campaigns for pediatric cancer research and has donated his time as a basketball coach to special-needs children.

The Flagg family donated $10,000 to the Ronald McDonald House in Durham, honoring the 109 days Cooper’s brother Hunter spent in the NICU. The House gave the family a home during the hardest days of their lives.