By Bels

The city of Atlanta has transformed from a historical epicenter of the civil-rights era to a place where residents successfully move to their own beat and uphold the integrity and true concept of the word “movement”. One major player in this city stays true to this movement by spearheading philanthropic initiatives and projects that revitalize the city and the kids in it. A DJ who speaks to thousands every morning from 6 to 10am as one half of “Frank & Wanda in the Morning”, Atlanta’s top-rated morning show on V-103FM, Frank Ski practices what he preaches and uses his influence for the benefit of others and not himself.

Frank Ski, noted founder of the Frank Ski Kids Foundation, has encompassed all of his successes and for the past 8 years given a lot of his time to helping others. From the start, the foundation has maintained its integrity and stuck with the goal to build intellectual, creative and confident young kids. With his celebrity, Frank has provided a global platform for the foundation that has in turn helped in its funding. This funding has provided access to several huge initiatives like the annual Youth Bowl and Kids Week, and the international all-expense paid youth trips to the Amazon and Ecuador to explore the Galapagos Islands and the Charles Darwin Research center.


Frank is a man with various talents and interests, also sharing his expertise to the entertainment industry as a producer, actor, journalist, and motivational speaker. He has dug into the minds of many celebrities and politicians such as Terrance Howard, Michael Jordan, the late Coretta Scott King, presidential-elect Barack Obama, and rappers T.I. and Young Jeezy. With the accolades he’s received, his greatest achievement has been the life-changing experiences the foundation has provided to the low-income youth of Atlanta.


Frank Ski, with his wife Tanya and four sons Jarrett, Franklin, Blake and Harrison in tow, has stretched the career of a DJ by putting his “generosity of spirit” in the forefront and taking the Frank Ski Kids Foundation and its movement to new heights.


To gain insight on the man and the foundation, STACKS Magazine chatted with Frank Ski about the foundation, his outlook on starting a foundation, and his foresight on helping the community and educating others on the meaning of giving back.

 

First, give our readers just a brief background of the foundation and what inspired you to start it.

Frank: The foundation was started out, I guess, as a way to become more effective and to be able to raise money in order to give money back to the communities and organizations that need it. And you know, for the longest time my wife and I had been donating to various charities and supporting different groups or organizations that have supported kids for a long time. But, we realized that there were a lot of people in the community that probably wanted to do more, such as your athletes and the entertainers, but they didn’t really have an avenue or know which way to go. Like for example, if it was an athlete, where would he put $10,000 or something if he wanted to give to an organization. So we tried to be kinda like the grassroots in between organizations to help people who want to donate to causes – being able to donate to our organization as a trustworthy 501C3 that they you know they can feel confident to know that when they put their money in the Frank Ski Kids Foundation we’ll make sure it gets to the places of need.

Because I know that one of the concerns that a lot of people who do donate to foundations and non-profit organizations is knowing exactly if their money is being used properly. So that’s good that you’re definitely somewhat of a broker…in a brokerage situation.

Frank: Right! Absolutely

When did the foundation start exactly?

Frank: About 8 years ago

Do you think it’s important for celebrities such as yourself to start non-profits?

Frank: Actually, I’m a little bit partial to that.

Okay…

Frank: Actually if I had to give somebody some advice, I would tell them not to do their own and probably to team up with an organization they feel good about, knowing that they are doing a certain job in the community. For instance, if you wanted to deal with young kids or young boys, I would tell somebody there’s a bunch of organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and what not…that do an actual good job at what they do. Because what a lot of us fail to realize is the difficulty about actually starting our own foundation and it is a business so it has to be run as a business. I mean we spend so much time fundraising and we got great ideas. Everybody has great ideas on how to give back and spend the money, but the process of going out there and raising the money to give is a difficult one and it takes a lot of time.

That’s actually a segway into another question that I have. For individuals who wish [whether their celebrities or non-celebrities] to start a foundation, what would be some of the key items that individual would have to do or put in place prior to starting one?

Frank: Well, I would first talk to their financial advisor to find out the validity of what it is they want to do. Because the difficulty which some people don’t understand is that as an individual you know, we’re a public health 501C3, so as a public health 501C3 we have certain benefits that go to us. But if you have one donor that gives you most of the money that you make all year long then you’ve changed from becoming a public foundation to becoming a private foundation. For instance, many family foundations are private foundations because the person who… like the Bill Gates is a private foundation, Arthur Blank is a private foundation and their private because so much of their funding comes from the individual whose name is on the foundation and what happens is that’s something really to think about. I mean if you’re just a person that’s sitting on millions and millions of dollars that you want to give away then you can create a private foundation and basically give to who you want and how you want and that’s not a typical thing to do, but as a publicly health foundation there are certain rules that you have to go by in order to be a publicly health 501C3.


The other thing I would tell people is that basically the most difficult thing is who’s going to run it and 9 times out of 10 unless it’s somebody’s momma like Ludacris’ foundation you know unless it’s your momma…you can forget it. It ain’t cool to have your sister or to have your auntie or cousin or best friend or whatever because at the end of the day those people who are working in your foundation are working all kinds of hours of the day for you, for your money and what happens is if they don’t have a great business sense you know like any other business…you gone be out of business. So you really don’t want to put yourself in that position and then there’s so much liability I mean if somebody makes a mistake or if somebody you know misappropriates money or even God forbid steals money…whose name is on it? Your name is on it and was it really worth all that when you could’ve just given the money to an organization that would have done the same thing you’re doing. I mean, put it this way, it’s not too much that’s being done out there that hasn’t been done before in some way, shape or form, you know. Everything that we do in some way, shape or form other people have done similar things; maybe not to the extent, maybe not traveled to the places we’ve been to or done the games that we’ve done, but to an extent it’s easy to go to somebody and say hey I’m going to give you a million dollars, but I want you to do a youth bowl. I’m going to give you a million dollars, but I want you to take 10 kids to the Glacial Islands. I mean once you become a large donor to an organization you can tell them how you want them to spend your money.

Okay and that’s why most foundations usually have a board, am I correct?

Frank: Yes, yes they have a board and you know the thing is it’s like getting the people who are going to be on your board and then realizing that a foundation is a really long term thing. I mean we’re doing some great things in our foundation, but you know we’re almost 9 years in so I mean, it takes time. It takes a lot of time to get to that point.

As far as upcoming initiatives and activities, I know you have the Youth Bowl that’s coming up on Dec. 14th.

Frank: Right!

Do you have any other initiatives that are coming up soon?

Frank: Well our big fundraiser is…that weekend is our fundraising weekend. So our big fundraiser is the wine tasting and that’s when we bring celebrities together, we charge people a lot of money to come to a wine tasting and we auction off some great items. We make a good amount of the money that we spend you know all year long at the wine tasting and the Youth Bowl. So that’s kinda like our way to raise money for this Youth Bowl event.

We’re also in the planning stages now for what we’re going to be doing for our summer initiative because before you know it, we’ll be in June again. It takes about that long to get everything planned out. Of course we’ll have another team of kids going to space camp. We’ll have a team of kids doing an art program in Europe and then we’ll have another team of kids going on our summer Science excursion which I’m not allowed to tell anybody where that’s going to be.

Okay (Laughs)

Frank: That’s kinda like a big surprise!

(Laughs) and speaking of raising funds you mentioned that you, a lot of times, charge certain amounts of money like for the wine tasting and other activities you have going on. As far as raising money for a foundation, what is the better route to go? Just having fundraising activities and drawing in money that way or applying for some government assistance?

Frank: Yes, applying for the grants is a business within itself. There are people who are grant writers…that’s what they do. They go out and write grants for your foundation and they basically charge you a percentage of the money that they bring in. That’s one route. You could hire a grant writer, but a good grant writer is going to cost you $50,000-$100,000 a year. You know, that’s a person’s salary. Then the other way is…to give you an example, even for us, I mean we’re 8 years in but we really didn’t start getting big grant checks until a couple years ago. You know what I mean, it was 5 years of you know our first year we were operating off $40,000 a year then it became $80,000 a year then we made $90,000. That’s not a lot of money and especially you know luckily for me I worked for the radio station so I got free advertising and free promotions and marketing and our events were a lot bigger than the money we were able to pay for them. Somebody else coming in saying okay I want to put together and do the Youth Bowl, they’re going to pay twice as much as we pay to get what we get. They won’t be able to get half of the amount of people because I’m on the radio.

And plus you’ve already established that foundation…

Frank: Right and it takes time and what happens is, going back to what I said in the beginning. If you got people on your foundation somebody’s going to want to get paid. Luckily for me we didn’t really have anybody paid on our foundation until like last year. Even now up until last year most of everybody on the foundation was 100% volunteer and it’s difficult to get people who are busy and who are good to volunteer to give that kind of work. So it’s a very difficult road to go by unless you have some sort of help and it’s not impossible because a lot of foundations start very small, within churches or within homes. If it’s a great idea and people go out and they fundraise and they get a good cause and they get the backing and create a reputation, but it takes time. That’s really all I’m saying today, you got to be willing to put the time in.

Well I definitely commend you for everything you’re doing for the community. As far as people wanting to learn more about your foundation, can they go to the website, the frankskikids.org site?

Frank: Yes, yes absolutely!

 

…you also have a link there for people to donate as well?

Frank: Yes.

Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about the foundation?

Frank: Well basically for us, we really believe and we’ve seen this even recently with Barack Obama being elected President…it is amazing how one person’s picture on a particular job can change the face of what a kid wants to be in the future. You know, because Barack Obama became President, there are a lot of kids now saying “I can be the president”, “I can aspire to be the president” and our foundation is based upon the same premise of showing kids that they can be scientists, they can be archaeologists or they can be artists on a grand scale and design buildings or space crafts or whatever they want to do because we show them first hand, put them in those situations that give them that background to say “you know what… there’s nothing that I can’t do”. That’s basically what our foundation is. We want to expose kids to those opportunities to be great.



One of the big annual events of the Frank Ski Kids Foundation, the Youth Bowl, will kick off this Saturday, December 6.

Game 1 start at 12pm: North Henry Tigers VS. North Clayton Eagles

Game 2 start at 3pm: Hapeville Hornets Vs Central Dekalb Jaguars


Then next Saturday on December 13, it’s the Youth Bowl Championship. Teams will be determined after the playoff games.

For more information about the Youth Bowl or any other Frank Ski Foundation initiatives, please visit http://frankskikids.org!

Photo Credit: Ben Rose Photography