BTI Events, the organization that is managing Team USA’s travel and participation in the 2023 World University Games in Chengdu, China, has begun accepting donations to support the US swim team’s participation in one of the world’s largest sporting events.
Historically, USA Swimming has sponsored, managed, and supported the American team, but for political reasons, they declined to do so this year. That lead to an independent movement to build a team of American college students and coaches, with an initial roster of 32 athletes being named last week.
Those trips are entirely self-funded, though, with the trip expected to cost each athlete several thousand dollars.
After SwimSwam readers asked for ways to donate, SwimSwam reached out to one of the team’s coaches Ian Quinn, who is the Director of Swimming for Team USA.
Several athletes have also set up individual GoFundMe accounts to accept donations.
- Christian Bart from Oakland University ($1,920 of $3,500 goal)
- Madyson Morse, Illinois State ($1,810 of $5,500 goal)
- Anna Kalandadze, Penn ($2,270 of $5,500 goal)
- Callie Dickinson, Georgia ($0 of $6,500 goal)
- Chris Nagy, Minnesota ($290 of $5,000 goal)
- Kevin Houseman, Northwestern ($710 of $3,500 goal)
BTI Events has provided the following information on how to donate to the team as a whole, and have provided assurances that other than the 3% credit card fee, all donations will go directly toward offsetting coach and athlete costs for the trip.
Is there any consideration of the State Dept Travel Advisory to China?
Have they given any update as to how much has been raised so far through the common fund? Trip is what, $250,000ish total for all coaches and athletes? Would be nice to see and could generate some more donations if they would post some progress.
$1,300 for the shared bucket.
Donating is not as smooth as it could be if it were just a simple GoFundMe, so I’m sure that’s hampering the effort.
Makes me wonder if the swimmers just created a group gofundme if that would generate more support…
Yeah…if I were them, I’d consider that.
Kind of weird that the event host wants to make sure all of the dollars go through them.
I donated directly to Chris Nagy on gofundme. It would be nice if we can get them all over 3K and maybe a little more.
10,000 likes 😊
Would love to fully fund the group BUT would need to have a recognition article on SwimSwam!
USA = pay to play
https://gofund.me/dc68c12d
Added!
Thank you!
I saw swimswam staff donating too, nice!
When I see a situation like this and in other countries scenarios where swimmers are being charged a fee to represent their countries at meets like junior worlds or junior pan PACs it raises the question in my mind of why? Why is it swimmers representing their countries are having to rely on gofundme pages or individual contributions.
Surely it’s time for the CEO’s of the national swimming organizations to collaborate on identifing which organizations ncaa, Speedo etc are benefitting financially from swimming worldwide or in their respective countries.
I see in the comments below Speedo is donating suits. For years I have observed Speedo revenue share insignificant amounts with clubs and donate a swimsuit once a year for… Read more »
Why wouldn’t they create a catch all gofundme? If the effort is to make it intentionally more difficult – good job. It’s working.
Yeah, I had the same feedback. They’d raise 4-5x as much using a GoFundMe. My guess is that someone wants to capture that 3% credit card fee for a little bonus revenue.
Zero transparency as well.