Potts Foundation kicks off new campaign - February 4th 2023

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
February 4th 2023

RICHMOND – Fundraising for the Maddie Potts Memorial Field House was a challenge made even more daunting by the chaos and delays caused by the pandemic.

After taking a break, Stephanie, Dan and Julia Potts and Maddie Potts Foundation Treasurer, Melissa DeJoseph, recently launched a new campaign to raise money for scholarships and local projects.

Stephanie Potts said she and her family needed time to recover from the pressure of raising money for the field house.

“That recovery’s actually taken a lot longer than I expected, and just kind of re-focusing,” she said. “I felt I needed to let our foundation board and our friends kind of recover from that, because they’d given everything they had to give.”

Stephanie and Dan Potts’s 17-year-old daughter, Madeline, was captain of the Chariho soccer team when she collapsed on the field from an asymptomatic brain aneurism. Maddie later died, on Sept. 24, 2017, at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

The sudden death of the popular student athlete drove the Chariho community into mourning. Determined to create something good from the tragedy, the Potts family started the Maddie Potts Foundation and began raising money for scholarships for Chariho students and a new field house for the Chariho campus. The Maddie Potts Memorial Field House was officially dedicated last August.

Back to basics

The Maddie Potts Foundation board met in November - the first meeting in the new fieldhouse.

“We had our first board meeting there, and it was just a whole different feeling and atmosphere and to me, it really empowered us to continue to find ways to give back even more,” Potts said. “…I felt that we all needed to take time and be reminded that we’re here because of a monumental loss that has affected thousands of people and five years later, still does.”

With the field house open and paid for, DeJoseph explained that the foundation board will now broaden its donation focus.

“I think the field house was so huge, but I think we’re almost kind of like ‘what now?’” she said. “We all have so many ideas and of course, we wish we could just help everybody and do everything, but I think it’s important, too, to get back to the smaller things – not that scholarships are small, but compared to a $2 million fieldhouse, it’s smaller. So, I think that’s why we talked about expanding the scholarship program and expanding the donations to Unified Athletics, to local schools and also increasing the donations and the supply drives for the local animal shelters and the local food pantries. So, we’re getting back to basics.”

(The fieldhouse is valued at $2 million but donations of goods and services from contractors reduced the actual cost of construction to $1,258,696.11.)

Organized by DeJoseph and now in its second year, the  Jail and Bail campaign has already raised more than $3,000 of the $111,000 goal. (Maddie’s team jersey was Number 11.)

“The whole reason we did ‘Jail and Bail’ again is because it was so incredibly successful last year as an inaugural event for us. She raised over $25,000,” Potts said.

Donations can be made to the general campaign, or to a specific “prisoner,” a participating volunteer from the community.

The funds will go towards scholarships, which, in addition to Chariho students, will now be awarded to students in South Kingstown, Middletown and Narragansett. The foundation will also raise funds for the Westerly and South Kingstown Jonnycake Centers and RICAN, and collect food and supplies for the Westerly animal shelter and the Charlestown animal shelter.

Potts said the foundation was also in the early stages of discussing a possible program with Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

“We’re trying to increase awareness even further of brain aneurism, and Hasbro has reached out to me on a number of occasions, so we are trying to figure out how we can help with their needs – very early talks, but we’re trying to figure that out,” she said.

The time off after the dedication of the field house has given the foundation leadership a much-needed energy boost.

“I’m hopeful that that re-group will allow us to come back even stronger and do more diversified good,” Potts said. “You know, this isn’t just about athletics. This is about all the things that were valuable to Maddie as far as art, and, just, community and animals and the elderly, and she just supported every single underdog in every way, and that’s the intention of the foundation.”