Leveling the field for youth sports and nonprofits.
What I help with
League Operations & Structure
Structure, bylaws, and day-to-day operations for boards and leagues that have outgrown ad hoc management.
Board Governance & Compliance
Scheduling, fundraising strategy, and building a volunteer base that doesn’t burn out the same ten families every year.
Fundraising & Volunteer Management
Board structure, compliance, and financial oversight that keeps a nonprofit board out of trouble.
Built on Real Board Experience
Eight years on a youth sports league board, three of them as president, showed what actually breaks leagues and nonprofits: not effort, but structure — bylaws nobody follows, money nobody’s watching, volunteers nobody’s supporting. That’s what this practice fixes.
Why Financial Oversight Matters
Every youth sports embezzlement case follows the same pattern: a trusted volunteer treasurer, unchecked access to the books, and a board that never thought to ask for a second signature. It’s not a hypothetical. Nationally, at least $17 million has been stolen from youth sports leagues across roughly 250 documented cases, and a decade-long Canadian investigation turned up nearly $8 million taken from youth leagues there alone, including a single $2.4 million theft from one regional hockey association.
Nonprofits overall aren’t immune either. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2024 Report to the Nations puts the median nonprofit fraud loss at $76,000 per scheme, and found that organizations without basic fraud-awareness training lose twice as much when it happens. Most of it comes down to the same fixable gaps: one person controlling the money end to end, no dual sign-off on checks, and financials nobody outside the treasurer ever reviews.
This is exactly the blind spot board governance and financial oversight work is built to close.
Request a Consultation
Tell me a bit about your board, league, or program, and I’ll follow up to schedule a time to talk.
Level Playing Field Advising provides advisory services only — implementation of any recommendations is the responsibility of each individual board and league. Read the full advisory disclaimer here.