Rays Baseball Foundation

The Rays Baseball Foundation community fund grant program provides assistance to local nonprofits in the tampa bay region. These grants help enhance and support current programs offered by community-based nonprofit organizations.

Since 2014, the Rays jersey program has outfitted more than 95,000 tampa bay area tee-ball players and coaches with jerseys and caps. The program covers more than 80 different leagues in nine area counties and has saved the leagues more than $1 million dollars in equipment costs. As a result of these savings, officials from some of the participating leagues have noted that they now have the ability to pass these savings along to participant families. They have also been able to repair their scoreboards, provide upgrades to dugouts, add fencing for fields, purchase additional equipment and grounds crew supplies and repair concession stands and other areas of their facilities.

Through various scholarship programs, the Rays Baseball Foundation supports student scholars in hillsborough, pinellas, pasco, manatee, and sarasota counties. All payments are made to area organizations that provide scholarships for students.

The home run club continues to offer a sense of stability and belonging to hundreds of foster children and adoptive families throughout tampa bay. Each season, with the help of eckerd, family resources, guardian ad litem, the heart gallery, ready for life and youth alternatives, over 500 foster children have become club members and attended a series of home games in the suite. When the suite isn't being used for club kids, eckerd and the heart gallery use it for special adoption events. Furthering the organization's support for foster children and families, the ballpark also plays host to a permanent heart gallery exhibit, displaying professional portraits and personal biographies of children waiting to be adopted. The home run club and heart gallery events hosted by the Rays have resulted in numerous adoptions for local foster children.

The rowdies soccer fund is dedicated to improving the lives of those in need within our community, focusing primarily on education, youth development, wellness, and social responsibility. Through programming and nonprofit giving the rowdies soccer fund strives to energize our community through the magic of rowdies soccer.

Since 2006, the Rays Baseball Foundation has teamed up with suncoast credit union for the summer reading program reading with the Rays - read your way to the ballpark. Reading with the Rays encourages kids to avoid summer reading loss by participating in a fun and interactive reading program over the summer months. More than 500,000 tampa bay area students from nine surrounding counties have participated since its inception. Participating libraries track their progress and award prizes for reaching certain goals, including free tickets to a Rays game. The program is made possible through a partnership with suncoast credit union, tampa bay times newspaper in education, the Rays and public library systems in charlotte, citrus, hernando, hillsborough, manatee, pasco, pinellas, polk, and sarasota counties.

Since 2018, the Rays have partnered with team smile, an advocacy group that partners dental professionals with professional athletic organizations to provide life-changing dental care to underserved children in their communities. In the past 2 years, the Rays have hosted more than 400 children from the boys & girls clubs of the suncoast and local foster care groups for a free dental day at tropicana field. The value of care provided totals almost $170,000 in dental care and education. Through this experience, the children received free oral health education, screening, and treatment, and were taught that the mouth and body are linked to overall health. The children received dental work completely free of charge, including x-rays, screening, and educational material on how to protect their teeth. Additionally, raymond and dj kitty were on hand to greet the kids, along with the Rays team, face painters, balloon artists and Rays Baseball camp coaches.

Throughout the month of june, Rays Baseball operations staff taught stem curriculum at academy prep campuses in lakeland, tampa, and st. petersburg. Across five days at each campus, staff members taught over 90 students lessons from the Rays science of Baseball program, which includes subjects such as geometry, physiology, and statistics. The program culminated with a career day at tropicana field.