Dan Snyder: Passion for Football and People

Anyone who follows football knows Dan Snyder is the owner of Washington Football. And people in Washington know Dan Snyder as someone who cares.

Daniel Snyder grew up rooting for Washington Football. Attending games with his father, he developed a devotion to the team. Snyder put his passion into action in 1999 by buying the team. and in the 20 years since he has made the team into one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world and one the largest drivers of public charity programs in the D.C. area.

Only a year after buying Washington Football, in 2000, Dan Snyder created the Washington Charitable Foundation for positive and measurable support to agencies and projects serving young people in greater Washington, D.C. The foundation has focused on health and wellness, community outreach, and education, providing more than $29 million in grant funding to organizations, group projects, and individuals.

In 2019, the Foundation hosted over 115 special events for children and their families in D.C. area schools. These programs included expanding a health and wellness program for over 12,000 seventh graders in four school districts and funding a reading program for over 38,000 fourth and fifth graders.

Also in 2019, the Foundation continued to expand its Loads of Love program making laundry facilities available at schools for children and families experiencing homelessness or housing instability. The goal of Loads of Love is to provide children with an person-affirming option for the challenges of keeping clothes clean. To date, the Washington Charitable Foundation has funded Loads of Love centers at over 80 schools.

2020 has posed even more needs and more opportunities for Daniel Snyder’s charity work. Dan Snyder gave early and gave generously to D.C. area COVID-19 relief. He donated $100,000 to the Capital Area Food Bank to feed hungry children and families early in the coronavirus crisis, and he set up a testing site at FedEx Field for the Maryland National Guard to do COVID testing of Prince George’s County residents.

After the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, Dan Snyder donated $250,000 to the Foundation to fund awareness of Black Lives Matter in the greater D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area.

But Dan Snyder’s charity has never been limited to his charitable foundation.

When Hurricane Matthew devastated the Caribbean in 2016, Dan Snyder quickly organized an airlift of supplies to the Bahamas. After the team beat Baltimore a day later, he authorized two players of Haitian descent to accompany a shipment of supplies to Hospital Bernard Mevs in Port Au Prince, Haiti. When a host on FOX NFL Sunday asked Snyder about his efforts to send aid, he replied, “What happened in Haiti was obvious. They were in need.” And after Snyder’s aid efforts reached the Bahamas, Bahamas Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe said, “This organization led by example mobilizing immediately to bring relief to our people who are in need. It is our hope that other organizations will follow the example set by the [Washington Football team].”

Prior to Hurricane Matthew, Snyder had donated relief supplies after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Beyond two decades of work with the Washington Charitable Foundation, Daniel Snyder has made generous donations of money, time, and influence to other charitable endeavors. He has made significant donations to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and to the Children’s National Hospital.

Snyder funded construction at Daniel M. Snyder and Family Communication Center at the NCMEC. Every day of the year, the Center fields hundreds of telephone calls from runaways seeking help, from parents desperately wanting to find their children, from law enforcement agencies around the USA, and from people making inquiries after becoming aware of the Center’s campaigns on behalf of missing children. In 2014, Dan Snyder and his wife Tanya received the Charles B. Wang International Children’s Award at the NCMEC’s annual Hope Awards Dinner.

In addition to serving on the Children’s National Hospital Foundation Board of Directors, funding from Snyder and his wife enabled the building of the Snyder Family Emergency Medicine and Trauma Center.

Daniel Snyder’s service has included the military community. Snyder helped Washington Football’s military appreciation club Salute to consolidate a decade of military appreciation initiatives into a platform serving service members, their spouses, and children 24/7/365. A first of its kind program for any NFL team, Salute supports, serves, and shows gratitude to the military community by hosting reenlistment ceremonies at FedEx Field and at team headquarters, and by throwing pre-game parties for military members. Dan Snyder teamed up with the Gary Sinise Foundation to build a new adaptive smart home for Captain Luis Avila, a Washington Football fan and U.S. Army Captain who became paralyzed during his service.

Dan Snyder is a leader in the activities of the NFL. His expertise in media and marketing has earned him appointments to the Business Ventures Committee, to the Digital Media Committee (which he co-chairs), to the Media Committee, and to the Hall of Fame Committee (which is responsible for the administration of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio). Apart from his service to the NFL, Snyder is on the Board of Trustees of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Over Snyder’s 20 seasons as owner of Washington Football five players, Champ Bailey, Darrell Green, Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, and Jason, Taylor, have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Since Snyder’s 1999 purchase of the team, 27 individual players have made 53 Pro Bowl appearances. NIne have been named All Pro and 13 of the team’s draft picks have made the All-Rookie Team.

Washington Football wholly owned stadium in Landover, Maryland has seating for 82,000 people. Snyder has invested over $100 million in improvements to the stadium, including a high-speed escalator to the upper decks and over 1,000 flat-screen TVs in concourses.

Snyder founded inVentiv Health. He is Managing Member of the Board of Red Zebra Broadcasting, LLC, which operates radio stations throughout the DMV. He is an honoree of the Greater Washington Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Dan Snyder and his wife Tanya live in Potomac, Maryland with their three children.

Learn more about Dan Snyder here: https://www.forbes.com/profile/dan-snyder/