Desert Hockey Development is a non-profit Arizona Corporation with full tax deductible, 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service. Our main activity is to run FREE introduction to hockey clinics for kids aged 4-14. Our popular tag line is “Always Free, Always Fun!”
500 Kids made it through our free hockey clinics in 2014. We’re counting returning children more than once, but over 300 individual children aged 4-14 picked up a hockey stick and had a blast learning and playing ball hockey with us in 2014. Most of those kids never played hockey before. Many of those kids were not from the traditional hockey demographic, many were financially underprivileged and some didn’t even have a home.
Our coaches and support staff are all volunteers, nobody is getting paid for this. We all do it for the love of our game and to give back to our community by nurturing healthy activities and sportsmanship.
City of Glendale and DHD now have an agreement in place that alleviates our expenses for renting the Bonsall Park rink. That will be a big help going forward, and we’re glad to have Glendale as our partner.
Expenses are very real, however.
- We try to feed everybody after every one of our free clinics, food and beverages add up.
- Materials for improvements to the Bonsall Park rink.
- Printing and laminating picture ID player cards to every youth attending our free clinics.
- Administrative costs for the AZ Corporation Commission and the IRS.
- Accounting and banking fees.
- Insurance
- Etcetera.
Expanding our operations to other cities is underway and we’ve surpassed where our project can be funded solely by board members and other close interested parties. So, more traditional fundraising is becoming more necessary for DHD to maintain our expected high level of service to the community AND to keep it free to our end consumers, the kids.
The Expense ratio for DHD is exceptional. We spent about 14% of our budget for overhead things like those listed above and for a fundraising golf tournament in 2014. Everything else goes to free programs for as many kids as we can find.