New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday will donate up to $5.3 million in game checks to start a social justice fund, according to NBA.com.
Holiday and his wife, Lauren, a former star player on the U.S. women’s national soccer team, said they will use his remaining game checks for the upcoming NBA restart of the season, which was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The couple has launched the Jrue and Lauren Holiday Social Justice Impact Fund to help aid communities in New Orleans, Indianapolis, and the Los Angeles area. The Holidays said that up to $1.5 million will go to New Orleans.
“Honestly when it came down to it, it was me and my wife talking about what we could do to kind of further this movement and progression and being able to help out our community and just being able to help,” Holiday told ESPN.
“We were just kind of sitting in the house, in the bed, thinking about it, and my wife said, ‘I think you should do this and you should do the rest of your salary.’ That’s a great idea. Because we want to make an impact. God has blessed us with so much. We know a couple of things that are important are time and money, and right now, we have both. To be able to give away our money to help further this movement and Black-owned businesses that have taken a hit in COVID-19, to us, it felt like the perfect time and opportunity.”
Most of the money from his game checks will be donated toward nonprofits, Black-owned businesses, and citywide initiatives that seek to assist Black and Brown communities in New Orleans (up to $1.5 million), Los Angeles, and Compton, California (up to $1.5 million), and Indianapolis (up to $1 million). An additional $1 million will go to Black-owned businesses in more than 10 other cities. $500,000 will go to institutions of higher learning, including historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).