We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matt Brown a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
When I was 15 years old, I suffered a spinal cord injury during a high school hockey game. I was left paralyzed from the shoulders down. Rather than calling it quits and closing my door on the world, I made it a point that I wasn’t going to let the injury define the way I live my life. I made the decision that it was time to look forward and not back. I couldn’t change what had happened and dwelling on it would only make things worse.
I was extremely lucky with the support that I had around me. Family, friends, and complete strangers were letting me know that they were going to be behind me and I realized I was not going to face what was in front of me on my own. That support followed me through my early rehab. I ended up going back to high school and graduating on time. I went on to college, graduated with a degree in four years, and lived on campus the entire time. It wasn’t easy at times, but I was lucky that my support system never left my side.
Throughout my journey, I have met many individuals and families facing the same things that me and my family have faced. Unfortunately, there have been many that dealing with what is in front of them, without a support system. Knowing how important something like that is, I wanted to create something that could help.
In 2020, I launched the Matt Brown Foundation. A 501(c)(3) foundation, dedicated to helping individuals, families, and groups suffering from illness or injury, with particular emphasis on spinal cord injuries. Launching and trying to grow a foundation in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t easy. It took us over a year to hold our first event, but our support system came up huge during that first year and allowed us to help a few individuals in need. In the years that of followed, we have really started to move in the right direction. This spring, we surpassed $130,000 in grants we have given out. A milestone that I am incredibly proud of. With momentum on our side, I’m excited to see what the future has in store because I feel like we can continue to make a huge difference in the lives of individuals who need it the most.
Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
When I was 15 years old, I suffered a spinal cord injury during a high school hockey game. I was left paralyzed from the shoulders down. Rather than calling it quits and closing my door on the world, I made it a point that I wasn’t going to let the injury define the way I live my life. I made the decision that it was time to look forward and not back. I couldn’t change what had happened and dwelling on it would only make things worse.
I was extremely lucky with the support that I had around me. Family, friends, and complete strangers were letting me know that they were going to be behind me and I realized I was not going to face what was in front of me on my own. That support followed me through my early rehab. I ended up going back to high school and graduating on time. I went on to college, graduated with a degree in four years, and lived on campus the entire time. It wasn’t easy at times, but I was lucky that my support system never left my side.
Throughout my journey, I have met many individuals and families facing the same things that me and my family have faced. Unfortunately, there have been many that dealing with what is in front of them, without a support system. Knowing how important something like that is, I wanted to create something that could help.
In 2020, I launched the Matt Brown Foundation. A 501(c)(3) foundation, dedicated to helping individuals, families, and groups suffering from illness or injury, with particular emphasis on spinal cord injuries. Launching and trying to grow a foundation in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t easy. It took us over a year to hold our first event, but our support system came up huge during that first year and allowed us to help a few individuals in need. In the years that of followed, we have really started to move in the right direction. This spring, we surpassed $130,000 in grants we have given out. A milestone that I am incredibly proud of. With momentum on our side, I’m excited to see what the future has in store because I feel like we can continue to make a huge difference in the lives of individuals who need it the most.
Since our incorporation, we have helped individuals and families purchase handicap accessible vans, alleviated some of the stresses that come with renovating a home for a wheelchair, and donated pieces of home equipment so an individual can work out from the comfort of their home.
Throughout the year we put on a few different fundraisers. We have a team in the Boston Marathon, we put on a golf tournament in July, and we have a team in the Falmouth Road Race at the end of August. We are incredibly lucky with the generosity and the support we continue to receive. None of what we do would be possible without it.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
Every grant we give out means a lot to me. Knowing that we are hopefully making life a little bit easier for these families and individuals is the continued reason why we do what we do.
One grant that stands out happened earlier this month. We were made aware that an individual and his family were looking to get a handicap accessible van. At the same time, we were put in touch with the family that was looking to sell their van to someone that could hopefully use it the same way they did in the prior years, to help alleviate some of the stresses that that they were now facing.
We were able to purchase that van and get it into the hands of this new family just a few weeks ago. While we were there delivering it, we overheard the individual say to his wife, “we get to go out to dinner again.” We realized that the family will no longer need to deal with the stress of figuring out how to get him to physical therapy anymore. They will be able to enjoy the convenience of going out where they want, when they want, whenever they feel like it.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Launching the foundation in the middle of a pandemic meant that we had to wait a little bit until we could hold our first fundraising event. It took us over a year, but we scheduled our first golf tournament for Monday, July 12, 2021.
For months we planned the day. We registered 38 foursomes, chased down raffle and silent auction items, gathered volunteers for setting everything up and the on course festivities, and created giveaway bags for each golfer to go home with.
Unfortunately, nearly 5 inches of rain fell during the 48 hours before our tournament started which led us to postponing the tournament the morning of. That required us reaching out to 152 golfers, plus our volunteers. We had to take all of our silent auction and raffle items, as well as our giveaway bags and find a storage unit for the time being. We rescheduled for September.
Bummed out, we realized that the only thing we could do was control what was controllable. We can’t dictate mother nature. Having to wait turned out to be completely worth it. We had an unbelievable day in September and the first tournament was an overwhelming success for the foundation.
Contact Info:
- Website: mattbrownfoundation.org
- Instagram: @mattbrown_foundation
- Facebook: Matt Brown Foundation
- Twitter: @MattBFoundation