The Spielvereinigung Unterhaching is expanding its social commitment: for a number of years now, in addition to training talent and investing in the stadium grounds, the focus of club policy has also been on helping people in need. The football club has now institutionalized its “Haching looks into it” initiative and founded its own association with this name – so that donors feel that they are in good hands and that there are no tax misunderstandings, as club president Manfred Schwabl explains.
Even before the current price crisis, “Haching looks out” primarily looked after the needy “in the region, because there is more need here than you think,” as Schwabl says. For example, in the family of Mirko, who is now seven years old, who suffered such severe brain damage when he fell out of his bed that he needs care. The people of Unterhaching have been supporting the boy for years. “Mirko is making incredible progress through the therapies that we have funded,” says SpVgg Vice President Peter Wagstyl. The tragic case was also the impetus for the first inclusion day, which the game association organized in 2019 together with the Bavarian Football Association (BFV) and the Special Olympics Bayern (SOBY).
The Hachinger initiative financed dolphin therapy for a seriously ill boy
Little Luca from Lower Bavaria is also supported by “Haching looks into it”: The six-year-old suffers from a genetic disease of the cerebellum (Chiari I malformation), which results in mental, motor and language development disorders and the associated severe pain. Constant hospitalizations and surgeries were necessary to alleviate the symptoms and achieve a gradual improvement in Luca’s overall condition. The Hachinger Initiative financed dolphin therapy for the family a year ago and presented them with a check for 5,000 euros at a charity event in Straubing a few months ago, in order to continue the positive development by allowing the disabled boy to stay with the marine mammals again.
“It’s important to us that we help in the long term,” says Wagstyl, who emphasizes that we don’t just support children. Together with the senior citizens’ aid “Lichtblicke” we have been helping ten needy pensioners since the beginning of the year so that they can pay their electricity bills and have money available for their living expenses by the end of the month. “We’d love to expand this commitment as we receive more donations,” says Wagstyl.
Because it has recently become apparent that many people and companies are quite willing to support the good works of the club with more and more money, they have now got down to business, as Schwabl explains: “So far, all donations have gone to the account of the football club , but we kept getting more and more donations, so we had to change something here.” The background is that according to the statutes, donations to a sports club may only be spent on sports promotion. “The tax office drew our attention to this,” explains Wagstyl.
An alternative would have been to set up a foundation, but the club management didn’t want that because that would be “very expensive”, as Wagstyl says. In addition, in this case, a certain donation amount must always be kept as a base within the foundation. But that’s not his intention, says Schwabl: “Everything we take in should go out one-to-one to those in need. I always call our initiative the fire brigade fund: we want to help where there’s a fire.” And so the only option was to set up an association with the sole purpose of doing good.
Founding members of the club are coach Sandro Wagner, Karim Adeyemi’s family and U17 coach Daniel Bierofka
This new structure now ensures that all donors receive appropriate receipts that they can use for tax purposes. As part of a founding meeting, Klaus Maier, who has been involved with “Haching Blick hin” for years, was elected chairman, Rena Schwabl, the wife of Manfred Schwabl’s son Markus, will support the association as an ambassador. The 35 founding members also include head coach Sandro Wagner, team captain Josef Welzmüller, the family of national player Karim Adeyemi, who once played for Haching, and U17 coach Daniel Bierofka. “I am very proud that the club supports this,” says President Schwabl, who has now placed the game association on a total of seven pillars: the KGaA of the licensed players department, two real estate companies, the catering trade (Haching Events GmbH), a health center GmbH and the two registered clubs SpVgg Unterhaching and “Haching looks at”.
For Schwabl, social commitment is elementary for regional roots. It is fitting that children up to the age of 14 have been given free entry to regional league home games since this season if they have printed out the “Fonsi” annual ticket and brought it to the sports park. You could call that customer loyalty. And that includes the restaurant, which should be the starting point for everyone, “regardless of whether they come with the bobby car or the walker,” as Schwabl says. That is the case in the sports park, many seniors are there regularly, “also because the price-performance ratio is right with us”.