We couldn’t be happier to announce that after a long wait, we’ve been designated as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization by the IRS in December 2021. Going forward, this will enable us to accept tax deductible contributions from individuals and businesses so we can fully focus on our stated mission of celebrating our diverse LGBTQIA+ and allied community through friendly athletic competition, all the while doing good work in Raleigh and Wake County, both in meaningful service-oriented actions as well as making financial contributions to other tax exempt charities when we surpass our own budgetary needs each season.
We are pretty stoked to announce, after much hard work behind the scenes, that we have put together a season that is short on dates, but long on game play! We wanted to get started with things in 2021, but the yearly closure of fields over the winter is a hard stop for anybody playing ball…the grass needs a break. We totally get that. Which means that we really needed to pack a lot of game play into the four weekends we had available to us. We think we’ve done that, with minimum 2 games for each team each Sunday, with each team cycling through at least one Sunday with 3 games. We have all played in other leagues around town, with a group of us most recently playing a season of 8 games spread over 2.5 months; we think we are providing the same or greater value here! We plan for spring and following seasons to be regular seasons, spring to summer, and summer to fall, so this inaugural season will be short but fully packed with games! Come join us!
We had the name, but we needed a logotype to match, and luckily, one existed already, in a slightly different form. It was a submission several years ago on the Rebrand Raleigh Instagram account by local “illustrator, photographer, art director, designer, motorcycle builder and entrepreneur” Bob Ranew. Bob graciously gave us permission to use the logo for this organization, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this. We’ve modified the logo somewhat, making it more of a fit for our sports league program as well as our nonprofit entity, Oak City Athletics. We think we’ve kept things respectful enough to Bob’s original concept of an acorn (anybody who has lived in Raleigh long enough knows about the city and its oak symbolism, including the giant acorn downtown that is dropped on New Years Eve!) in outline, topped with the crowning motif of our state capitol building. We’ve kept the same font choices, as there was no need to change what was already perfect in that regard, and we believe we have a logo and concept that will stand the test of time as we grow and change. Thank you again, Bob!