{"id":196910,"date":"2025-10-08T06:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T06:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196910\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T06:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T06:54:09","slug":"thoreau-giving-hosts-its-third-annual-charity-golf-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196910\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoreau Giving hosts its third annual charity golf tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ronnie Harris II \u201916, a former Stanford Football team captain, led his third annual Charity Golf Tournament at the Stanford Golf Course on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eighty-eight golfers and 25 volunteers attended the event. Joe Lacob \u201883, Bob Stefanski, Jim Cowie \u201893 and Martin LaGod won the tournament.<\/p>\n

Thoreau Giving, a nonprofit dedicated<\/a> to creating affordable housing solutions for single mothers and at-risk youth in the Bay Area, raised $157,000 at last year\u2019s tournament. The nonprofit\u2019s goal for this year was to raise over $250,000 in service of these families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Tournament featured a silent auction with exclusive trips and one-of-a-kind memorabilia, including a Leonel Messi jersey and a hand-signed sports card, a Mike Tyson hand-signed glove and a hand-signed Taylor Swift guitar and photo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we\u2019re at the point where we\u2019re actually superseding goals and expectations,\u201d said Harris.<\/p>\n

Harris said Thoreau Giving is likely to buy a home in Oakland or Antioch by the end of 2026 or early 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe effort Ronnie is putting together to find and buy a house for folks who can\u2019t otherwise afford it is an incredibly uplifting mission for all of us,\u201d said Jim Cowie, Stanford Law School \u201893 and third-time tournament participant.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cEventually we want to get to the point where we\u2019re actually constructing our own affordable housing, where we have apartments, we have multi-unit facilities\u2026 where we can actually be doing more around health and wellness and taking care of families.\u201d <\/p>\n

During the seven years following Harris\u2019s graduation from Stanford, while he worked at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, he spent time building his network and skillset in order to tackle affordable housing. By 2023, Thoreau Giving was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started with the mindset of, \u2018How can we create affordable housing, but not just affordable housing?\u2019\u201d Harris said. \u201cWe actually want to wrap around services, so we have financial literacy services that we\u2019re going to wrap around health and wellness and also job enrichment programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thoreau Giving is in the process of talking through different partnership agreements with other nonprofits and technology companies to help build financial literacy software to help families manage their money.<\/p>\n

Harris likened his Stanford football career to his nonprofit strategy and his future goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilar to football, we\u2019ve got to start as early as possible and take as many reps as we can, so that ultimately, you know, 10 to 15 years from now, we\u2019re a lot bigger, a lot better for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris wants to grow the nonprofit into other spaces in need of support and empathy. Namely, he plans to work with food banks and branch out to support food health and wellness.<\/p>\n

Former Stanford football teammates of Harris\u2019 attested to his passion for leadership and his ability to bring people together to ignite progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cAwesome leader on and off the field. He always got the best out of everybody,\u201d said Blake Martinez \u201816, Harris\u2019s former teammate and former Green Bay Packers linebacker.<\/p>\n

\"ThoreauRonnie Harris II \u201916 and Thoreau Giving volunteers at the third annual charity gold tournament. (Photo: FRANCESCA PINNEY\/ The Stanford Daily)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronnie Harris II \u201916, a former Stanford Football team captain, led his third annual Charity Golf Tournament at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[27174,97542,73740,49,48,2769,97543,527,622,17305,97544,97545,82,28770,97546,1457],"class_list":["post-196910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-affordable-housing","tag-at-risk-mothers","tag-boys-and-girls-club","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-charity","tag-charity-event","tag-football","tag-golf","tag-golf-cart","tag-greenbay-packers","tag-ronnie-harris-ii","tag-sports","tag-stanford","tag-stanford-golf-course","tag-tournament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}