Olympian Marcus Daniell Shows Athletes Can Help Improve The World

Marcus Daniell’s professional tennis career is winding down. With retirement in sight, the New Zealand men’s and mixed doubles player chose to make the final year of his professional tennis career a selfless one. Daniell, who won a bronze medal in doubles at the Tokyo Olympics alongside Michael Venus, is donating 50% of the winnings from his final season to high-impact charities to combat the climate crisis, alleviate extreme poverty, and improve animal welfare.

At the time of writing, Daniell’s campaign has raised $64,152.91 to create positive change for 19,345 humans, and 96,229 animals and mitigate 41,343 tonnes of CO2e from the environment. The tennis star from Masterton, on the southeast end of New Zealand’s North Island, is a longtime plant-based athlete and a known advocate of effective giving.

After two years out of competition due to knee injuries, Daniell decided to play one final season of professional tennis. However, he wanted to ensure the season had a purpose beyond the court. On February 21st, in Auckland, New Zealand, Daniell announced he would be finishing his career after the ABS Classic, the same tournament in which he made his ATP debut. More importantly, he committed to donating 50% of his final season’s winnings to twelve charities that protect people, the environment, and animals. He dubbed his final season the Back with Impact Tour, and set a goal to raise $100,000. According to his team’s calculations, a $100,000 donation would help protect 28,000 humans from devastating diseases and malnutrition, and protect 138,000 animals from torturous living conditions, while also mitigating 12,500 tonnes of CO2e from the environment.

At the February announcement of the Back with Impact Tour, Daniell said “I’m incredibly excited to make my final year on tour a successful one and finish on a high, but it’ll be even more rewarding knowing that my on-court success will have a direct impact off the court by contributing to amazing charities who provide the biggest impact for people, animals and the planet.” Daniell has also offered fans the chance to make donations to “12 of the most high-performing charities in the world.” Using the Back with Impact Tour link, fans can simply set a donation amount per point, and as Marcus wins those points the money is donated to charity.

This is hardly Daniell’s first foray into charity work. The Kiwi is the founder of High Impact Athletes (HIA) an organization that mobilizes professional athletes towards effective, evidence-based charities. He founded High Impact Athletes back in 2020, and in just four years the organization has grown to include over 200 athletes, most notably Greek tennis star, Stefanos Tsitsipas, New Zealand cricketer Lockie Ferguson, and professional boxer Joseph Parker. Daniell has also been donating a minimum of 10% of his annual winnings to charity since 2021.

Speaking to me via video call, Daniell said that he created HIA after coming to the painful realization that by not speaking out and advocating for the causes that were important to him he was leaving a lot of potential impact on the table. Daniell said he made his first significant donation to charity in 2015 and built up his donations quickly after that, but when Covid hit he essentially lost his job. The professional downtime provided him with the time and space to ponder how he could maximize his positive impact on the world beyond donations. This period of reflection galvanized him to form a platform for elite athletes to extend their impact beyond their field of play. He is a firm believer that athletes “have a huge potential and real responsibility to use their platforms for good.”

HIA makes it simple for athletes to do so. In fact, Daniell says he believes this is his organization’s true point of difference. HIA takes personal bias out of the equation and uses charity research organizations such as Give Well and Founders Pledge to find the most effective charities to donate to a variety of different causes. This information and transparency ensures that each athlete’s donation is optimized. The donations from the Back with Impact Tour will be split evenly among twelve charities focused on animal welfare, carbon emissions, and global health and poverty. These include organizations like Clean Air Task Force, Good Food Institute, and Helen Keller International.

Daniell says that his care for the environment “came from growing up in New Zealand in a family that loved the outdoors.” He notes he started surfing at a young age and quickly developed a real appreciation for nature. As his professional tennis career took off, he noticed he was “having to catch an ungodly amount of flights every year,” something he “never felt good about.”

Coming across the work of Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer also helped change Daniell’s worldview. Singer’s theories led the Kiwi Olympian to learn how to give effectively, something he began doing once he felt financially secure.

With his tennis career in its twilight, the Olympian is working hard to ensure that athletes are using their platforms to do good. He says his Olympic bronze medal strengthened his credibility and opened many doors, allowing him to grow HIA into a global community of over 200 athletes. Daniell says there are always bound to be “no’s” when discussing athlete impact off the field, but notes that the ideas he is discussing are not really a hard sell with most athletes, many of whom want to be involved in the charity space but lack the trust and time to choose from the various options. HIA provides athletes with transparent and highly impactful charities to align with, and never takes a cut of the donations.

Daniell encourages athletes who are keen to have an impact off the field to reach out to him and actually admits that “the moonshot goal for HIA is that we cease to exist.” He wants athlete advocacy and charity work to be so commonplace that the organization he created back in 2020 is no longer needed. Until that moment comes, he says he wants to grow it to the point where someone else can lead it, so that he can be more involved on the athlete relationship and publicity side.

Since the announcement of his farewell tour back in February, Marcus Daniell’s role as an ambassador for sports on and off the field has grown. The Olympian was recently elected to the International Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission. The 34-year-old was one of four athletes elected to the Commission by over 6,000 of their peers. As part of the Commission, Daniell will work “to ensure that athletes’ viewpoints remain at the heart of all decisions made within the Olympic movement.”

His will be a key voice in conversations about how to use the power of the Olympics to create a positive impact around the world. Moreover, he will bring valuable expertise regarding concern for athlete health related to climate change. Given his body of work off the field, it can only be hoped that Daniell’s mentality of effective giving will be embraced within and beyond Olympic circles.

Daniell best expressed the potential sports have the day he announced his Back with Impact Tour, stating, “As athletes, we have an amazing opportunity to use the power of sport for good and engage fans to help make the world a better place. My hope is that this commitment will inspire both fans and fellow athletes to consider the impact we can collectively achieve.”