Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has a decision to make regarding his future with the Kansas City Chiefs as he mulls retirement once again. But as he considers his future, he’s facing a bit of a scandal.
Last month, Kelce was announced as the Kansas City Chiefs’ club winner for the 2025 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, recognizing his community impact through his Eighty-Seven and Running Foundation. However, that foundation has recently come under some strong scrutiny.
According to federal tax records obtained by the Arizona Republic as part of a recent investigation into the charity, Kelce’s nonprofit told the IRS that it spent just 41 cents of every dollar on charity from 2021 to 2024.
Instead of the money going directly to charity, the Arizona Republic investigation found that Kelce’s Eighty-Seven and Running Foundation has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to A&A Management Group, which is a management company co-founded by Kelce’s longtime business managers, brothers Aaron and André Eanes.
Not only that, but the Arizona Republic found that the company had no official president, secretary, or treasurer and had just two board members, which is below the minimum of three required to ensure good governance.
“It appears to function more as an extension of the management company versus as an independent public charity,” said Laurie Styron, the executive director of CharityWatch, an independent charity watchdog group that reviewed the nonprofit’s tax filings for The Arizona Republic. “That’s not how charities work. It’s wrong.”
Aaron Eanes addressed these issues, claiming that the numbers were a result of incorrect tax filings and said that the charity is working to expand its governance.
Eanes told the Arizona Republic that the operational costs for charitable efforts were “mistakenly reported under management rather than allocated adequately to program services.” As a result, the public records do not provide an accurate “indication of where the resources were truly directed,” Eanes claims.
“We have since corrected this: Management fees decreased significantly in 2024 and dropped to zero in 2025,” Eanes said.
“Looking ahead, we are expanding our board of directors, bringing on advisers with nonprofit expertise, and restructuring our reporting processes to better reflect our actual program work. We are dedicated to ensuring this foundation operates at the highest standards,” he added.
Mistake or not, the current numbers indicate that just 56 cents of every dollar spent has gone to charity since the nonprofit was created.
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