As the world celebrates Giving Tuesday, three donors have come forward to match donations, dollar for dollar, up to $50,000 each for Tennis Canada’s (Re)Build a #TennisNation campaign. This latest wave of matching pledges means that each contribution that helped the campaign reach $50,000 in public donations is now worth 12 times its initial amount.

Sherry Shannon-Vanstone, the family of the Hon. Michael M. Fortier, PC and an anonymous donor make up the trio of benefactors whose generosity follows that of Bianca Andreescu, Félix Auger-Aliassime, Anton Rabie, a group of past and present Tennis Canada board members as well as a cohort of Canadian Tennis Hall of Fame inductees. With public donations now sitting at roughly $61,000, the fundraiser’s running total stands at approximately $611,000, including matching pledges.

Celebrated across the world, Giving Tuesday takes place each year after “Black Friday”, the informal name for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and marks the “opening day of the giving season”. It is a time for communities, companies and charities to join forces and rally for the causes close to their heart.

Following the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of its Rogers Cup presented by National Bank events in Toronto and Montreal, Tennis Canada is set to lose a staggering $17 million in 2020. All of its programs, from High-Performance development pathways to grassroots tennis, have been affected. That includes the National Tennis Centre (NTC) based in Montreal where nation’s next generation of tennis stars are developed with the goal of following in the footsteps of Andreescu, Auger-Aliassime and Canada’s other elite athletes.

“The new recruits on the professional tour are making their mark at home and abroad,” said the Hon. Michael M. Fortier, PC. “Tennis Canada’s development program is one of the best in the world. We must support them if we want to continue to develop top players.”

“I supported our Billie Jean King Cup team in the Netherlands in 2019,” Shannon-Vanstone added. “And I want to help make sure the next generation of women playing our great sport have everything they need to exceed their own expectations and have the opportunity to represent their country with distinction, like Bianca and so many more have done before them.”

Donations can be made online by visiting www.tenniscanada.com/donate. The (Re)build a #TennisNation campaign officially launched on November 9 on Tennis Canada’s digital platforms and runs until the end of December.

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