The Ordinary Marathoner Foundation, Inc. has recently been approved by the IRS as a tax-exempt non-profit and is now OPEN for business. Beginning as a podcast, the Ordinary Marathoner community developed into a global, online group of runners and endurance athletes.

Runners are a supportive and generous bunch of people. The Foundation’s Advisory Board is tasked with creating programs that make the sport available to people who can benefit from its many health and wellness aspects. Increasingly, the evidence that exercise not only contributes positively to physical health, but mental health as well, is overwhelming.

CEO Scott Riecke states, “Our mission here is to expose our sport to those who may benefit from its positive contributions to health and wellness. We currently have programs in development to bring running clinics to children, provide comprehensive training to autistic athletes, devise training groups and provide equipment for military veterans, introduce former athletes to sports like triathlon to combat post-athletic depression, and develop a track club for the hearing impaired.”

As these programs move towards the implementation stage, the excitement within the organization is palpable.

“We knew we had a great bunch of people in our community,” explains CEO Scott Riecke. “When you take such a generous group of people and give them an avenue to do good in the world, great things happen. We have barely gotten off the ground and already we are sensing the incredible potential this Foundation has to improve lives.”