How Bananas Foster Uses Banana Ball to Support Foster Families

When Jolie Chabala joined Bananas Foster in 2023, there was no polished playbook waiting for her.

There was barely time to find her desk.

Two days after being hired, she boarded a bus for West Palm Beach with the Savannah Bananas, surrounded largely by people she had not yet met and heading toward a job that was still being defined.

“I just kind of showed up on my first day and was like, ‘Want me to work?’” she recalled. “I got on the bus on day three. I didn’t really know anybody.”

Her first assignment was not crafting a nonprofit strategy or speaking with foster families. She started by helping the merchandise team, setting up tents and cases, learning the point-of-sale system and discovering how a Banana Ball event operates from behind the curtain.

It was, she said, a fitting introduction.

“It truly was bananas, my first week.”

That beginning helps explain what Bananas Foster has become.

The official nonprofit of Banana Ball was not built separately from the show and later attached to it. It grew from inside the same Fans First environment, learning from the ticketing, merchandise, entertainment and game-day teams while attempting to answer a much larger question:

How can the joy and reach of Banana Ball help children and families experiencing foster care?

For Jolie, now the director of Bananas Foster, the answer begins with three words.

Celebrate. Educate. Inspire.

“Bananas Foster is the official nonprofit of Banana Ball,” she said. “Our mission is to celebrate the foster care community while educating and inspiring others to get involved.”

A different kind of future résumé

Jolie did not arrive with a traditional nonprofit résumé.

She studied history and communications in college, completed an internship with Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, worked in newspapers and digital media, and later became a marketing director for an outdoor boating company in South Carolina.

She was already a Savannah Bananas fan.

She remembered when the Savannah Sand Gnats left and the Savannah Bananas arrived. She attended games with her family. She and her husband even held their bridal shower at one of the early Banana Ball games.

“I knew what it was like to be a fan,” she said. “I just wanted in. I didn’t know how I would get in.”

She originally applied to become a group experience coordinator.

Knowing the Bananas valued unusual thinking, she walked into her interview carrying a bag of oranges, set them on the table and delivered her opening line:

“Orange you glad I didn’t bring bananas?”

The joke broke the ice, but her “future résumé” became far more consequential.

Rather than focusing only on what applicants had already done, the organization asked candidates to describe what their future could look like. Jolie wrote that she would become the company’s first community director and build a nonprofit around Banana Ball.

She did not get the group experience job.

She did, however, get connected with Emily Cole, who was developing an idea centered on foster care.

Jolie still remembers their first conversation.

There were roughly 400,000 children experiencing foster care, Emily explained, and not enough foster homes to serve them.

What if the demand could someday be reversed?

What if there could be a waiting list of foster families, similar to the enormous demand for Banana Ball tickets?

“If we had a wait list of foster families, it would mean that every child in foster care would be provided a safe and loving home,” Jolie recalled Emily telling her.

Then came the name.

“Jesse wants to call it Bananas Foster.”

Jolie was sold.

Building the nonprofit while learning the show

The first months required her to learn how every major piece of Banana Ball fit together.

She traveled with the team, worked alongside different departments and studied how the organization created its Fans First experience.

The challenge was not simply starting a nonprofit.

It was determining how that nonprofit could become part of an entertainment operation already moving at full speed.

“How does a nonprofit become something that all these teams—the entertainment team, ticket team, merchandise and group experience—can come together and support?” she said.

After several months on the road, Jolie stepped back from traveling to handle the less glamorous but essential work of building the organization.

She completed the federal nonprofit application, developed the business strategy, defined the mission and programs, created the website and logo, built the social-media presence and determined how funds would be used.

Bananas Foster received its IRS determination in May 2023 and officially launched the following month.

The organization then celebrated its first Bananas Foster Family, or BFF.

At first, the plan was modest.

“We had this idea that Bananas Foster would just be in Savannah,” Jolie said.

That changed quickly.

The team realized foster care affected every community Banana Ball visited, and the on-field recognitions became a meaningful part of the show.

Instead of limiting the program to Savannah, Bananas Foster began identifying and celebrating foster families in cities across the tour.

“Why not shine a light on the foster care community in Indianapolis?” she said. “Why not take it to Des Moines, Iowa?”

As Banana Ball expanded, the nonprofit expanded with it.

When multiple teams began playing in different locations at the same time, Bananas Foster moved from being closely associated with one club to becoming the official nonprofit for the entire sport.

“Wherever Banana Ball goes, that’s where we go, celebrating the foster care community,” Jolie said.

Bananas Foster Celebration and Awareness Moment at Banana Ball game in Indianapolis. | R. Kenner French

What donations actually provide

The impact is both emotional and practical.

Bananas Foster provides each game-honored foster family with $500 to help cover expenses surrounding their game experience, including parking and food in stadiums where concessions are not included.

A family attending a game in Savannah may receive all-inclusive food and beverages. A family visiting a major stadium elsewhere could face $15 hot dogs, parking fees and other expenses the nonprofit cannot control.

The stipend allows families to enjoy the experience without worrying that the celebration itself will become a financial burden.

The organization also provides what it calls Potassium Care Baskets to newly licensed foster families or families with an immediate need.

Each basket costs approximately $250 and includes a $200 gift card, along with supplies that can help when a child arrives unexpectedly.

“Kids come with the clothes on their back,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of late-night Walmart runs.”

The needed items can be painfully ordinary:

Diapers.

Shampoo.

Socks.

Shoes.

Clothing.

Underwear.

“You don’t even know you need it until they come to your door,” she said.

Bananas Foster hopes to expand its support, particularly for teenagers experiencing foster care, who Jolie said can be among the most difficult children to place and the easiest to overlook.

The organization would also like to increase the assistance contained in each care basket and eventually direct every donated dollar back into programs serving the foster care community.

“My goal and my dream would be that 100 percent of the donations to Bananas Foster go right back into the foster care community,” she said.

That was not possible for a startup nonprofit in 2023, when donations also had to support staffing and infrastructure.

Jolie believes greater assistance from Fans First Entertainment through grants and in-kind contributions could eventually cover more operational costs and allow donations to flow directly into programming.

“I do see us in five years getting to that point,” she said.

Celebrating rather than exploiting pain

One of the most affecting moments at a Banana Ball game often arrives when a foster family is introduced.

Players and coaches from both teams gather around the family.

The stadium celebrates them.

The moment is emotional without turning the family’s most difficult experiences into entertainment.

That balance is deliberate.

“We’re not out on the field talking about the negative aspects of foster care,” Jolie said. “There are a lot of negative foster care aspects. There are kids who deal with so much trauma and so much negativity.”

Bananas Foster chooses instead to focus publicly on the people who step forward to help.

“We are out there putting a positive light on something that is so dark,” she said. “We’re very particular on the language that we use. We’re out there celebrating these families.”

The philosophy is simple:

Celebrating one family may inspire thousands of people watching in the stadium, on television or online.

“If you celebrate one, you might be able to inspire thousands,” she said.

The ultimate hope remains the same one Emily Cole shared during that first conversation:

Create so many willing foster homes that children are no longer left waiting for a safe place to live.

The foster mother who changed everything

One of the earliest celebrations showed Jolie what Bananas Foster could become.

In 2023, before the nonprofit had established its current nomination system, Jolie spent hours calling foster-care agencies in upcoming tour cities, explaining Banana Ball, introducing the new nonprofit and asking whether they knew someone deserving of recognition.

Indianapolis became a major test.

About 15,000 fans packed Victory Field, making it the largest Banana Ball crowd of that season.

Jolie connected with a single foster mother who worked as a nurse and cared for teenagers.

The game was interrupted by severe weather and postponed, creating unexpected time for Jolie and members of the Banana Ball organization to get to know the woman.

What Jolie learned stayed with her.

The woman had become a foster parent at 22—you read that correctly—after seeing a hospitalized teenager remain at the facility because no foster home would accept the child.

“That just doesn’t fly with me,” the woman decided.

Over the following six years, she welcomed more than 30 children into her home.

She developed a particular commitment to teenagers, including pregnant teens, and was present for the births of multiple babies whose mothers were in foster care.

Jolie was struck by the depth of that commitment:

A young, single nurse not merely providing a room, but walking alongside teenagers through trauma, pregnancy and childbirth when they had few other people available to support them.

“She was nothing short of magic,” Jolie said.

The experience revealed that Bananas Foster’s role went beyond recruiting new foster parents.

The organization could also make existing foster parents feel recognized.

“We have the power to change the course of somebody’s life,” Jolie said. “To make them feel seen, make them feel celebrated, make them feel like everything that they’re doing—and all of that pain and suffering and weight that they’re carrying on their shoulders—is worth it.”

The woman later wrote Jolie a letter, and they have remained in contact.

The story also affected Jolie personally.

After spending months recognizing foster families, she began to feel that celebrating their work was not enough.

“I finally looked at my husband and I was like, ‘I can’t just sit back and celebrate these families,’” she said. “‘We need to do something.’”

They began the licensing process and became foster parents themselves.

The people behind the mission

The commitment to foster care also extends to the Cole family.

Jesse and Emily Cole have adopted two daughters from foster care, and Jolie said their involvement continues away from the stadium and public view.

“There are times when Jesse is out doing his thing with Banana Ball, and Emily could be home doing respite care for families,” Jolie said.

That private commitment mattered to Jolie, particularly because she had admired the Bananas as a fan before joining the organization.

“It’s good to know that the people I looked up to with Fans First Entertainment are who they say they are,” she said.

Jolie does not present herself as extraordinary.

Asked what people should know about her, she pointed to three high-school superlatives:

Most outgoing.

Best dancer.

Everyone’s friend.

“That’s me in all that I do,” she said. “I might not be the smartest person in the room, but I sure enough will be the friendliest person and the first person to go up to you and want to learn more about you and tell your story.”

That instinct has become central to her work.

Bananas Foster may be attached to one of the fastest-growing entertainment properties in sports, but its impact often begins with a conversation, a family’s story and the decision to make someone feel noticed.

Still in the first inning

Bananas Foster remains young.

It began in 2023.

Its programs are still expanding.

Its financial model is still maturing.

The number of people exposed to its message, however, continues to grow alongside Banana Ball.

“We’re putting foster care in front of millions of people,” Jolie said. “The impact of the organization really can’t be measured because of how many people we’re putting foster care in front of.”

Internally, the organization often returns to a line from Jackie Robinson:

A life matters through the impact it has on other lives.

For Jolie, that applies to the families Bananas Foster celebrates, the children they welcome and the fans who may be inspired to help.

Not everyone can or should become a foster parent, she emphasized.

But that does not mean people are powerless.

They can volunteer.

They can donate clothing and supplies.

They can support foster families financially.

They can advocate.

They can learn.

They can use their voices.

“At the end of the day, everybody can do something for the foster care community,” Jolie said.

Bananas Foster has already grown beyond its original Savannah-centered vision, but Jolie does not speak as if the work is nearing completion.

She borrows a familiar phrase from Jesse Cole.

“We’re in our first inning,” she said. “We learn by doing, and we’re just excited to see how the next five years could go for us.”

For an organization built inside Banana Ball, that may be the most appropriate description possible.

The game has started.

The crowd is watching.

And Bananas Foster is only beginning to show what its platform can do!

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