Thursday's Dallas Cowboys game will launch the Salvation Army's holiday fundraising campaign. The Cowboys host the Kansas City Chiefs at AT&T Stadium in Arlington
Charlotte Jones, the Cowboys' executive vice president and chief brand officer, says the partnership with the Salvation Army started during the 1990s.
"This was the mid-90s, so the Cowboys had just had some incredible success on the field winning three Super Bowls, so everything was really, really amazing," she said during the Salvation Army's "Doing the Most Good" luncheon. "We were getting all this attention and then all of a sudden, something really bad happened off the field. One of our players made a very unfortunate decision, and overnight it all changed."
In 1996, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader said Michael Irvin and Erik Williams assaulted her while on cocaine. The story was later shown to be false, and the cheerleader pleaded guilty to perjury, but in August , a documentary series called, America's Team: The Gambler and his Cowboys, premiered on Netflix. Irvin talked about a house near the Cowboys' facility in Irving where players would meet women and do drugs.
"I'll never forget sitting at the breakfast table with my parents, and my dad reading the headlines and saying, 'Oh my gosh, look at this. What are we going to do? We need to find a way, if people are as interested in what our guys do off the field as they are what they do on the field, we need to do something, find an organization we can partner with. We need to become the Jerry Lewis of something.' Then he looked at me said, 'Now, go figure it out,'" Jones said.
The following the week, Jones said she met Steve Reinemund who was serving as chief executive of PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division and would later become CEO of PepsiCo as a whole. Reinemund has also served on the Salvation Army's national advisory board.
Jones said Reinemund asked for a meeting.
"I walk into his office, and the first thing he asks is, 'Do you know what charity helps more children than any other in the country?' I said, 'No, sir.' He said, 'Do you know what is the largest service organization in the world?' I said, 'No, sir,'" she said. "Then he said, 'Do you know what the Salvation Army does?' I looked straight at him and said, 'That's the place where you take your old clothes,'" Jones said.
"He said, 'That is our problem. The Salvation Army, its greatest asset, its humility, is also its greatest challenge because they don't walk around talking about all the lives they've saved and all the people they've helped.'"
Jones said Reinemund asked about using the half-time show of the Cowboys game to start the Red Kettle campaign. She said the Salvation Army had previously held a small event in Tulsa while the Cowboys had a high school band performing at half-time.
Reba McEntire performed at the first half-time show for the Red Kettle kick-off in 1997.
"She looked straight at me and said, 'The Salvation Army was my grandmother's favority charity,'" Jones said.
McEntire recorded a song, and Charlotte and Jerry Jones went to NBC with their plan for half-time. Jones said Dick Ebersol told them he was willing to air the show if it was "worthy of network television."
"We stood up, shook hands, shut the door, and my dad grabbed me by the arm and goes, 'Do you know what you just did?'" Charlotte Jones said. "I said, 'I got my first nationally televised half-time show.' He goes, 'No, you just got 15 million dollars' worth of air time for the Salvation Army.'"
Since then, the Red Kettle campaign has raised $3 billion.
In North Texas, the Salvation Army says it provided than 660,000 meals, placed 1,836 people into permanent housing, and provided addiction recovery for 500 people last year.
"These are staggering numbers, but we all know there is more to be done," says Major Robb Webb, area commander for the Salvation Army of North Texas.
The Salvation Army of North Texas has launched a $212.7 million campaign "to end intergenerational poverty and homelessness." Webb says the campaign is centered around a new social services campus.
Webb says the campus would cover 21 acres and be able to serve 31,000 people a year.
"We will expand safe shelter and support to impact more than 4,000 of those experiencing homelessness each year, and we will prevent and end homelessness for about 1,700 men, women and children each year," Webb says.
Webb says the campus would quadruple the capacity to serve families and allow the Salvation Army to help six times more people.
"We will connect our clients to critical services right on the campus to mitigate the barriers to success," he says.
The Salvation Army says last year's Red Kettle campaign raised $1.5 million in North Texas. This year, the organization hopes to raise $1.6 million.
More information is available at SalvationArmyNorthTexas.org/Christmas.