Buffalo Bills, NFL contributing $400K to help neighborhood in wake of shooting

The Buffalo Bills along with the NFL have announced plans to contribute $400,000 to support the city’s East Side neighborhood in the wake of the mass shooting at a supermarket there over the weekend.

In a statement on Wednesday, the league said it would give $200,000 to the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund, a newly created fund that plans to address long-standing issues in the community such as systemic issues involving marginalized minority communities. 

The other $200,000 will be directed toward the Bills’ own charitable foundation, the Buffalo Bills Foundation, which will work with various nonprofit organizations who work on emergency response efforts to address the immediate needs of the city’s East Side residents.

The Bills’ foundation has partnered with Buffalo Go Green, African Heritage Food Co-op, the Resource Council of WNY and UB Food Lab to provide food resources to those who are unable to find food distribution sites near them, according to the statement. 

“On behalf of the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund, we are most grateful for the generous contributions from the Buffalo Bills Foundation and the National Football League Foundation that will allow us to create real change and emerge from the darkness of this heinous act,” Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, the president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, said in a statement. 

“This Fund is a partnership to build upon the collective desire to take action and to work together as a community to address immediate needs, long-term rebuilding and systemic issues that continue to marginalize communities of color.”

This comes as President Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo on Tuesday to meet with state and local officials and the families of those who died in the shooting. 

Ten people were killed and three others were wounded in the shooting on Saturday when a lone gunman who had espoused racist beliefs opened fire at a Tops Friendly Markets.

Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old resident of Conklin, N.Y., has been charged in the shootings. Authorities said that they will investigate the incident as a hate crime, noting that Gendron specifically targeted Black customers and employees at the supermarket during the rampage.