Every great athlete was once in your shoes. At least, that’s the mantra Michigan track and field runners Yasmine Mansi, a 2025 graduate, and Clare McNamara, a current graduate student, coined when they founded their nonprofit, The SunBundle. The organization aims to provide local communities with fitness education and upcycled athletic gear — putting young athletes, quite literally, into the shoes of their predecessors.
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In the summer of 2024, Mansi traveled to Ismailia, Egypt to race for the Al Ahly club team. Upon her arrival at the event, she was swiftly reminded of her fortunate situation back home. With the Wolverines, Mansi had access to a state of the art hydraulic running track, a personal nutritionist and a brand new pair of shoes whenever she needed them.
These robust training accommodations were a stark contrast to her opponents’ experience in Ismailia. On the day of her race, the heat in Ismailia reached a high of 105 degrees and the sun
beat down relentlessly on the track. When Mansi looked down the starting line at her competitors’ feet she realized that some of them were racing entirely barefoot. The image of bare feet on a scorching track stuck with her from the finish line all the way back to Ann Arbor.
After the race, she returned to the Ross School of Business for her junior year, where she balanced her entrepreneurship courses and accounting meetings with rigorous track practices and extracurricular clubs. Mansi was heavily involved in other organizations including the American Advertising Federation and the Muslim Student Business Association, where she served as the president. When Mansi first enrolled in the business school, she knew she wanted to own her own company in the future, but with the hectic nature of her schedule, she didn’t think it was possible. However, disparities in athletic resources pushed her to take the leap.
“I always wondered, if people who lacked resources had the right ones, how far they could go?” Mansi told The Michigan Daily. “What level could they reach with their talent if they just had that?”
Mansi officially launched her nonprofit, The SunBundle, in 2023. The mission of the organization is to empower athletes in underserved communities by supplying physical resources and educational information. The name, SunBundle, is an homage to the scorching sun during her race in Egypt. As Mansi saw the runners next to her fly down the track without any foot protection, she was inspired by their grit and dedication despite the conditions — traits she wants to invoke for the recipients of the care packages.
The basic business model consists of collecting pre-loved athletic shoes via donation boxes around campus, hosting events for volunteers to assemble care packages and identifying schools and homeless shelters in the area to be recipients. Each package contains a pair of refurbished athletic shoes, a pair of socks, personal hygiene products, a goal-setting notebook and a notecard with general fitness information. In addition, the packages may be customized based on the donation site, with some schools receiving racing spikes and other athletic gear for their racing teams. The SunBundle identifies locations in need by using a software that targets schools with high percentages of students benefiting from free and reduced cost lunches.
At the beginning, Mansi orchestrated each step of this process entirely on her own, as well as writing grant proposals and promoting the organization on social media. Owning a company is more than a full-time job, and Mansi started to feel the weight of building her company while also being a student athlete. But Mansi wouldn’t be by herself for long. Soon, Mansi discovered that some of her teammates shared her passion for entrepreneurship and supporting young athletes, and the load began to lighten.
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McNamara has been a long-time teammate and friend of Mansi’s, racing together since they were teenagers at Northville High School. When Mansi started The SunBundle, McNamara was one of the many teammates that became involved with the program, showing up to events and assembling care packages alongside Mansi.
As a fellow Business Analytics major, McNamara became interested in the technical side of operations, and when a position on the executive board of The SunBundle opened in January 2024, McNamara stepped in.
“If we saw each other in the training room and we were doing our recovery, or passing each other in the locker room, we’d be like, ‘I had this idea for SunBundle,’ ” McNamara told The Daily.
Other teammates also took interest in the organization and its goals. Currently, four out of five positions on the executive board are filled by Michigan track and field athletes. Aside from Mansi and McNamara, graduate students Leah Doezema and Lucy Petee serve as the Vice President of Engagement and Vice President of Marketing, respectively. Having student athletes as active members of the organization helps promote the message and maintain connections with the University and volunteers. Additionally, the perspective of the athletes drives one of the main pillars of the SunBundle care packages: education.
Alongside the athletic items, each SunBundle package contains an information booklet with guidance on proper nutrition, hydration and step-by-step guides on stretching and cool down routines to keep your body in shape.
“We don’t want to just drop off a pair of shoes at a school, we want to create an experience for those athletes,” Mansi said. “We recognize that underserved communities don’t not only have physical resources, but they also don’t have educational resources. We want to be able to entirely use our experience to help benefit those communities.”
Since the growth of the organization — from Mansi as a single contributor to an entire team of dedicated members — SunBundle has raised over $12,000, collected 568 pairs of shoes and donated 380 care packages. Having student athletes work behind the scenes has dramatically increased the impact of SunBundle and is one of the unique aspects of the organization that allows it to fulfill its goals of inspiring young athletes and providing them with the resources to thrive.
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As the original founders of The SunBundle graduate, opportunities for expansion and change in the company are imminent. Alongside these internal shifts, the entire business of college athletics is rapidly changing.
In the wake of the House vs. NCAA ruling, college athletes at Division I schools are entitled to direct compensation for their Name, Image and Likeness. These expanded rights allow college athletes to participate in brand endorsements, public appearances and social media content independent of their contract with universities.
This ruling ushers in a new era of opportunity for student athletes with social media presences, and The SunBundle team wants to harness the power of that group. Mansi and McNamara are seeking to create a student ambassador program within the nonprofit to spread the word about the company. While big names in college athletics would provide name recognition and a larger sphere of influence, the most important role of student athlete ambassadors is to inspire the next generation of athletes. SunBundle’s holistic culture of community building even bleeds into their marketing.
It isn’t always possible, but The SunBundle team makes an effort to appear in-person to donate their care packages to local schools. Currently, the original SunBundle team focuses their efforts on communities proximal to Ann Arbor and the Metro Detroit area. As a result, the schools greatly appreciate the impact of having supplies donated directly from the hands of University of Michigan athletes.
“When I was growing up, seeing a student athlete from Michigan was such a big deal for me, and it was something like, ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up,’ ” McNamara said. “We try to have our outreach events in communities that are near us. We’ll go to Ypsilanti schools (where) a lot of them are really big Michigan fans so that’s an experience for them that will stick with them for a long time and kind of inspire them.”
Keeping this in mind, Mansi and McNamara recognize that spreading The SunBundle to all areas in the Big Ten could have a unique impact. For young students in Southeast Michigan, a visit and a SunBundle from a Wolverine athlete could make their year. But for those growing up in the greater Lansing area, a Michigan State Spartan might be their role model, and even farther across the Big Ten region it could be the Ducks or the Scarlet Knights.
For Mansi and McNamara, one of the many joys of seeing SunBundle expand its reach has been the outpour of support from fellow students and community volunteers. Establishing satellite offices at other universities not only gives the organization a self-sustaining approach that is important for its long-term lifespan, but it also provides more opportunities for students to donate, volunteer and serve their communities across the country.
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While the company has grown leaps and bounds within the last year and both leaders have been able to take on salaried positions, they are treating the next few years post-graduation as a trial run of working for The SunBundle full-time. As the initial founder, Mansi recognizes that if she decides to pursue a job in the corporate sphere, it will be difficult to part ways with something she has put so much time and personal effort into.
“We always realize that our main thing with The SunBundle is being able to create something long-lasting, where people can create impact for others,” Mansi said. “Even if we do something else in the future, having that be something that’s always running in some capacity, that’s success to us.”
Whether or not Mansi’s life leads her toward another career path, she can look back at her past self and safely say that taking the plunge alone was worth it. Two years ago on the starting line of a summer race in Egypt, an idea was born. In its wake, Mansi has created a successful nonprofit with room to grow, grown a network of dedicated volunteers and employees and inspired hundreds of young athletes with the proper tools to achieve their dreams.
