TEMPE, AZ — Derek Loomis, a 38-year-old brown belt and owner of Vanguard Jiu-Jitsu, launched a GoFundMe this week asking his 114 active members to help fund a $42,000 expansion into the adjacent storefront, which was a frozen yogurt shop until November.
The campaign, titled “Help Vanguard Grow — Invest In Your Mat Space,” offers tiered rewards. Twenty-five dollars gets your name on a plywood “Founders Wall” in the new room. One hundred dollars gets a free month of training. Five hundred dollars gets a private lesson with Loomis himself.
“This isn’t charity,” Loomis said in a four-minute Instagram video filmed from inside his Tacoma. “This is community. You’re not donating. You’re investing in the place where you train.”
Members currently pay $189 per month, a $150 enrollment fee, and $60 annually for the mandatory holiday seminar. A rashguard with the gym logo runs $55. The GoFundMe would fund demolition of a shared wall, 1,200 square feet of new Zebra mats, and what Loomis described as “a proper warm-up area so we’re not doing shrimps into the cubbies anymore.”
Reaction among members has been mixed.
“Of course I donated,” said Tara Modica, a two-stripe white belt who has trained at Vanguard for seven months. “This gym is my second family. Derek gave me confidence. He gave me community. The least I can do is give him forty thousand dollars to knock down a wall.”
Modica contributed $200, which she noted is slightly more than one month’s tuition for the gym she is also helping to build.
Others were less enthusiastic.
“I own a landscaping company,” said Marcus Healy, a purple belt who has trained at Vanguard since 2019. “When I needed a new truck, I didn’t ask my clients to Venmo me. I took out a loan. Like a business. Because that’s what this is.”
Healy added that he once brought up the gym’s pricing at a team meeting and was told, “This isn’t a transaction, it’s a journey.”
“It was a transaction,” Healy said. “I had just paid my monthly dues.”
The campaign reached 31% of its goal within the first four days, buoyed by a $2,500 donation from Loomis’s mother, who does not train. Several members shared the link on their Instagram stories with captions like “family over everything” and “OSS.” One blue belt who asked not to be identified said he felt “socially trapped” after the link was posted in the mandatory team group chat.
“I don’t want to be the guy who didn’t donate and then has to drill with Derek on Monday,” he said.
Loomis addressed concerns about the optics in a follow-up post, clarifying that donations are “completely voluntary” and that “nobody will be treated differently based on whether they contribute.” He then added a $1,000 tier that includes a reserved parking spot and early access to open mat sign-ups.
The frozen yogurt shop next door closed after eight months. Its owner could not be reached for comment but did leave a one-star Google review of Vanguard that reads, in full, “Loud. Smells. Parking is a nightmare. Good luck.”
As of press time, the Founders Wall had 23 names on it, and Loomis was asking in the group chat if anyone knew a contractor who “trains and would maybe cut us a deal.”