When Lisa Borders, the president of the Women’s National Basketball Association, looks ahead to the coming season, she sees far more than just a game: She sees a moment. Right now “the cultural, political and social zeitgeist, or winds, if you will, are all blowing to the benefit of women,” she says—and the WNBA is ready to make that count.

To that end, the league is launching the Take a Seat, Take a Stand program. The initiative directs a portion of WNBA ticket sales to spectators’ choice of national nonprofits that champion causes ranging from sexual assault prevention to women's health.

In interviews with Glamour ahead of the 2018 season tip-off, women of the WNBA said the Take a Stand drive may be new to the league, but social and political engagement are decidedly not. Instead, Borders says, “This is very much encoded, I think, in the DNA of the WNBA,” and the fund-raising partnerships formalize that aspect of the league's identity.

An anthemic promo video crystallizes the message, coupling footage of WNBA players and pink-hatted marchers on the move: "This season, your ticket supports more than women's basketball," says the clip's closing title. "It supports women."

Ask someone about activism in pro sports, and it’s a fair bet they'll highlight someone like the NFL's Colin Kaepernick, whose “take a knee” protests captured the attention of the country (and the personal condemnation of President Donald Trump). But WNBA players were actually ahead of Kaepernick in using their platform to make their views known.

WNBA president Lisa Borders Dia Dipasupil/Getty

“You might recall in 2016, when there were some unfortunate incidences in communities of color with police, many of our athletes took a stand,” Border said. That summer players from the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx put on shirts that said “Change Starts With Us: Justice & Accountability" and spoke out on the police shootings of two black men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.

Next, members of the WNBA's New York Liberty warmed up for a game in shirts emblazoned with the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #Dallas5. Demonstrations continued within the league—as did objections to fines imposed on players for flouting uniform rules. (The penalties were later withdrawn, with Borders saying the WNBA understood players’ “desire to use their platform to address important societal issues” and would work with their union to facilitate that.)