Special Olympics is racing toward a tech evolution. The athletes are leading the sprint
One big kick changed Garrett Utz’ life. At his first soccer practice eight years ago, he booted the ball so high and far, coaches raved about his raw power. Now, the game is taking Utz to new heights – from the Seattle suburbs to pitches in Berlin and Abu Dhabi. “It’s really cool,” he says.
Haleigh Sommers earned her sports glory closer to home, at a bowling alley in Pennsylvania. From her wheelchair, she nudged ball after ball down a metal ramp and toward the pocket – knocking over enough pins to post a personal high, 140. “Pretty exciting,” she says.
Their triumphs came at events hosted by Special Olympics, which provides year-round training and an array of team and individual sports globally for nearly 4.6 million people with intellectual disabilities.
Utz and Sommers, each 28, will bask in those memories for years. But these days, they cherish another feat even more: Helping Special Olympics lean into technology to grow the movement.
Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, the organization is building a digital “center of excellence” to make it easier for athletes to register online for sports and to help mobilize millions of volunteers who serve as event organizers, coaches, health specialists and fundraisers.
Selected athletes and volunteers were invited to use the new interface and share their opinions on its design and functionality, ultimately shaping the portal’s look and feel throughout its development.
“Even though I have a disability, I can give feedback – and it’s heard and listened to,” Sommers says. She has cerebral palsy. “It’s kind of an ego boost, I guess you could say. I didn’t think I would be this involved in Special Olympics when I started. It’s crazy to me!”
“At the end of the day,” adds Utz, “this is about: How can we – as athletes and parents and guardians and caregivers – make Special Olympics the best nonprofit organization we can? I’m glad we don’t have to fill out 20 pages of registrations anymore, that we’re going to the 21st century.”
That tech evolution is all about nurturing inclusion – the organization’s driving purpose since 1968 when Eunice Kennedy Shriver led the first International Special Olympics Summer Games at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
Shriver, sister of President John F. Kennedy and senators Bobby and Ted Kennedy, was inspired by her sister, Rosemary, who had an intellectual disability. Together, the sisters sailed, skied or played football – moments that convinced Shriver people with intellectual abilities can become exceptional athletes, and that sports can help them accomplish big things if given an equal chance.
“We’re trying to address a barrier to entry for participation in our program,” says Nathan Cook, chief information officer with Special Olympics. “We serve a population of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, meaning we need to build systems and processes that align with their unique abilities.
“We really wanted to look at a way to meet them where they’re at and … empower them through the registration process so they’re able to get on the field and participate.”
To fuel that redesign, the organization invited people with intellectual disabilities to tell them what Special Olympics “systems and tools work well for them,” which experiences were easy or hard to use, and what systems, tools or experiences work well for them outside of the Special Olympics, Cook explains. Their feedback guided the creation of a prototype.
After several prototype iterations, athletes like Utz and Sommers (also a Special Olympics volunteer) were asked to complete registrations on their own without support or guidance. That athlete testing rolls on today. So does their feedback, lots of it.
Utz, for example, proposed adding the ability to save work in progress to prevent restarting the entire registration if an athlete must pause or if the process gets interrupted. “Make it simple for me,” he says.
And Sommers suggested a more accurate system for telling athletes and volunteers when their registration has been approved. This came after some volunteers received premature approval notifications. “Since our athletes have to do this on their own, it has to be an easy process. If it’s not, they will stop and won’t get to play the sports they like,” she says.
For Sommers, staying in the game is everything. Her sports accomplishments have led to public speaking engagements at her local Rotary Club and at local business groups for women.
“I’ve become more independent. It’s made me want to learn more and grow as a person,” she says.
Collecting user experiences to shape a new product is standard practice in tech. But at Special Olympics, seeking input from the athletes isn’t just standard practice. It’s the soul of the movement.
“We’re an organization that’s led by our athletes, led by people with intellectual disabilities,” says Kymberly Jordan, vice president of global corporate engagement at Special Olympics.
At the same time, the decision to go digital speaks to another core tenet of any nonprofit: hold down costs.
“We’re always trying to do more with less,” Cook says.
To help enable that financial responsibility, Special Olympics turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, an AI-powered CRM solution that helps organizations improve client relationships and streamline operations.
In addition, Cook says he prefers how Dynamics 365 Sales exists “in the same ecosystem” as Microsoft Power Apps, a low-code development platform that helps companies quickly modernize legacy systems. That, in turn, supports Cook’s use of model-driven app design – an approach where components like forms, views, charts and dashboards are added to tables via an app-designer tool.
“It allows us to severely reduce how much we have to invest in maintaining, building and supporting the system over time, reducing our total cost of ownership,” Cook says.
Those tools now underpin the center of excellence, which streamlines the collection and storage of athlete data, including participation history, releases, photos and waivers. Protecting the privacy of that athlete data is so ingrained in the organization’s ethos that Cook calls it, “a bit of an unstated assumption.” They rely on Microsoft Azure to secure their data.
“Azure has adopted best practices such as encryption at rest and transit, among many others, and as a result is able to deliver secure solutions to critical organizations, including those with exacting security requirements (such as government agencies),” he says.
Special Olympics’ center of excellence also will aggregate athletes’ health reports, provide a centralized event calendar spanning all programs and regions, and create a digital “funnel” designed to retain and develop volunteers over time.
“It marks the first time in Special Olympics’ history that we will be able to clearly identify and understand who our millions of constituents are,” Cook says.
That data gap surfaced after the pandemic when the organization sustained a significant loss in participation.
Scores of athletes and volunteers who once were regulars at Special Olympics events stopped coming, and there was no simple way to contact those constituents to invite them to return. The organization is still trying to rebuild its previous participant numbers.
With the center for excellence, however, the organization can do proactive outreach and prevent a future falloff in its numbers, Cook says.
And to help bolster the movement’s longevity, Special Olympics is now leaning on generative AI. Employees are incorporating Copilot for Microsoft 365 into their workflows to complete daily tasks faster and more efficiently.
“It’s just so cool to learn how to use that stuff,” says Jerry Holy, who works as a Special Olympics data management specialist and swims at Special Olympics events. “To be honest, I’m a terrible writer. Copilot makes it easier for me to write emails and keep track of things.”
He foresees AI becoming a recruiting tool for younger applicants who are seeking to broaden their skills.
“It helps grow people’s confidence,” Holy says. “It helps them understand, ‘Hey I’m a part of something bigger. I’m part of something that makes life better for everyone else.’”
Top photo: The start of a men’s 800-meter race at the 2023 Special Olympics World Games in Berlin. (All photos courtesy of Special Olympics)