Special Olympics is racing toward technological advancement. And athletes are leading the race.

Photo by Marvin Ebo Gungor/LOC/Marvin Ebo Gungor

A powerful kick changed Garrett Utz’s life. At his first soccer practice eight years ago, he hit the ball high and far, with coaches praising his raw power. Now, the game has taken Utz to new heights—from the suburbs of Seattle to stadiums in Berlin and Abu Dhabi. “It’s pretty amazing,” he says.

Haley Somers found her sporting glory close to home, at a bowling alley in Pennsylvania. From her wheelchair, she pushed ball after ball down a metal ramp toward a pocket — knocking down enough pins to set a personal high of 140 points. “It’s so exciting,” she says.

Their victories came on occasions hosted by Special Olympicswhich provides year-round training and a range of team and individual sports worldwide to approximately 4.6 million people with intellectual disabilities.

Utz and Somers, both 28, will cherish those memories for years to come. But these days, they cherish another accomplishment even more: helping Special Olympics use technology to advance movement.

Benefit Microsoft Dynamics 365 for SalesThe organization is building a digital “Center of Excellence” to facilitate online registration for athletes and help mobilize millions of volunteers who serve as event organizers, coaches, health professionals and fundraisers.

A select number of athletes and volunteers were invited to use the new interface and share their opinions on its design and functionality, ultimately shaping the look of the portal throughout its development process.

“Even though I have a disability, I can give feedback — and people listen and hear it,” says Somers, who has cerebral palsy. “I think it’s a confidence booster, I guess. I never thought I’d be involved in Special Olympics to this extent when I started. It’s crazy to me!”

“Ultimately, it’s about how we can make Special Olympics the best nonprofit we can be, as athletes, parents, guardians and caregivers,” Utz adds. “I’m happy that we no longer have to fill out 20 pages of registrations, and that we’re going to Special Olympics on October 21st.”^street a century.”

The technology’s evolution is all about promoting inclusion—a core goal of the organization since 1968 when Eunice Kennedy Shriver led the first Special Olympics International Summer Games at Soldier Field in Chicago.

Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Bobby and Ted Kennedy, was an inspiration to her sister Rosemary, who had an intellectual disability. The two sisters sailed, skied and played soccer together—moments that convinced Shriver that people with intellectual ability could become exceptional athletes, and that sports could help them achieve great things if given equal opportunity.

“We’re trying to address barriers to participation in our program,” says Nathan Cook, Special Olympics’ chief information officer. “We serve a population with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and that means we need to build systems and processes that accommodate their unique abilities.

“We really wanted to find a way to meet them where they are… and empower them through the registration process so they can get out in the field and participate.”

To support this new design, the organization invited people with intellectual disabilities to tell them about “Special Olympics systems and tools that worked for them,” which experiences were easy or difficult to use, and which systems, tools or experiences worked for them outside of Special Olympics, Cook explains. Their feedback helped create the prototype.

After several prototype trials, athletes like Utz and Somers (also a Special Olympics volunteer) were asked to complete the recording on their own, without any support or guidance. That testing continues today. So are their reactions, lots of them.

For example, Utz suggested adding the ability to save work in progress to prevent the entire recording process from having to be restarted if an athlete has to pause or if the process is interrupted. “Make it simple for me,” he says.

Somers suggested a more accurate system for notifying athletes and volunteers when they are approved to enroll. This came after some volunteers received early approval notifications. “Since our athletes have to do this themselves, the process should be easy,” she says. “If it’s not, they’ll stop and they won’t be able to play the sports they love.”

For Somers, staying in the game is everything. Her athletic achievements have led to public speaking engagements at her local Rotary Club and local women’s business groups.

“I became more independent. That made me want to learn more and grow as a person,” she says.

Gathering user experiences to shape a new product is standard practice in technology. But at Special Olympics, asking for athlete feedback isn’t just standard practice. It’s the spirit of the movement.

At the same time, the decision to go digital points to another fundamental principle of any nonprofit: reducing costs.

“We’re always trying to do more with less,” Cook says.

To help enable this financial responsibility, Special Olympics turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, an AI-powered CRM solution that helps organizations improve customer relationships and streamline operations.

Additionally, Cook says he would prefer to have Dynamics 365 Sales “in the same ecosystem” as Microsoft Power applications, A low-cost development platform that helps businesses quickly modernize legacy systems. This in turn supports Cook’s use of model-driven application design—an approach in which components such as forms, views, charts, and dashboards are added to tables via an application design tool.

“It allows us to significantly reduce the amount we have to invest in maintaining, building and supporting the system over time, which reduces our total cost of ownership,” Cook says.

These tools now support the Center of Excellence, which streamlines the collection and storage of athlete data, including participation history, releases, photos, and exemptions. Protecting the privacy of athlete data is so ingrained in the organization’s ethos that Cook calls it an “unspoken assumption.” They rely on Microsoft Azure To secure their data.

“Azure has adopted best practices such as encryption at rest and in transit, among many others, and as a result is able to deliver secure solutions to critical organizations, including those with stringent security requirements (such as government agencies),” he says.

The Special Olympics Center of Excellence will also aggregate athlete health reports, provide a centralized calendar of events across all programs and regions, and create a digital “funnel” designed to retain and develop volunteers over time.

“This is the first time in Special Olympics history that we will be able to clearly identify and understand our millions of constituents,” Cook says.

This data gap emerged after the pandemic when the organization suffered a significant loss in engagement.

Dozens of athletes and volunteers who were regular participants in Special Olympics events stopped attending, and there was no easy way to contact those participants and invite them back. The organization is still trying to rebuild its previous numbers.

Through the Centre of Excellence, Cook says, the organisation can conduct proactive outreach and prevent future staffing cuts.

To help enhance the longevity of the movement, Special Olympics is now relying on generative AI. Staff integrate Co-pilot for Microsoft 365In their workflow to complete daily tasks faster and more efficiently.

“It’s really cool to learn how to use these things,” says Jerry Holley, who works as a data management specialist for Special Olympics and swims in Special Olympics events. “Honestly, I’m a terrible writer. Copilot makes it easier for me to write emails and keep track of things.”

AI is expected to become a recruitment tool for younger applicants looking to expand their skills.

“It helps boost people’s self-confidence, it helps them understand, ‘I’m part of something bigger, I’m part of something that makes life better for everyone.’”