Financials
Financial Support
Special Olympics provides year-round sports training and competition opportunities for children and adults living with intellectual disabilities. For Special Olympics athletes, sport is a platform to provide health and fitness benefits, develop friendships, and to be and feel included in their communities. Special Olympics Oregon is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and an accredited program of Special Olympics International. Each accredited state program independently raises their own funds and builds their own programming, while being a part of a larger global movement that provides requirements, guidelines, and parameters for maintaining accreditation.
In Oregon, we run a very lean operation made up of three pillars:
Local programs
30 volunteer-run, county-based programs across the State that are responsible for finding volunteer coaches, renting practice facilities, and coordinating logistics for the athletes to train for 8 weeks in each sport.
Unified Champion Schools
150 schools across Oregon have incorporated our programs that include Unified sports where students with and without intellectual disabilities train and compete in sports together, Unified leadership opportunities focused on building Respect campaigns within their schools, and all-school assemblies to promote inclusion and reduce bullying.
State Office
Small staff (less than 15) responsible for providing support and infrastructure for the local programs and Unified Champion Schools, finance and accounting, statewide fundraising and marketing initiatives, and engagement in the global mission.
We raise funds to support our mission in several ways: donations, grants, corporate partnerships, and fundraising events (we do not receive funds from the Kennedy Foundation). To learn more about how to support Special Olympics Oregon, you can learn more here. The significant expenses we need to offset during an average year include:
- Support and infrastructure to empower and enable thousands of volunteers
- Transportation
- Lodging
- Uniforms
- Sports equipment
- Meals for athletes and coaches
- Practice and competition venue rentals (golf courses, aquatic centers, bowling centers, ski hills, gymnasiums, fields, and more)
To view our financial statements, please see the links below. It’s important to note that there was a management change in June 2018 when the organization fell into a state of financial collapse. New management and new board leadership worked tirelessly to restructure the debt that had been incurred and rebuild a broken fundraising model. The results achieved in less than two years are evidenced in the 2019 and 2020 financial statements.