COVID-19 Transforms Our Special Olympics Fundraiser

For my management class in the spring of 2020, I was randomly assigned to a group, and the goal of the project was to enhance a nonprofit organization by managing a project that will make a difference. I was part of the group "Charitable Chicks," and we collaborated with various members of the Special Olympics community to create a fun and new way to engage the athletes while promoting physical fitness and health and wellness. My role throughout the entire project was to edit all of the videos, upload them to YouTube, and create all of the graphic content.

Our project evolved drastically because of the effects of Covid-19, but our overall goal remained the same. Our goal was to increase communication within the Special Olympics community while promoting physical fitness. This goal was accomplished because of the hard work and dedication from the members of Charitable Chicks and our supervisor Chris Hopkins and the various Special Olympics coaches who guided us along the way.

Before COVID-19, we originally created an inclusion park for the annual Special Olympics Polar Plunge the last weekend of March. The main point of the inclusion park was to create more communication throughout the Special Olympic community and make the event a celebration. We were in charge of organizing a list of fun activities and ensuring the inclusion park went smoothly.

However, due to the Pandemic, we could not go through with the event and had to take our project online. To maintain our goal of increasing communion, emphasizing inclusion, and encouraging physical fitness, we created a website. We created, filmed, and edited videos on this website to promote physical fitness and health and wellness. Click here to view the website.

My group members filmed a total amount of five videos that I edited and posted on YouTube. Our group filmed two exercise videos, two health and wellness videos, and one challenge video to break it further down. The videos were a success, with 70 views as of April 26th, 2020, and the number continues to rise. Each team member was a part of either the filming or editing process and posting other non-video blog-type posts to the website.

The Special Olympic Rhode Island community was able to view the website and YouTube videos after our nonprofit promoted our project in an email sent out.

In one of the five videos, we included an interactive "Exercise Challenge" where members can send their favorite exercise activity in a cumulative video where all video responses would be included. This video replaced the original "Polar Plunge" event where members would still be engaged in some challenges that required physical effort. The challenge video and the four others were also a great way for us to accomplish our goal of increasing communication, promoting physical fitness, and emphasizing inclusion.

Throughout this project, I learned several valuable lessons, such as creating a digital contingency plan. Since our original plan had to be canceled because of the coronavirus, we learned how to think creatively and to still follow our mission of connecting the Special Olympics community but instead online. This required us to change our mindset and design an entirely new idea in a short amount of time. This lesson can be helpful in the future once we are in the workforce and have to scratch the original plan and redesign a new one quickly.

Being held accountable for deadlines, quality work, and timeliness with no exceptions was an essential lesson that our group learned. Holding each other accountable to a strict contract is crucial because it creates an incentive to try your hardest. Having the contract be heavily enforced allows all members to be treated equally. This lesson can be applied to our future workgroups.