Outlining Our Strategic Plan for 2025 to 2030

Enhance, Expand, Empower. We’ve extended our Strategic Plan: Growing an Inclusive New York, 2025 – 2030.

Why did we extend the existing plan?

Special Olympics New York last outlined its Strategic Plan in 2021. We set an ambitious agenda for 2022-2025 in the aftermath of a global health crisis that underscored an urgent need for our programming in the lives of people with intellectual differences and their families. As that plan enters its final phase, we are proud to have achieved meaningful progress. We have not only rebuilt—we have evolved. Our reach has expanded, our partnerships have deepened, and our ability to inspire inclusion throughout New York communities, workplaces and schools is stronger than ever.

Reflecting on our progress over the last three years as well as the impact we have—and have yet—to make, we decided to follow SOI’s lead and extend our plan to 2030. It is a comprehensive plan that our state still so urgently needs. It is a well-conceived plan that Special Olympics New York is still so strongly positioned to deliver.

What’s new in the plan?

Strategic Plan 2025–2030: Growing an Inclusive New York is both a continuation and an evolution of our work. It remains grounded in three strategic goals—Enhance, Expand, and Empower. However, each goal has been refined by our 2022-2025 experiences and strengthened by clear objectives, measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and thoughtful cost projections to guide our work.

Perhaps the most powerful lesson we learned over the last three years is that achieving our goals will require more than funding. It will require innovative new models for partnership. As demonstrated in our work with New York City Public Schools, progress happens when investment is mutual. In the years ahead, we will prioritize the needs of our partners, adapting our delivery to meet them where they are. An example of this you will see soon is a grant opportunity we will pilot with targeted agencies that commit to starting new training clubs and bringing new athletes and coaches to our movement.

At the same time, we will pursue opportunities to streamline our own operations so that our programs become more nimble and planful for our staff as well as our stakeholders. An example of this approach is our work toward seasonal registration.

Our vision

At the heart of our plan are two guiding forces: an internal statement of Core Values and an external vision for an inclusive New York—one where Special Olympics programs are reasonably accessible from every home, where Unified Sports and inclusive activities are embedded in every school and community, and where every New Yorker understands the life-changing impact of Special Olympics.

We envision a time when every family blessed with a newborn who has an intellectual difference is immediately made aware of the opportunities for inclusion and support accessible to them, opportunities that are equal to— if not in excess of— those available to all youth.

This is more than our vision; it is our responsibility. Through continuous improvement and disciplined focus, we aim not only to grow an inclusive New York—but to sustain it for generations to come.