About the Charity
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Sports & Recreation
Mission
Special Olympics Georgia provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them ongoing opportunities to build fitness, show courage, and share in friendship with their families and community.
Favorite Features
Event cloning, campaign page builder, volunteer management and check-in, leaderboards, and customer support.
Fundraising Wins
Increased fundraising for 2026 Polar Plunge by 12% compared to the year prior.
Saved hours of setup each year by cloning State Games and Polar Plunge campaigns.
Moved State Games volunteer check-in from paper and spreadsheets to laptops and iPads onsite.
A Lean Team Behind a Statewide Event Calendar
Special Olympics Georgia runs three State Games a year, plus a full slate of fundraising events, with a staff of about 14 people. Every program is free to athletes and their families, so fundraising carries the cost of everything from venues to hotel rooms.
"We don't charge athletes or their families to participate in programs. It's all completely free of charge to them. So anything that they get registered for, it all comes through fundraising, and it all goes directly back to them to cover facilities, venues, equipment, meals, travel, and hotel." — Conner King, Torch Run and Events Manager, Special Olympics Georgia
Conner oversees the Law Enforcement Torch Run, a partnership with law enforcement agencies across Georgia that accounts for roughly a quarter of the organization's annual budget. His calendar includes Polar Plunge, Cops at Donut Shops, and events with Topgolf. Each one runs on a tight timeline, often in person, with little room to troubleshoot on the fly.
For years the team ran its fundraising on GoFundMe Pro, formerly known as Classy. As the pro plan costs added up, it started looking for something that would cost less without making a small team work harder.
"The biggest thing was cost for us, and even the yearly plan for Pledge It is still significantly less than what we were paying for Classy." — Conner King, Torch Run and Events Manager, Special Olympics Georgia
Turning Every Event Into a Repeatable Playbook
Special Olympics Georgia began moving its events to Pledge It, and it eventually became the team’s main platform. Conner noticed right away how quickly colleagues picked it up, including those less comfortable with technology. The settings spell out what each option does, and he can flip between tabs to see changes on the campaign page instantly.
With so many recurring events, duplicating became the feature the team leans on most. The State Games, Polar Plunge, and similar events start from last year’s campaign and get tailored from there.
"It's very nice to not have to set up everything from scratch every single time. Even when we have an event that's similar but not the same, we're able to duplicate it and then tailor it a little bit to what we need." — Conner King, Torch Run and Events Manager, Special Olympics Georgia
The State Games team also uses Pledge It for donations and volunteer management, including blocks of slots reserved for sponsor volunteers. On game day, staff bring laptops, iPads, and hotspots to check volunteers onsite.
"It used to all be either pen and paper or spreadsheets, and sometimes people can get confused with that. Now we're able to just look up a volunteer, check them in, tell them where to go." — Conner King, Torch Run and Events Manager, Special Olympics Georgia
When something comes up mid-campaign, Conner goes straight to the same support contact he's worked with before.
Polar Plunge Is Just the Start
Polar Plunge is Conner’s biggest event of the year and a cornerstone of the Law Enforcement Torch Run, which funds about a quarter of Special Olympics Georgia’s budget. Now that every campaign lives in one place, Conner can see exactly how this year’s event compares to the last. In 2026, Polar Plunge raised 12% more than it did in 2025.
“I’m able to see where we were the year before at that same time. We were doing much better for this past year’s Polar Plunge than we did in 2025.” — Conner King, Torch Run and Events Manager, Special Olympics Georgia
Competition helps drive that growth. For team-based fundraisers, leaderboards let supporters watch teams and individuals move up and down in near real time, and that friendly rivalry gives people one more reason to give.
Athlete agencies have started running their own campaigns, too, including a bowling fundraiser where supporters pledged based on how many pins each athlete knocked down. Donors could follow along on the athlete’s profile, and Conner is already looking for ways to bring that pledge format into more of his own events.
Special Olympics Georgia is also expanding how it fundraises. After a walkthrough from the Pledge It team, the team is running its first auction on the platform at an event this year. This will be a test run for a much bigger moment next year, when the organization hosts a conference expected to bring in more than 1,000 people.
For teams just getting started, Conner suggests digging into the campaign settings and support documentation first, since most answers are already there.
“If all else fails, reach out, and that problem is always solved for us.” — Conner King, Torch Run and Events Manager, Special Olympics Georgia
