The Challenge
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado with sport-specific associations spread throughout the 50 states.
USOPC is responsible for protecting, supporting and empowering America’s athletes, and for fielding US teams for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games as well as various other international events. They receive only very limited federal support at a national level. This means individual sports associations have to raise their own funds to ensure their athletes can prepare for the major games. USOPC approached the =mc consulting decisionscience team to increase support to underfunded sports – both financial and in terms of participation.
How we helped
=mc designed a programme of a national webinar and an onsite masterclass training for senior staff of sports associations in the Colorado Springs HQ.
The aims of the programme were:
- To help senior members of associations to understand the potential of decision science to encourage supporters, foundations and corporations to provide support
- To explore which online techniques could help encourage participation and engagement in sport among the wider community – so promoting health
The webinar offered a basic introduction to =mc’s well-known EASIEST framework to a large number of individuals representing different sports. The focus was on fundraising in a mass setting, largely through online campaigns.
Participants undertook case studies and were able to work on their own challenges guided by =mc’s senior North American consultant, Alan Hutson.
Following this a smaller number of senior sports specialists were invited to the onsite event. This covered:
- Detailed exploration of the importance of system 1 and system 2 in decision making and when to use them
- How framing, goal grading and normalisation could promote greater engagement in sport
- The importance of ethics when using these techniques to avoid ‘sludge’ – manipulation of choice
The Impact
It’s always difficult to quantify the impact of a training programme. But the numbers attending, and the positive response to ideas presented, suggested individuals were energised by the ideas and took back various practical initiatives to their separate associations. What is true is that the US Olympics teams have raised more money than ever before to attend the next Games scheduled for Japan in 2020 and now postponed to 2021. And more people than ever are taking an active part in a wide variety of sports.
Next Steps?
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Clare Segal, Director
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