Removing barriers to Special Olympic Arizona's volunteer programs with Service Enterprise
Since 1968, Special Olympics has aimed to pave the way for a more accepting and joyful world for people with intellectual disabilities. By creating sports leagues for children and adults with intellectual disabilities like Down Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, Autistic Spectrum Disorder and more, the organization uses athletics as a medium to demonstrate the population’s often-overlooked talents and abilities. Today, Special Olympics has gone worldwide, reaching more than 5 million athletes with intellectual disabilities globally.
Special Olympics Arizona is one leg of that global movement. Founded in 1975 and celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, it delivers the Special Olympics mission to the state of Arizona, where it reaches more than 20,000 athletes every year.
Much of that effort is built on volunteerism. At Special Olympics Arizona, volunteers are integral to the nonprofit’s day-to-day activities. Its nearly 25,000 annual volunteers occupy critical roles as everything from coaches and medical staff to scorekeepers and chaperones.
With such a strong reliance on volunteerism to accomplish its mission, Special Olympics Arizona requires effective, up-to-date strategies for volunteer management and engagement. This year, the organization turned to Service Enterprise to meet that goal.
Service Enterprise is a nationally recognized accreditation that represents a nonprofit’s commitment to implementing best practices in volunteer management. Offered in Arizona by the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation in partnership with AL!VE and Points of Light, the accreditation recognizes organizations that strategically leverage volunteerism to achieve social good. Service Enterprise-accredited nonprofits report being better equipped to engage volunteers to meet their missions, as well as an increase in the number of volunteers registered.
But Service Enterprise offers more to nonprofits than just a title. It also takes steps to make sure they meet the accreditation's rigorous standards in volunteer management.
The pathway to accreditation begins with the Service Enterprise Diagnostic: an assessment that uses staff surveys, volunteer records and more to evaluate how well the organization manages its volunteers. Its result is a comprehensive report that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s current practices, assigning a numerical “score” to a variety of categories such as onboarding and resource allocation.
For Special Olympics Arizona, the Service Enterprise was spearheaded by the organization’s Volunteer Engagement Manager, Heather Turkes. As manager of what she calls "all things volunteer," Turkes says she set out to create more "internal structure" around Special Olympics Arizona's volunteer program, especially through behind-the-scenes work like creating formal policies and volunteer handbooks. However, she frequently ran into common barriers such as limited time and difficulty knowing where to start. Turkes believed the Service Enterprise diagnostic could become a valuable solution to both.
“It’s something that had piqued my interest,” Special Olympics Arizona Volunteer Engagement Manager Heather Turkes said. “Looking through the diagnostic [and] being able to have this tangible report to go off of — that [sounded] perfect.”
For nonprofits with limited time and resources, the Service Enterprise Diagnostic is a time-effective solution to the long process of overhauling the way they manage volunteers. By incorporating surveys from multiple staff members and drawing on volunteer records, the diagnostic gains a multi-layered perspective on how volunteers are managed while minimizing additional work for staff.
“The time that went into the diagnostic was a lot less than I was expecting,” said Turkes. “Especially considering everything that we got out of it.”
At the end of the process, Special Olympics Arizona received a diagnostic report that Turkes says served as “a conversation starter” for the beginning stages of making changes to their volunteer program.
“It’s giving me that starting point of, ‘Okay, this is the direction we want to go [and] the areas we need to focus on,’” Turkes said.
Since completing the diagnostic, Turkes has used the results alongside input from her fellow staff members at Special Olympics Arizona to plan her next moves in improving volunteerism at the organization.
This strategic plan includes playing to the organization’s strengths. For example, one category that Turkes is devoting extra time to is “Collaboration,” which she says the organization received high scores in based on positive feedback from her fellow staff members.
“I feel good about that, but we can always improve it,” Turkes said.
Now, Turkes believes in the value of the Service Enterprise Diagnostic for any nonprofit.
“It was definitely worth the time,” Turkes said. “It’s a really great starting point and great tool to kick off if you’re looking to make some improvements.”
Learn more about Service Enterprise during an online workshop
Strategic planning with volunteerism at its core — Nov. 5, 2025
To fully leverage the value of volunteers, it’s important to treat them as a core part of your organization’s workforce—not just an extra hand. That starts with building volunteer roles into your strategic staffing plan.
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