Brightspot

“David Gang and Brightspot have been a very significant part of who we are as a global movement. David has been our strategic visionary on technology for more than 16 years, helping us create a vision for how our movement should reinvent itself digitally. He has led us through every twist and turn in the digital landscape.” Timothy P. Shriver, Chairman of the Board

We have entrusted the talented, creative, and capable team at Brightspot to be our lead digital partner for years. This gold-medal partnership has achieved the development of 5 new web sites, 2 major redesigns of www.specialolympics.org, and the creation of templates for all 220 programs worldwide. Brightspot has been an integral guide and collaborator in the quickly evolving online presence of Special Olympics around the world.

The smart and easy-to-use design of the Special Olympics website debuted in late 2011 after almost a year of consultation and design work between Brightspot and Special Olympics. The design incorporates numerous features that take the Special Olympics site to a new level.

On the new site, the pictures and news stories change depending on where in the world a visitor is coming from. Core content is available in six languages. Facebook and Twitter are not only deeply integrated but also targeted to each visitor's location.

100% of their remarkable work connected with the project was donated by Brightspot.

In 2008, when the movie "Tropic Thunder" stirred anger for its insensitive and relentless use of the word "retard," Brightspot stepped in to create a new website called R-word.org. Brightspot created the ability for visitors all around the world to voice their outrage at the hurtful use of the words "retard" and "retarded" and did it over a weekend and at no cost to Special Olympics.

Since then, R-word.org has been revamped and expanded by Brightspot, which has donated hundreds of hours of time for that project and others.

Touching and informative tributes to Special Olympics co-founders Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver debuted in 2009 and 2011, respectively. These sites invited visitors to post their own offering on a tribute wall and read page after page of those written by others. “The sites that Brightspot designed and built for the Shrivers were beautiful, wonderful, and so fitting for the couple who had helped change the world,” said Peter Wheeler, Chief of Strategic Properties for Special Olympics International.

Brightspot has also donated its strategic, design, and development expertise to create sites for A Very Special Christmas albums, contributing to the awareness and excitement around a fundamentally important source of funding for Special Olympics. In another very beneficial project, Brightspot developed a single, consistent set of templates that all 220 Special Olympics programs around the world, including each of the 50 domestic statewide programs, could use for its dedicated site.

The most recent collaboration between the two partners is LA2015.org. Brightspot has planned a site unlike any that has come before it for the Summer World Games. They have envisioned a dynamic central hub where athletes, families, fans, and volunteers will be able to publish content immediately from any location on any device, enabling us to tell the full story of the games for the first time.

The enduring partnership between Special Olympics and Brightspot is one for the record books. Said Peter Wheeler, “Brightspot has been everything we could ever dream of as a partner. They help us tell our stories to audiences around the world in a way that we never could have done without them. They are visionaries that guide our path in the ever-changing digital world.”