More Than 20 Years On, a Holiday Record Keeps Raising Money

In Philadelphia, Special Olympics is rebuilding its program of sports training and competition for young people with intellectual disabilities. The organization’s affiliate in Thailand is taking the program to the remote hill tribes in the northern part of the country for the first time, and volunteers in the African nation of Djibouti are building a brand-new Special Olympics chapter.

These three very different projects all owe their existence to a series of successful Christmas albums.

Over more than two decades, the albums, titled A Very Special Christmas—which have featured musical superstars like Madonna, Run-DMC, U2, and Stevie Wonder singing holiday fare—have generated more than $100-million for Special Olympics.

“It really has single-handedly enabled us to expand and accelerate our operations internationally,” says J. Brady Lum, president of Special Olympics, which maintains headquarters in Washington.

The album project is only one factor that has helped the organization maintain its fund-raising momentum. The group ranked at No. 94 in the most recent Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s annual ranking of charities by private donations; it raised $189.3-million over all in 2009, generating just under 2-percent growth in a tough year for giving. Since 1991, when The Chronicle began keeping its list, Special Olympics has ranked eighth among all charities in terms of its gain in private donations.

‘Passionate Arguments’

In 1987, when the music project began, the organization had programs in roughly 70 countries, a number that has grown to more than 170 nations.

To make sure the money went to programs that benefit disadvantaged athletes, rather than operations, the project’s founders—the record producer Jimmy Iovine, his then-wife Vicki, and Bobby Shriver, son of the Special Olympics founder Eunice Shriver—created the Christmas Records Trust.

When the trust was founded, there were “very passionate arguments” about the approach it should take, says Kristy Hays, director of strategic investments at Special Olympics.

The central question, she says, was “do we get the money out the door to do the greatest amount of good now, or are we conservative, and do we try to build the trust so that it will continue to help more and more programs over the long term?”

Eventually, the trustees decided to steward the money for the long haul. So far, album and DVD sales have topped $57-million, and investment income has added another $47-million.

To date, the trust has made grants totaling more than $58-million.

Special Olympics employees help plan the Christmas albums and pitch in on things like marketing and communications, but it is the directors of the Christmas Records Trust, with their connections to musicians, producers, and record companies, who do the heavy lifting, says Ms. Hays.

“The trustees are the ones who make this happen,” she says.

While the first A Very Special Christmas album continues to sell the most, the trustees have sought to keep the series fresh by moving into different genres, such as Latin and country music, and last year the trust put together an album featuring young performers, such as Miley Cyrus and Sean Kingston.

All of the artists and production professionals who work on the series donate their services. Yet even with those contributions, the organization has had to adapt to changes in the music industry.

For example, this is the first holiday season in which the albums are available worldwide on iTunes.

Officials at Special Olympics say the organization is very fortunate the series was able to establish itself back in the 1980s, when album sales were still an important source of revenue for the music industry.

Copying the success of A Very Special Christmas would be very difficult today, they say, because touring, rather than album sales, is where the profits are now for musical acts.

Growth in China

Special Olympics counts the dramatic growth of its affiliate in China as one of the grant program’s greatest successes. While just 50,000 athletes took part in the group’s activities in 2000, the organization expects to see the participation of nearly one million athletes by the end of this year.

In 2006 the Christmas Records Trust made an $800,000 grant over five years to Special Olympics China, which the affiliate used to spur additional support, says Ms. Hays.

“They were able to go back to their government and say, ‘We have this. Will you match it?’” she says. “And then, ‘Will you double it?’”

At this point, the Chinese affiliate can pay for its own operations, says Ms. Hays, and it uses grants from the trust to expand into new provinces and experiment with new ideas. She says the trust is making grants in India that it hopes will have a similar catalytic effect.

The Christmas records also played an important role in raising awareness of the Special Olympics mission, says Peter Wheeler, the organization’s chief of strategic properties. “Back in the ’80s, we were not a household name,” Mr. Wheeler says.

Now the organization is looking for ways to have a similar marketing impact in other parts of the world. The group is currently testing Special Olympics-branded shoelaces in Europe.

“This is early kind of stuff,” says Mr. Lum. “But it’s neat in that this is not some agenda out of New Jersey or North Carolina; it’s something out of Warsaw, Poland, and Dublin, Ireland.”