The cookbook

How we develop, expand and sustain our efforts to increase the number of children with special needs and disabilities participating in leisure and club communities.

Who we are

Specialsport is a volunteer-based non-profit NGO working to ensure that all children and young people with special needs and disabilities can be part of an active leisure and club community.

Our mission

Our goal is to transform society to recognize the right of all children to participate in club life and leisure activities, with a special focus on children and young people with special needs and disabilities in special schools.

Our vision

Our vision is that by 2025 we have introduced 75% of all special schools in Denmark to our sports internship method, helping their students into leisure activities through a systematic effort at their school, so that the many positive potentials of leisure activities for personal, social and health development will also be available to all students with special needs and disabilities for years to come.

What we do

The five pillars of our work

1. Mapping opportunities

We share knowledge about special sports. We publish physical guides to special sports and have developed the world’s first online portal that combines barrier-reducing search criteria and club opportunities for people with disabilities.

2. Support for children and families

Advice on leisure options and practical help with anything that may stand in the way of participation.

For example, we work with the child’s motivation, financial help, practical support in the activity and accompaniment.

3. Collaboration with clubs.

Help with starting up special teams, including advice on inclusion of children and young people with special needs and disabilities in clubs. Practical help, training tools, courses for coaches and managers, and help finding participants for the teams.

4. Collaboration with schools

Tried and tested concept for reaching special school children in middle school and above by identifying students’ wishes for leisure activities. Hands-on introduction to club life in close collaboration with school staff and parents.

5. Developing data and knowledge

Development and dissemination of data and knowledge about children and young people’s conditions for leisure and club life when they have a special need or disability.

Our philosophy

Our ethical ground rules in transforming society to fulfill the right of all children and young people to an active leisure life.

We develop our work and organization together with volunteer employees, working side by side to help families, innovate and co-create projects.
We strive to be an organization for and with people with disabilities and to have an inclusive mindset, no matter what barriers arise in working as an employee or volunteer.
Volunteering is a fundamental part of the organization – even when you are a paid employee.
As a paid employee in the organization, you are always responsible for bringing volunteering into your workspace, with guidance and development as a guideline – whether it is the volunteer who guides the paid employee or vice versa.
Everyone in the organization must ensure a good balance between work in Specialsport.dk and other parts of their lives.
We strive for growth for our mission – not growth for our organization.
We work to create and promote equality regardless of disability, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic factors.
To ensure the sustainability of our efforts, we always aim to anchor our long-term solutions outside the organization.

Rules of the game

The basic principles of how we work with children and their families.

All children can benefit from and enjoy leisure activities and communities.
Anything that stands in the way of bringing a child closer to an active leisure life, we see as a barrier that it is our responsibility to remove.
We don’t let go of a child and family that needs our support until the mission is complete.
A thorough assessment of each child’s needs is necessary to select an appropriate leisure activity.
We always focus on the child’s needs and not the child’s disability.
We always listen to the child’s voice and know that each child is doing the best they can in the situation.
Our approach to children and young people in communities is based on the basic principles of the Low Arousal mindset and related techniques.
It’s never the child who needs to adapt to an activity. It’s up to the activity to find the right way to include the child.
We use behavioral design principles when working with families and clubs.
It should be easy for families to access our help and support.
We seek to strengthen all actors within special sports, including children, families, clubs, schools and municipalities.
We follow an evidence-based method and go to great lengths to adapt our practice to the most current and solid scientific evidence.

How we run the organization

Our workplace, employees and recruitment

We are 9 people employed, sharing 5 full-time positions, around 90 volunteers and 7 volunteer board members.
We have one central office, located in the Capital Region, which is run via donations. We are flexible in relation to where the office is located depending on which company is donating premises. Right now we are located in Copenhagen Municipality.
We also work from home workplaces and from ‘once a week office space’ at special schools in various locations (currently at schools in Aarhus, Rødovre and Copenhagen).
We are happy with internships, fleks jobs, work trials, students and so on.
We meet online and communicate about work via a visual online platform (Trello) that cancels time and place, while creating a good workflow and easy accessibility for people with attention disorders.
We run our internal communication in both Danish and English, and are happy to collaborate with volunteers from abroad and foreigners who live in Denmark for a shorter or longer time.
We create interest-based work teams that bring together volunteers for learning or development tasks, and we strive to make Specialsport.dk a place where you as a volunteer can grow and become more skilled.

Our economy and business partners

The basics of our economy

Our annual accounts and reports are available on our website for each year since 2014.
In 2019, we became nationwide and meet the requirements to apply for public operating subsidies.
Our main sponsor in 2022-24 is the Egmont Foundation.
We have operating agreements with various municipalities.
We are also continuously looking for different pools and funds, and we are looking for sponsor support for specific things and activities.
We try to get sponsorships for everything we do. For example, we get sponsored office equipment.
We value quality very highly when it comes to materials and tools for the work we do around families and clubs.
We have developed a purchasing policy that balances the need for quality and price, and we always obtain several offers before making purchases.
We have strict internal policies for how we handle our accounts and payments. We work in accordance with the authorities’ guidelines and the requirements for public institutions, and our accounts are audited by an authorized auditor.