Sport has the power to deliver impact everywhere, every day. The Olympic and Paralympic Games boast the largest sporting platform in the world. The fundamental principles instilled in the Olympic Spirit are clear, and promote the Olympic values of Excellence, Respect and Friendship with the whole world to create an international commitment to goodwill.
These values have seen the Olympics and Paralympics garner worldwide reach to over 3 billion people, truly bringing the world together. The Olympic Agenda 2020+5 sets out the IOC’s roadmap to strengthen the role of sport in society, to ultimately build a better world through sport.
The IOC’s long-term partnership strategy, The Olympic Partners (TOP) programme, has worked to integrate purpose as a fundamental pillar, joining together values and commitments to deliver meaningful impact. The long-standing partnership between the IOC, the IPC and Worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Partner Procter & Gamble (P&G) exemplifies this purpose-led approach. P&G aims to activate their Olympic and Paralympic partnership through supporting athletes, their families and the causes they are passionate about, for example, through the Athletes for Good (AFG) programme.
The AFG programme was first launched in 2020, to support athletes’ efforts to give back in the areas of equality and inclusion; environmental sustainability and community impact. AFG empowers athletes to carry out inspiring work beyond the field of play, by awarding financial grants to support social causes and charitable organisations. AFG has supported nearly 70 athletes and has awarded $1.5M to date.
Together, through AFG, the IOC, IPC and P&G have gone beyond traditional sponsorship - leveraging the collective strength of a powerful community of athletes committed to meaningful change.
Ahead of Paris 2024, 20 Olympians and Paralympians were each awarded a $24,000 grant toward their charitable efforts. This recent cohort of AFG grant recipients were selected from over 100 applications and were selected based on several criteria, including their passion for, and personal impact on, their chosen charity partner. With diversity as a key KPI, AFG 2024 recipients represent 11 different nationalities, across 12 sports, and include elite athletes who participated in the Olympic (75% of AFG recipients) and Paralympic (25% of AFG recipients) Games.
To broaden the impact and generate more awareness, these athletes and their chosen charity partners, the IOC, the IPC and P&G told the stories of the AFG recipients over the course of one year in the lead-up to Paris 2024. These stories were promoted globally as well as in local markets around the world through brand partnerships, social media assets, press materials and retail partner activations. For each charitable partnership, the IOC and P&G jointly created video assets to tell the stories of the athletes and charities involved in the AFG programme. The creation and distribution of these videos within local markets amplified the charity endeavours of each programme, and received earned media coverage from 11 different publications, which had a combined 181M unique visitors per month. Publications included Fox Sports, Inside the Games, Global Sustainable Sport TheKnockturnal.
Athlete channels, such as their social media accounts which carry a highly engaged following, were used to share the announcement of the grants and to highlight athlete stories through social-first content series. Likewise, P&G and the IOC played a role in promoting AFG athlete stories across their channels – driving further attention and reach to the incredible work done by these charities and informing the public to inspire positive change.
By harnessing both owned and earned channels, the impact of AFG projects extended beyond the Games themselves, with Inside the Games and The News Market announcing the recipients of the 2024 grants post-Paris. For P&G, the IOC and IPC, the project serves as a shining example of their purpose-led mission. For athletes, it's a chance to inspire a new generation on the social causes close to their hearts. The charities themselves will similarly benefit from increased awareness – bringing the whole project perfectly in line with the Olympian ideal to create an international sense of goodwill.
The results and impact from these grants will offer support across the key pillars of the IOC and P&G’s joint purpose commitments in the areas of Environmental Sustainability, Equality and Inclusion, and Community Impact. The AFG fund also addresses four of the UN SDGs, and has so far already donated more than $1.5M in grants, impacting 30,000 people around the world: from encouraging gender equality in skateboarding; to providing clothes, meals and groceries to low-income families in Colombia; to providing resources to young people with epilepsy.
Some of the charitable organisations chosen in the Paris 2024 cohort will enable:
100 children to attend US Tennis Player Sloane Stephen’s Summer Tennis Camp and Reading Lab for eight weeks.
96 high schools to receive mental health training and support, from To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA), supported by US Surfer Griffin Colapinto
The planting of 100,000 trees across Africa, thanks to British Fencer Marcus Mepstead, through Trees For The Future.
600 disabled people a week to have better access to swimming, thanks to Carlotta Gilli, and ToSwim, that is installing LED systems into swimming pools in underprivileged areas.
“The Athletes for Good Grant will be hugely important in reaching and empowering more athletes to use their platform for good”. - James Farndale, British Rugby Player.
The joint programme between IOC, IPC and P&G is about recognising and celebrating athletes as champions of change away from the crucible of sport by way of supporting the causes they care about - using their voices, platforms and resources to truly embody the original Olympic spirit. It achieves this – and much more besides.
