Top tips for award-winning entries

Everything you need to know to write an award-winning entry:

What information you'll need

• Community group or organisation name and region
• Number of paid employees, number of volunteers, and approximate total hours contributed by volunteers each month
• Any funding the group receives (including grants applied for by volunteers), and what that funding goes towards
• A short summary of your group (up to 80 words) and your group’s contact details – name, email and/or phone number – for inclusion in the programme
• The aim of your organisation or voluntary group
• Focussing on volunteers, detail the activities or project(s) the organisation or voluntary group has carried out in the last 12 months, and share how this has impacted your local community
• JPG and PNG files may be attached to support your application
• Group’s social media pages (e.g. Facebook) or website

How the judging works

The information you provide is used to score your group against five criteria. There are many ways you can demonstrate how your group has performed against each criteria. It is a good idea to prepare your answers beforehand in a Word document and get feedback from others in your group, previous winners and/or your Council representative before you submit the information online.

To make it easy, we’ve broken down the types of information that could apply to each aspect of the judging criteria below.

As every group contributes differently, you may find that certain points apply to your group and others do not. Similarly, you may have additional information to share that will assist the judges in their scoring. Please keep in mind that the judging panel may have no prior knowledge of your group – so be sure to share all the details that will be relevant to the scoring process. 

Use of resources

Cost effectiveness and service/project sustainability:

• Explain how the group gains its financial, material and human resources (grants, fundraising, recruiting, etc.)
• Explain how the group ensures it gets the most it can from these resources
• Explain how the group is ensuring its service or project has the funding and people power needed to carry on into the future

Initiative and creativity

Innovation, capacity to overcome difficulties or face challenges:

• Explain any problems or obstacles the group has faced and how it overcame them
• Outline ways the group has adapted to change over time
• Talk about opportunities the group has seized, and/or changes it has implemented for better outcomes

Effectiveness of activities

Success of service/project, achievement of objectives:

• Outline what your group set out to achieve, and whether it achieved its aims
• Compare what the situation looked like before your group, and what it looks like now
• Include measures of success like statistics, before and after photos, etc.

Voluntary input

Volunteering involvement, commitment and passion:

• Identify the number and role of people in paid positions
• Identify the number of volunteers
• Outline the total hours contributed by volunteers
• Describe the types of work volunteers undertake
• Explain the sacrifices volunteers have made to be able to contribute
• Identify any ‘special something’ that volunteers bring

Impact

Benefit of the service/project on targeted audience and/or community:

• Outline how your work makes people’s lives better
• Explain who benefits from your service/project, and how
• Compare what their situation would be like without your involvement
• Outline how the wider community also benefits