by Bright Ewuru | Jul 12, 2023 | Articles
Businesses and individuals in a professional circle or otherwise united by a common interest often form associations to foster their goals. One of the common missions of an association is to provide recognition for its members to mark achievement in their industry. An awards program is a popular and effective way to do this.
An association awards program will identify and recognise impressive contributions and achievements in an industry or community. Such a program is a good way for the association to encourage excellence in the industry, motivate its members and nurture solidarity in the community.
However, running an association awards program requires a measure of planning and careful management to ensure it runs smoothly and successfully. Here are some pointers to help you manage your awards program effectively.
The first step is to define your mission for the program. Being clear on what you hope to accomplish serves as a guiding light on how you should set up the awards initiative. The goal of running the program could be to honour the accomplishments of members of the association, encourage high standards, foster a sense of unity in the community or boost interaction among members.
It could also be to enhance the association’s reputation and reach or to increase its membership. Indeed, an association awards program can generate a lot of positive attention for the organisation. Whatever your target is for running the program, identify it first.
You should lay out a plan of how the program will operate. Here are some relevant considerations.
If you are recognising excellence in more than one area, it’s ideal to create different awards categories in the program. This will make it easy to honour various accomplishments. There could be an award for the most impactful newcomer, the best innovation or even the biggest contribution to the association. As you create the awards categories, ensure they are relevant and align with your association’s vision.
Equally important is setting eligibility criteria for potential entrants. The criteria, which include qualifications such as membership requirements, define who can participate and what qualifications are required.
For a successful association award program, funds are necessary. But, this does not mean that you have to drain your association’s resources. Consider your costs—marketing, prizes, benefits for judges and the rest of your team and the relevant software. Then, coordinate your finances to meet each need.
Give the program room to grow; in subsequent seasons, you can gradually increase the financial investment. There are plenty of ways to keep costs down, especially important if you want to consider how to inflation-proof your awards program.
Entry fees can serve as a source of revenue, drive high-quality submissions/participation and increase the credibility of your program. But as beneficial as they are, there are pros and cons to consider on whether you should charge awards entry fees. Consider the aspects of your association award program and decide what will work best..
Specify how long you want the association awards program to last. The process should not be too lengthy; your participants might lose interest. Likewise, it shouldn’t be so short as it might cause rush and disorganisation.
There should be enough time for the various stages such as the registration of applicants, submission of entries, judging and the final announcement of winners. With this in mind, you can decide on the opening and closing dates as well as the deadlines for each stage.
What’s in it for your participants? The prizes available to the winners and other notable participants matter a lot as they can affect the reputation of the program and the number of entrants. Good examples of award prizes are cash awards, certificates, trophies, digital badges, branded items and lots more.
It’s important to have judges for the evaluation of the participants’ submissions. When choosing your judges, consider the renowned experts in your industry. These could be high-ranking members of the association or even winners from past seasons of your association awards program.
During this selection process, prioritise diversity and emphasise impartiality. Together, these elements will establish integrity in the awards program.
A crucial aspect of organising the association awards program is deciding on the rules of the program. For your entrants, this could mean the judging/scoring criteria. Choose the prime factors that will be considered during the evaluation of each participant’s submission. These factors include rate of growth, impact, leadership, innovation, support of the association and much more.
A distinct scoring guideline guarantees objectivity, transparency and consistency during the judging process.
When running an association award program, efficiency should be your watchword. This highlights the importance of technology. Instead of having a manual setup which can be prone to human errors, consider a dedicated awards management software!
Reliable software does the heavy lifting involved in running an association awards program. By serving as a centralised platform for various functions, it imbues the award lifecycle with high performance and integrity, making it easy to scale your program, impress your judges and distinguish your program.
With the right association awards management software in your toolbox, you can seamlessly
Promoting the program is vital to its success. You need a simple yet detailed marketing strategy to spread the word about it.
Marketing the association award program involves communicating all relevant dates/deadlines, the registration process, eligibility criteria, the scoring/judging process and answers to frequently asked questions. It also involves calling for applications and touting the pros of participation.
To market your program, post the details on your association’s website or a site dedicated to the program. Make the most of social media; post program-related content and tag the expert judges. Encourage your judges and the rest of the team to reshare such posts for greater reach.
Email marketing is another reliable marketing and communication method. With newsletters and targeted email campaigns, you can keep your community in the loop about each coming award season and what’s new.
The climax of an association award program is the announcement and recognition of the winners and other notable participants. The beauty of this stage of the program is that it offers a ripe opportunity to appreciate your judges and the rest of your team. It’s equally ideal for networking among the various entrants.
There are different ways to go about the announcement and recognition. You could opt for an in-person association awards ceremony or a virtual event. Whichever you choose, consider using an online awards gallery to provide a richer experience.
Give the prizes to the winners as soon as possible and encourage them to share their experiences with their communities to help boost the reach of the program.
Running a winning association award program doesn’t end after the announcement of winners. Evaluating the program is an essential stage too. It’s necessary to gauge its effectiveness as well as the satisfaction of the judges and the rest of your team.
Feedback can uncover areas that need adjustments and give insight into tactics that work. This will tell whether the initial goals of the program were achieved and help improve future seasons of the program. For proper program evaluation, collect feedback from participants, winners, judges and all others to get an idea of their experience.
The insight gained can even help you set new goals for the next awards season.
Associations exist for the achievement of shared targets. Rewarding members who have excelled is a great way to keep the association engaged and relevant. By following the above tips, you’ll have an association awards program worthy of participation.
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