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HOW TO WRITE AN AWARDS NOMINATION:
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
WRITING AN AWARDS ENTRY TO IMPRESS & WIN - A GUIDANCE BRIEFING
Make your nominations from 9am on 1st July till 5pm, 1st October.
All nominations must be made online via our e-Nomination system - but write it first offline, on your computer, and get it perfect before you copy and paste your text into our online system. Tables of numbers (eg from a Word .doc or Excel .xls) and images cannot be accepted by our online system.
Your nomination needs to be for something which was has delivered its above-average sucess or results in the year to October 2008.
In the online nomination form, we'll ask you to enter:
1) Full contact details for the person making the nomination.
2) Which Awards category you are making a nomination for.
3) Full contact details for the lead organisation & person being nominated.
4) Summary detail on the nomination (its title, web address etc).
5) The Citation. Stick to word counts, don't use too many superfluous adjectives, keep it factual and informative.
Citation part 1) Citation: 100 words maximum, summarising why this nominee deserves national recognition.
Citation part 2) Evidence of success: Include any quantifiable or qualitative evidence of performance, effectiveness, contribution or other measure of actual success vs targets / benchmarks. 300 words maximum.
Citation part 3) Any other relevant testimonials, commendations, items of public or press praise - which highlight excellence and above-average achievement. 200 words maximum.
In your citation please include if possible:
1) The benefits/results/output which the nominee has achieved for its target audience/user group(s);
2) Efficiency, effectiveness, capacity or other gains achieved.
3) Numerical detail on take-up or user/usership growth over time - we're looking for unique users, page impressions, users sessions, number of transactions or similar.
WRITING AN AWARDS ENTRY TO IMPRESS & WIN:
WILL THE WORDS YOU WRITE IMPRESS THE JUDGES?
To win more funding, an Award, or even your next job, it pays to write effectively to deliver the hard goals you need. This guidance sets out the key areas you need to take note of when writing your Awards nomination. The ideas here are exactly the same as you'd use when writing your pitch in Dragon's Den - to win that £100k new funding!
• 1) Have a clear picture of why the nomination is being written: to broadcast information about your team / brand / service to key influencers in the public sector, to increase business / usage / engagement from the outside, update target audiences.
• 2) Identify the nomination's target audiences - [1] the Judges (who are board directors at large organisations, used to selling and being sold to) and [2] The public sector at large - who you'll want to impress if they read your nomination at some stage.
• 3) Ensure that the nomination contains evidence-based, timely, newsworthy information that will be relevant to the target audiences [1] So you can be assessed against criteria and [2] so you demonstrate 'best practice' and achievement 'better than the average'.
• 4) Argue that there is a just cause for the nomination - prove you have done more than just 'doing the job as set', and over-achieved.
• 5) Ensure you explain the key 1 or 2 or 3 points which make you a winner (don't list 50 reasons).
• 6) Ensure that the nomination is grammatically correct and doesn't contain any spelling mistakes, errors, and sources are quoted correctly. Poor spelling will immediately mark you down.
• 7) Write the nomination keeping it punchy, not using unnecessary flowery language. Superfluous adjectives will also get you marked down. Also avoid nonsense catchphrases like 'cutting edge' (possibly OK if you sell kitchen knives), 'state of the art' (unless you are an art gallery), 'ground-breaking' (unless you are an undertaker or road mender), 'the leading blahblahblah' (unless you can prove with numbers you beat everyone else in the sector).
• 8) Present true and correct information without embellishment - your factual statements may be checked.
• 9) Refrain from using over-hyped quotes from sources, as they may be seen as biased.
• 10) Understand timing - the nomination needs to be for something which fits the agreed criteria for the Awards entries.
• 11) Write a nomination offline on your computer, spend some time on it and re-iterate it till you're really happy.
Then get another pair of eyes to criticise it so you can further improve it.
You might like to use the following principles - collate and organise the facts, identify the reasons you are 'above average' in your own field, create a catchy headline, make your first paragraph tell the story of what your service actually does (ie the benefit it brings stakeholders) and also why this deserves to be commended, write in a third-person voice, provide "testimonials" from relevant influential supporters, and provide additional background information.
Lastly, inclusion of evidence of success (quantititive / qualititaive / statistical) is essential.
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