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How to Find the Right Judges for Your Awards Program

Choosing the right judges is critical. With the right panel of judges, you’ll see increased participation and higher quality submissions. It holds the potential to push your awards program beyond expectations for both your organization and entrants. So, how are you supposed to make a selection?

Keep a Strong Focus on Your Industry

Your awards program is industry-specific, so your judges should be as well. You don’t want just anyone to be announced as your judge, especially because your program is meant to enhance the prestige, legitimacy, and desirability to submit an entry.

For example, if you are a restaurant awards program, finding esteemed chefs as judges offers the kind of award recognition that your entrants want. So, as tempted as you are to use your mother as a judge (because she’s the best cook in the world, we know) don’t. Stick to industry leading experts.

Tap Into Previous Awards Winners

Take a quick minute to do an awards program review and think of previous winners ideally suited to serve as judges this time around.

By doing so, you can inspire entrants through the prestige that comes with winning your awards by serving as a judge in a future program period. That way, you can increase submissions without having to hunt down multiple industry experts for your panel.

Have a New Program? No Problem.

New awards programs can sometimes find it particularly challenging to find the right judges for their programs. Without the track record of a successful program and the prestige to match, recruiting industry experts can sometimes be difficult. But, this doesn’t mean that you’re out of options!

Instead, you can cultivate people who have won awards in similar places. As a result, you’ll still have relevant judges with the kind of experience you want for your own program. By doing so, you can give your program the jump start that it needs to continue to develop it over time.

Prestige doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes multiple years to build up your program and by recruiting more relevant and prestigious judges each time your program runs, you are positioning your organization for long-term growth and success.

Miriam Hancock

Miriam Hancock
Miriam is the Marketing Coordinator for OpenWater. When she isn't writing and designing content she paints and cooks for her own personal blog.

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