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Learning Series: Winner Selection

Your entrants are in, the judges are selected, and the entries are scored. However, this doesn’t mean you necessarily have an obvious winner. In fact, there are countless methods you may use to select a winner for your program.

Using multiple methods to choose winners is important because it allows you to reward those who have different strengths in your program. Below, we explore six potential categories for winner selection, including:

1. Highest Rated Per Category
2. Best in Show
3. Judge’s Choice
4. People’s Choice
5. Medals; and
6. Winners and Finalists

Highest Rated Per Category

This is exactly what it sounds like: You’ll select the highest score in each category and give an award to each. As one of the most common methods for winner selections, your entrants will expect you to issue this award.

Best in Show

Best in Show is similar to the first method of winner selection but instead of awarding the best entry in each category, you will award the highest score across all categories. As such, the Best in Show award will go to only one entrant.

Judge’s Choice

Judge’s Choice allows your judges to deviate from the actual scores and scoring criteria and instead determine as a collective whole which entries were most creative, most impressive, or most “anything you can imagine and is appropriate for your program.”

The Judge’s Choice award isn’t always one of the top scores in the competition. By recognizing these entries, you can encourage entrants to continue to enter your program, regardless of where they fell in the numerical scores.

People’s Choice

Like Judge’s Choice, People’s Choice gives your entire entrant pool a chance to voice their opinion for their favorite. Sometimes, the People’s Choice winner is quite different than the highest scoring entry in the competition. This again lends diversity to your winner’s pool, even if this award isn’t as prestigious as winning Best in Show.

Medals

Medals are a great alternative to choosing one winner per category if you want to award more entrants and keep your awards ceremony interesting. Most organizations have a bronze, silver, and gold medal they award to the top three entrants in each category.

Other programs may award medals to all scores that fall within a certain score. For example, scores that receive a 90 or higher receive a gold medal, scores between 80 and 89 receive a silver medal, and 70 to 79 receive a bronze medal. This not only keeps your competition more interesting, but it makes more people feel good about their entrant and your awards program.

Winners and Finalists

You should always distinguish finalists in addition to the winner who takes home the Highest Rated Per Category award. Doing so recognizes those who may have come close to winning but didn’t quite make the cut. And, because entrants apply to your program for recognition, pointing out finalists is a great way to do so.

Create a Winner Selection Process That Works for Your Program

If you believe your audience will respond well to having medals in each category, do that. If you believe just one winner is best, stick with that.

Structuring your winner selection is all about knowing what your audience wants and delivering.

Ashley Surinak

Ashley Surinak is the resident OpenWater expert on all things content. From the blog to guides and beyond, you'll find her at every turn in your OpenWater journey.

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