Get Every Letter In Before Your Judges Start Scoring

A 30-minute session for associations on collecting letters of support and references automatically, so complete nominations reach your judges on time.

Most award nominations don't stall on the nomination itself. They stall on what someone else has to send: a letter of support, a reference, a second endorsement. The request goes out from the nominator, the reference has no deadline of their own, and staff find out what's missing when nominations close.

This session draws on two of the five dimensions of Review Integrity, a framework for judging whether an application and review process is fair, consistent and defensible.

The first is Intake Proportionality: does what you ask of nominators and references match what's at stake in the award? Three long letters may fit a flagship honor and be too much for a chapter award.

The second is Rubric Clarity: are your criteria written, weighted and visible before anyone applies? When references write open-ended letters, judges get praise they can't score against those criteria.

The cost lands on the wrong people. A deserving nominee is disqualified or passed over because a letter came in late. The member who nominated them has to explain what happened. Staff spend the last week before judging chasing letters by email. And when a finalist asks why one incomplete file was accepted and another wasn't, there's no clear record to point to.

How letters are requested, when they're due and what references are asked to write are all set when the call for nominations goes live. Changing them after nominations open means some references are already working from the old instructions.

In This 30-minute Session, You'll Learn Three Ways To:

• Let the nomination send the request. When a nominator enters a reference, the request, reminders and tracking go out automatically, from your own email domain.
• Give references their own deadline. Keep the nomination deadline firm and give letters extra time.
• Ask references for what judges score. Use short prompts and rating questions tied to your criteria in place of open-ended letters.

You'll also see how nominators can save their work and come back as letters arrive, and how staff can see which nominations are complete at a glance.

Who Should Attend

Association staff who run awards, recognition, fellowship or member scholarship programs, in membership, programs, events, foundation or communications roles, plus the committee chairs and judges who review nominations.

About Reviewr

Founded in 2011, Reviewr is SOC 2 Type II certified and has processed more than 1 million applications for thousands of organizations.

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