Award programs celebrate hard work, innovation, and dedication. They offer a way for organizations to give back and promote excellence, to publicly honor outstanding contributions across fields. Not to mention the good feelings that come from nominating someone for a special opportunity. Submittable is proud to support hundreds of organizations with their awards and nominations process–here are six, each nobly serving their industry.
International Women’s Media Foundation
Founded in 1990 to advance opportunities for female journalists worldwide, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) is an NGO seeking to “unleash the potential of women journalists as champions of press freedom to transform the global news media.” Through awards, grants, fellowships, reporting trips, and safety trainings, among other initiatives, IWFM aims to comprehensively support women in media throughout their careers.
IWFM facilitates three major awards each year. The Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award recognizes an outstanding female photojournalist with $20,000 in addition to a public showcase. Courage in Journalism Awards, for heroism in the field, have been awarded to 100 journalists in 56 countries so far. The Gwen Ifill Award provides mentorship for women journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.
Local Authority Building Control
With a network of over 3,500 professional surveyors, Local Authority Building Control (LABC) represents control teams in England and Wales. Serving property owners, developers, architects, and contractors, LABC focuses on safety, health, inclusivity, efficiency, and building regulation standards. To this end, LABC’s Regional Building Excellence Awards honor outstanding work in a variety of building projects.
LABC’s Regional Building Excellence Awards are facilitated in 12 regions, with annual Grand Finals held in London. Nominations are accepted for the best local builder or traditional craftsperson, the best partnership with a local authority building control team, the LABC construction professional of the year, and specific site based categories (for each nomination, up to four can be selected). The LABC Grand Finals draw a crowd of over 800 individuals from across England and Wales.
The International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University
The Kabiller Prize and Kabiller Young Investigator Award were established in 2015 by Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology to honor significant individuals in the field of nanoscience and nanomedicine. Entrepreneur David Kabiller founded these programs to encourage innovative research and technology—$250,000 is awarded annually for the Kabiller Prize and $10,000 is given for the Young Investigator Award.
Previous winners of the Kabiller Prize, for career-long impacts to the field, include Joe DeSimone, honored for innovation in nano-biomaterials and their medical application, and Robert Langer, acknowledged for “interdisciplinary work in the design and development of novel nanocarriers for improved small molecule drug delivery.” The Kabiller Young Investigators Award, celebrating discoveries within the last two years with significant long-lasting potential, has been given to Warren Chan, recognizing his work on nano-bio interactions and nanoparticles, and Liangfang Zhang, for medically-applicable biology-mimicking nanotechnology.
Guild of Music Supervisors
California’s Guild of Music Supervisors provides resources for musical supervision professionals who serve a wide variety of visual media platforms, including film, television, advertising, video games, and emerging media. In 2010, this 501(C)(6) non-profit began offering Annual Awards to recognize outstanding work in the field.
The Guild’s 9th annual awards celebration in 2019, held at the Theatre at The Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, honored musical supervision in films like Black Panther and A Star is Born, as well as television shows like 13 Reasons Why and American Idol. Musical supervision champions were also acclaimed for film and television trailers, advertising (winners from Google Pixel and Nike), and video games (winner Donut County).
Alberta Emerald Foundation
The Alberta Emerald Foundation (AEF) is committed to recognizing environmental achievements and stewardship in the western Canadian province of Alberta. Since the inception of its flagship program in 1992, AEF has recognized more than 800 finalists and 300 recipients from over 120 Albertan communities for their creative thinking and innovation in environmental management systems, technologies, and education programs.
AEF’s year-round programming makes them “Alberta’s environmental good-news storytellers.” In addition to their awards and grants, AEF organizes Emerald Day, the Emerald Speaker Series, and Sharing Stories (a social media engagement program) to inspire Alberta community members towards proactive and positive action for the environment. Find out more about AEF’s use of Submittable in this recent case study.
National Safety Council
Originally founded in 1913, the National Safety Council (NSC) is dedicated to inhibiting preventable deaths—the third leading cause of fatalities in the United States—through “leadership, research, education, and advocacy.” The NSC is a nonprofit focused on safety in the workplace, at home and in communities, and on the road.
NSC has 13,000 member companies, 20 chapters, employs 479 safety professionals, and trains 500,000 First Aid responders per year. They manage a robust awards program, using Submittable, that includes Green Cross for Safety Awards in three categories, Rising Stars of Safety (for those under 40), the Marion Martin Award (celebrating women), a Distinguished Service to Safety Award, Community Advancement Award, and various workplace and driver safety awards. Among many other endeavors, NSC also offers several different scholarships to their annual Congress & Expo and reviews Road to Zero Safe System Innovation Grants using the software.
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Managing an awards and nominations process can present unique challenges for even the most organized groups, in part because so many individuals and unique considerations are involved. Clients using Submittable to facilitate awards appreciate the software’s robust reviewing options, especially for juries separated geographically. Submittable reporting tools also provide teams with easy access to powerful data and our customer support crew goes above and beyond to quickly, efficiently serve all stakeholders in an awards process—organizations, reviewers, nominators, and applicants. Organizations who adopt the software for awards also enjoy the product’s versatility, often using it for a variety of other programs and across departments.
Submittable is dedicated to ensuring an outstanding user-experience for everyone involved in your celebration. We love to join you in honoring nominees and award winners—congratulations on a job well done.
Interested in finding out more about using Submittable for your awards and nominations? Please reach out anytime.
Rachel Mindell is a Special Projects Editor at Submittable. She also writes and teaches poetry. Connect with her on LinkedIn.