Your awards presentation is coming up, and it’s time to ask for nominations. And, if this year is anything like last (and the year before that, and the year before that…) they’ll be submitted everywhere — your email, your voicemail, in the middle of a Zoom meeting!
Before you know it you’re completely overloaded with a ton of unorganized submissions. You don’t even know where to begin with collecting feedback from your team, too, let alone choosing the winners.
Sound familiar?
If your association or chamber regularly solicits submissions for things like awards, speakers, abstracts, scholarships, grants, etc. then you can probably identify with this overwhelming feeling. But, there is a way to simplify the process! Here are six benefits to taking your submission and review process completely online:
- It’ll cut down on confusion. With an online form, you’ll be able to set standards that submissions can’t deviate from. Submitters will know exactly what’s required — and what they can’t submit.
- You’ll be more organized. Submission time will be a whole lot easier when you can point all of your promotional efforts to one place, and when reviewers only have one place to go to review.
- You may get more submissions. An online submission process means you can use that landing page to give the submitter all of the information they might need. Cutting down on the questions and using a streamlined form means people will be much more likely to complete their submission.
- Feedback will become more collaborative. Submissions aren’t the only thing you need to collect! With an online process, all of your reviewers can leave comments and have discussions in one place before making selections, rather than having disjointed conversations about it.
- You’ll have more insight to use in the future. By aggregating data you collect, you’ll be able to learn more about who is submitting and what they’re submitting, and improve your program year after year.
- You can easily duplicate the process for another type of submission. Once you’re set up for, let’s say, a call for speakers process, you’ll be all ready to go for any other submissions-related activities. Now that scholarship program you’ve been thinking about administering doesn’t seem so hard!
Adding new solutions and processes to your ecosystem can seem daunting at first, but in the end they’re built to help you do more for your members — while helping your staff do less. Take a look at some of the tools we recommend your association or chamber has at the ready!
