How to Organise Non-Profit Contests

Contests are one of the most popular ways to raise funds for nonprofits and promote their mission. They also are a great way to collect new names for their mailing lists. How to run a nonprofit contest? That’s a good question. Let’s find out a bit more about how to organise a successful contest for a nonprofit.

What is a nonprofit contest?

A contest for nonprofit organisations is a competition held to raise funds, highlight the most outstanding contestants, and provide them with social media promotion and support. Every respectable event planner should know how to organise non-profit contests and succeed.

Reasons for running a non-profit contest

Organising a nonprofit contest is the best way to support socially oriented non-profit organisations in a variety of fields: business, culture, healthcare, environmental protection, animal rights, women’s organisations, and many more. The significance of a nonprofit competition project is the expected socio-cultural effect of its implementation. With the help of contest organising, event planners also elevate their company reputation because organising a contest for nonprofits is hard, interesting, and rewarding. It showcases the maturity and reliability of an event business as well as its multitasking skills, and it’s extremely prestigious in the Asian region.

Guideline on how to organise a grant contest step by step

There are several steps todesign a contest for a nonprofit. We’ve picked a few pieces of advice on how to organise a good grant contest with the help of Judgify’s online contest and judging management app. Here you are:

• Set goals
• Make a budget
• Define requirements
• Choose a venue
• Decide on the event format
• Find  sponsors
• Set the rules & criteria for judging a nonprofit contest
• Plan the event with your chosen event management service
• Distribute areas of responsibility
• Come up with contest promotion ideas
• Choose prizes
• Invite judges
• Optimise awards process management workflow
• Run a contest
• Follow up.

 A well-designed set of nonprofit contest rules is not only essential but can also help a nonprofit avoid substantial problems. In other words, take it seriously!

How to judge, how to find judges

Finding contest judges who know how to judge a nonprofit contest is not always an easy task.

However, if you utilise modern-day judging apps, they will provide you with the ability to invite judges, organise their work effectively, and conduct contests of any complexity. Invite judges via email, with a printed invitation, through an event judging module, or using all of the above-mentioned ways.

With event management apps, you not only create an invitation letter/email asking potential judges to preside at your awards or grant contests, but you can also provide them with an effective platform for judging. You will build an evaluation system to assess each project by the industry experts, and allow them to judge based on set criteria and judging rules.

Non-profit contest checklist

Practice makes perfect. Let’s briefly look through the nonprofit contest guide:

• Set goals.
• Think of awards criteria, contest rules, etc.
• Promote the event.
• Invite judges.
• Offer prizes.
• Use humorous/entertaining elements.
• Reflect the company’s brand.
• Use innovations/new solutions.
• Follow up, measure, and report the data via the best apps.
• Ask for feedback.

Ask for the latest contests ideas for nonprofits from industry leaders.

5 nonprofit contest ideas

• Sweepstakes Contest: Giveaways are one of the most frequently-used contest types; make your contestprize be directly related to your cause, not to attract entrants interested in cash only.

• Vote Contest: Your organisation can include your vote into a contest page and ask members, sponsors, or the public for their insights about the options they like the most. This gives you priceless insight into what will work best for your organisation.

• Photo Contests: These are similar to vote contests, but the content voted on is submitted and championed by your entrants, not your brand. This is a fantastic way for your nonprofit company to increase engagement with your brand and boost it via social media sharing.

• Essay contest: A bit more intimidating than the other promotions, an essay contest gets your most serious supporters involved in your organisation.

• Video Contest: You can encourage each entrant to share your brand and their submission with their friends and family, community, etc. and attract positive attention from that broader audience.

Tips for contest organising

Here’s what we do to succeed in organising events for nonprofits:

• Use nonprofit contest tips

Keep competitions focused with the assistance of expert help.

• Use a professional awards management system

The major event subjects—projects, investors, attendees, and jury members—must all tune what they do to meet mutual objectives on a single platform.

• Make the contest an open enterprise

Try to maximise the geography of the participants, even in low-budget contests. Promote your contests via social media to give them even more publicity.

• Provide clear and well-described terms and conditions

The categories, judging criteria, rules, and other conditions should be clearly explained to all participants.

• Create easy application forms

Needless to say, using an online registration platform is effective to organise successful and flawless attendee application submissions. The simpler a registration process, the better.

• Make applications easy to score

The same thing is true about processing submissions. An automated system allows judges to score the applications very easily!

• Apply surveys

Always collect feedback and create a community around contests. Follow up and make friends!

• Finalise

Invite all participants, experts, investors, partners, and even those who are not familiar with the contest. Meet them and organise networking events to get the most out of your contest organisation.

Conclusion

Social media contests for nonprofit organisations are powerful promotional tools and a great way to do good. One of the best ways to drive social growth and generate new members for your organisation is to conduct contests online. Get the most out of a good promotion with the help of a professionally organised contest and other grant contests of various types.

If you have any doubts, contact us for help. Good luck!