All right, hello, welcome everyone. Okay, I've given a minute for everyone to get their audio working. I see some friendly faces. Great to have you all here. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy advancement work to be with us. My name is Jenny Denton, I am the moderator today, and so it's my job to just welcome you and thank you all for being with us. And Jacob is here with us from case headquarters he's going to be my tech support, and also help me out if I get anything wrong or forget anything right Jacob. So I'm very excited we have an excellent excellent panel here today. I've had some great conversation with them and I think that they are well prepared to answer pretty much any question that you might throw at them. And I'll have some prepared questions to start us off but I hope that we can also just be very interactive. So as you folks think of questions, and please let me know and we will make sure that you have an opportunity to to pipe in and ask those questions. So the topic of our together today is the circle of excellence institutional awards. And so I have served as our institutional awards chair from 2019 to 2023, and I currently serve on our district cabinet I'm the district six secretary. And so that's a great deal of fun I love meeting district six people who are awesome. I mean from from another district you're welcome to be here to we're glad to have you. My day job is associate vice president for advancement at Emporia State University which is in Emporia, Kansas. So the district six cabinet really thought this would be a good topic that we can bring some value to you all today, since the circle of excellence awards is now open accepting nominations. And we are still in that early bird discount phase so everyone can afford to submit their, their best work to win an award. So we hope that you'll get some encouragement and some tips today to be able to do that. And we thought the best way to do that would be to share some knowledge from former award winners and former judges, and I have several of those here with us today so I'd like to introduce them in alphabetical order, I've got Heidi. Heidi is the assistant director of loyalty giving at South Dakota State University Foundation, and her team won a 2023 best best of district six award for their giving day. Thank you, Heidi. Maria Coons is director of creative communications and services at University of Colorado Boulder. She is a frequent global and district winner in magazine and many other categories. Cassandra Morris here with us. She is executive director of new media strategy at Washington University in St. Louis. Her team is a frequent global and district winner in video, as well as other categories, and Sarah writer is senior director of donor experience at the Nebraska Foundation. Her team won a gold circle of excellence award in 2022 for their donor relations and stewardship initiatives, among other awards that they have one so welcome to our panel, thank you for being here. I'm going to kick us off with some questions. Let's just popcorn around. Hi Ben if you feel inspired to answer and we'll just keep this really conversational and informal, as we do in district six. So the first question for you all is how does your team determine which projects to nominate. Within Jenny I'll go first so within my team here which my team leads social media here for our central comms and offers other options for our campus partners, when going through, we were when reviewing our work for for a year and considering what we're going to submit for an award. There are a few things that we're looking for like one we're looking, obviously you're going to look for what are we most proud of. We are also going to look for what makes the most strategic sense and so I have some ideas around around that as well. We're also thinking through what can we, you know what has really strong impact as well where we have excellent, excellent results as well. Excellent. Who would like to add on. Yeah, pop in there. Um, you know, our team sits down and make sure to like have a really open conversation where we're approaching it from every aspect of the team so communications projects marketing projects. This year we actually came up with the fact that there's an HR project that we believe we could submit so our team has been charged with thinking even beyond just marketing and creative, but across advancement what are the things that our division is doing. So sometimes we're partnering with another unit. And I think exactly you know what Cassandra said is that what strategic for us. What are you know areas that we're proud of. Personally, but I think that's tricky because you also have to know you know where, just because you really love something it may not be award winning that year. So looking at you know have you grown something have you innovated something like, what about that project, and its success is a real benefit and value to your peers and colleagues, because we want to be offering sort of growth and stretch and, you know, something to be really proud of that's new that can inspire others. I'm glad that you mentioned the innovation part, because my team while we don't do a bunch of like deciding like who's going to go forward. I budget for everyone. So that way, no one is overthinking about like oh I don't know if mine is good enough so I look at it, but what we spent a ton of time doing and I'm glad you mentioned it is we spend enough time like who can make the $55 deadline. Like who are we just like all right you're still really special and awesome but you're going to be the 160. And between that that's where we spend our time because during this time of year we have two signature events that always happen in the winter, and I don't want other workloads to keep people from nominating. So we probably spend more time coordinating the budget and how we're going to allot that out, but I always have an opportunity for folks to use those budget dollars, but maybe not everyone uses it every time for some of the other reasons that were mentioned as far as like what strategic what do you really feel like you nailed it, that kind of thing. And I would say, being probably the most newest out of this bunch to just submitting awards. I know one of our big things that we took a lot. Last year was one of our first awards one. This is our second year submitting entries and so what we've kind of done is our loyalty giving department which would be very similar to annual giving programs have teamed up with our marketing and communications group. And we kind of did a big whiteboard session just kind of taking a look at some of the big things we did this year maybe some of the smaller things that were really neat or highlighted. So kind of just got everything up on the board and then kind of picked three or four that we really felt could be unique, or be some good strategy kind of even case to that point like what kind of things if we were to win an award would also help us market well and just be able to be something just to have some backup to what we were submitting or what we were planning to do. And then kind of just taking a look how do we want to implement that and what we had a couple of things that could be really good for projects in a couple different categories and areas so what kind of things do we want to be most strategic just saying, man, we could have a really good chance here first it might get a little bit lost and maybe this department, or this category to put up I heard the word innovation. Another word to think about is collaboration or collaborative work as well. You know, being here at WashU for the past 10 years, there have been a few times in which a few times in which we have submitted and, and that one, and I had a light bulb moment, a while ago of thinking through some of some of our collaborative work that we do here with other departments within university marketing and communications as well so also identifying things where you collaborated with other units within your own markham team, or even do collaborative work that you have a collaborative work that you have done with your campus partners as well. It's really good you said that because I even think about like large undertakings that we always do every you know you always have a campaign kickoff and like, but if you think about like what was really special about this campaign kickoff like we had certain things that one during our campaign kickoff and certain things that did it so I think, yeah, solid point as far as just thinking about that collaboration and and metrics and we'll probably get to some of those things but that's mine. Yeah, I agree with you because a lot of people said be strategic, and I think there are different ways to use the award strategically so it could be be strategic and how you spend your money, it could also be be strategic in what you want your external reputation to be as well as your internal within your institution reputation to be so, you know, it was mentioned that we have a lot of awards for the magazine well we used to only submit for the magazine, and our team has been through some formations and funding, and it's really exciting to get an award for a marketing campaign. We probably had work that could have gotten awards before but people, we didn't, we didn't put ourselves out that way. And so it's helping us build the recognition within our own institution that we're strong, we're multi dimensionally strong. So for every single category for award, read them thoroughly and get to know them thoroughly and think about your work because sometimes your, your work definitely fits into those pockets, and you're not in your, and you're not thinking about it that way you might be thinking about, like, of course like the thing that you're most proud of, so on and so forth but I think that thinking about awards is a really great, a really great way to kind of like think about your year in review, and your, your year review, as a whole, and how it affects other things and when you start getting in that mindset. I think it kind of also affects how you execute your strategies like throughout the next year, as well as getting in that mindset of thinking, this fits. And so I'm really appreciative to the categories because I think about how these areas impact, impact, like how we impact these areas and so really reading those descriptions, and you might surprise yourself. Yeah, great point. Great point. If we're thinking right now. How do I want to plan my year so that I will have great work I want to submit next January, right. Absolutely. My team and I, I have kind of, I have a quad grid of every year that we set up of strategic focuses of what we're working on. And then with the goal of saying what here when we're building this out. What here do we think is some award winning that we want to kind of keep tracks on. Yeah, and I would add to that even, um, I know one of the things we're looking at as we looked through what we had this year to submit. It was even kind of keeping in mind man this this or this could be a really great idea but like a couple things they're still in earlier stages we might have better metrics or statistics to show from this. If we maybe let it go another year before we try to report back on it, or kind of like, we could talk about it here but it might actually make more might be more monumental if we kind of wait to have that for that next year. That's great. Yeah. So in an earlier conversation that we had we talked a little bit about having those metrics, the ROI, and that seeming to be something that judges really hone in on. Tell me more about that. Well I tie this to storytelling, so I believe numbers are also stories like I say a spreadsheet tells a story, so figure out how you're using qualitative data so quotes feedback from, you know, partners or peers or colleagues or alums and donors, but also numbers so knowing that okay we want it. We want to know if this was successful, how are we going to track that sometimes you really have to set those things up in the beginning, or be mindful of it, it makes it easier in the end if you're able to say okay we were So, our team. Maybe in the future will be submitting for our second buffs all in which is our giving day. You're one I don't know that will submit this year it's kind of up in the air because we were talking about the fact that we had a benchmark year. But the things we're doing in year two to grow and be more strategic and collaborative across campus. So I think the results will be better and we'll have that year over year so looking at number of donors dollars raised if that's valuable engagement. I think, again, feedback from colleagues and partners and putting all of those metrics together so numbers, and that qualitative info. Awesome. Thank you. I would even say like last year what we submitted was for giving day and I think you know we kind of honed in on a toolkit we use for social ambassadors. But I think part of it was also showing the stats of like in the last at that time was six giving days we had been through how we've had success and how we've had growth both in dollars and donors but because of certain resources like the toolkit. That's helped to paint a picture of like that's more social meat social ambassador buy in and that's what helping our giving day to grow and enhance. And so it kind of to your point is just how are you painting that picture with maybe that that data you have available that's going to help to be really showcase because you can talk about a really great idea, but sometimes if you can show some other things behind it that really kind of confirm success, that's going to just help enhance your entry. Thank you so much. Um, so you kind of been doing this throughout but let's suppose we have on the call today some first time submitters, what advice would you give a first time submitter regarding the nomination process. I'm going to say this, do less. The very first time I said I submitted for awards, I'm like, I was like I'm going to give it all I got. I'm going to make this special like this special display of something I'm going to make it look this way in that way and then when we, when we didn't I was devastated because I'm imagining myself like in my office at home, spending, you know, three or four hours putting together this beautiful magnificent looking something and then I find out like, how can we lose this was the most beautiful presentation of anything ever. When we, when I like decided to do less to strip away all of the, all of the glitter and stick to the facts, keeping it strategic understanding what kind of story I wanted to tell, and the submissions. This, this really made a difference for us. I'm so glad you said that. In fact, I was like, yes, I don't even know if you're down, but you're down on my screen. So I keep on going like this. As a judge, I couldn't agree any more than that. I'm going to admit, we're all a little lazy reader readers. And it is. It's kind of a lot to do. But I do love the experience. So I kind of wrote the same thing, like keep it simple, use an economy of words, if there's going to be a place where you're just going to like throw a bunch of really great validation down, do it in the metrics and the ROI session, section like that's, that's where you're going to win. I think Cassandra talked about like cross populating your nomination, there are typical categories, but there are a typical categories that you wouldn't have thought about. So really think about that. And this is a lesson learned. Remove the donor names. Once you win, because we're going to manifest that once you win, case will take the entries and things that you've submitted, and they're going to publicize it. And it's going to go to a much wider audience, which is what we all want. But you're going to be so glad you redacted certain information. And so that would be a tip on that. So you're already going to win, just make sure you take out anything that you wouldn't want to see in print or otherwise. Great, great point. And so bringing up judging, thank you for that. Sarah, let's talk about judging. And several of you have judged before I've been a judge before. And tell us about your judging experience and how it's shaped your thoughts on nominating your team's work. Sarah kind of got us started with that. To back Sarah up, I have participated as a judge in the past. And I have to tell you, it is overwhelming that judges are reviewing lots and lots of submissions, which is why pulling back, you know, resisting the urge to give this amazing presentation is really, really important. Because when you're going, you are wanting to review all of the submissions while also trying to like do your work at the same time. So those who are able to say what they need to say in a very concise way where I can clearly understand kind of like what the goal was, how they met the goal, and what was the what was the return or the outcome of that always stuck out to me. And I as a judge was very, very appreciative of that. And do it in bite sizes, I will out myself as someone who's like, all right, today, I'm going to do five. And I will admit it keeps it manageable, but also it keeps the scoring really fresh. And also, don't overthink it, you are qualified to be a judge. I felt like it was incredibly welcoming. It really expanded some horizons as far as it was, it was so cool to work with some international folks. I mean, I was logging on at some really random time in the afternoon. And there are people joining me from dinnertime and morning time. And I was just like, Oh, wow, my world just got real big outside of Nebraska. And it was really, it was like actually really fun and talking through the entries. The judges take a lot of time, but you do have time to do it, you just have to break it up. And case would be thrilled for you to be a judge. So please don't wait to be asked. Anytime you voluntary yourself to do it, they no one's going to turn you away. I feel pretty confident about that. I would say just to add on to what both of you said, the volume is really high. And it can be overwhelming. So that conciseness, but also something that stands out. It's like what's memorable, because people aren't spending a half an hour with whatever you submitted. It's kind of like think about it like a resume. They say hiring managers look for 30 seconds, like people are looking pretty fast. I think that's great. And so I spent several years recruiting judges, which was a lot of fun. And I typically had to step in when someone had to step away or had to fill a spot that I couldn't find anyone to fill. So I found myself judging all sorts of categories that are not directly related to what I do every day. And that was so good for me that gave me an appreciation for what my colleagues do, and help me think about ways to collaborate. So I really encourage you not only to volunteer as a judge, but be open to judging many different categories. And just learning what others do. There's so much value in that. And also perusing the awards gallery after the fact. So I'm getting ahead of myself, but I very, I very much love the volunteer judge opportunity and highly, highly encourage it for everyone. And you can volunteer, volunteer your staff to to do that, because it'll be it'll be good for them. It'll be a great opportunity. I see a question in the chat. Thank you, Barbara. Question about which magazine category we should enter? Who met case? Can we contact those specific questions? That's a great question. So there is a generic email address at case case HQ, which is just awards that case.org. And they are very responsive, very knowledgeable, they will get right right back to you. And if you have any issue, don't hear back or they're not understanding your question, you should also be able to contact your district awards chair. And so our district awards chair is Grace link, I'm going to share some resources after this that will have her email address on it. And as well as the awards that case.org and some other helpful links for you all. But I highly encourage anytime you have a question of any nature awards that case.org. Thanks for the question. Appreciate it. Okay, so we kind of beat up volunteering as a judge. That's a great thing. Let's see other questions that I had prepared for us. Okay. I like what Sarah said, we're manifesting that you're all going to win. So what tips would you all share with this audience regarding what to do after they win? How do they maximize the value of their work? I love this because I'm laughing also because I'm an elder millennial. So if you give me a wreck, like some kind of piece of paper, like I feel super special. Here they are. They're right up here. Everyone walks in and sees them. I'm super loud and proud about it. But I'm also a parent. I'll see their kids too. Humble brag. You all know what it is. So you're throwing it on LinkedIn. Maybe it's something that your team won, you're going to share that great accomplishment with your campus partners. You're going to do it wide. At our foundation, we do some like mini presentations at like a quarterly meeting to say like, here's who won. It's kind of like a fast one minute elevator. This is what I submitted. This is what it is. We've even got as far to that's right. We make little awards for our campus partners who collaborate with them. We do this at M pics. But like even when maybe like not the super sexiest of things that are visual like when so like this was a like a letter campaign we did with our endowed shares like we just did a little envelope. And then when we asked them to write that letter again, we say the case winning award from 2000 and whatever, we're inviting you to be a part of it. So I think it's some shared recognition. But it gives you some good street cred. So don't be shy after you win, you almost want to kind of overdo it like an elder millennial. So we we had this conversation in our pre chat, where Sarah had identified me basically as genetics, which I am. I personally, I personally, as an individual, you know, I personally as an individual, I don't care for I don't, I don't care for awards. But I will say, using awards strategically in order to meet the needs and the needs of your team, and also meeting some of your strategic needs is very, very it, it makes a difference. I don't know how many of you are at decentralized universities. And you have your central comms, and you have your satellites within schools and departments across student affairs and so and so on. And for us as an office, establishing that we are the team that leads that leads marketing and communications submitting and winning awards in order to prove this point is one of is actually one of our offices strategic initiatives. From there, on my team, I have two full time employees, a millennial and genetics. They love awards. I get I get the awards and I have a folder that I put them in and I put them in my drawer. It's great. I know where they are is you know, they're nice, nice. They're very nice. And there's a trophy case behind me for our entire office. And but they love them, you know, and I will eventually you usually put something up on LinkedIn, and I'm dropping this link in our chat as well. Office wide, our news team, when we do have awards, and this is our most recent pull together of all of the awards that were run across all Washington University departments, where we put them all together, and it goes out to our campus wide in our campus wide newsletter. So everyone knows. I'll add on to that. So I think the stories is a good place to pick up the conversation like we we used to just win them and nobody told anybody. And so I don't think anybody knew what our team was doing. And there just became a point where it was important to share with our peers, our colleagues, our leaders, our peers across campus, what the team was doing on behalf of the university. So I think, you know, we have someone write up a quick story, we think about the story we want to tell to that audience. So recently, it was like, you know, mark advancement, markham collaborates with partners to win awards, because we had a bunch of collaborative awards. And that was a message we really wanted to emphasize that we were working with people. Again, LinkedIn, internal newsletters in the division posted on teams, posted it on teams to university wide communication and marketing leaders, not just our, not just the advancement division. And we'll submit it up to things like a board of trustees slide that gave my just be one slide when they have their quarterly meetings. And also our, we have a university system communication. So we'll even submit it there just really getting the word out. And I think we make sure to celebrate it with the team and call people out by name in that LinkedIn post, I make sure to list everyone on the team, because everyone's contributing to that success that it's not one person or two people, but everything we do as a team effort. And that's one of our, I think, values and priorities. And the last thing I'll say is how that helps reputation and recruiting to say, we're an award winning team. There's been a lot of reshuffling, great resignation, and, you know, we have some positions open. So I think, you know, it's nice to be able to share that. And I'm an elder millennial. So everything Sarah said, I would even, you know, just add to that, too, just because one of the things we saw prior to submitting last year was just some other universities, how they were using it to leverage on their social media. And it kind of was an aha moment to us going, hey, we're doing some pretty neat things, too. I've never thought about this in the context of being able to submit it for an award. But man, what a great way to be able to recognize it and show the innovation and some of the things that we're doing. And so we kind of used it strategically when we did to kind of showcase on social media, to our Council of Trustees, we sent them an email, just being able to highlight it, just showing some more buy-in, especially to our Giving Day. Because, you know, one of the things I'll tell you is, besides our department and Creative Services, you know, digital strategy and just doing things digitally, not everyone gets or grasps. So now being able to kind of showcase it and show some leverage of an award behind it just kind of, again, shows that buy-in, like we're doing the right things. And we're moving in the right direction. And just being able to be recognized by our peers that we're doing that, I think that's just a really big step in just kind of showcasing what we kind of bring to the table. Also, I want to say think about advocating for additional resources, advocating for, you know, either if it's human resources, or tools, or in also thinking about raises and reviews, and all of those things of how you build your case for yourself, and also for your team. Yes. Yeah, we actually have someone on our team who it's part of their job. When we restructured our team, there's a small portion where it's like, this is the point person, who's our collator, aggregator, moves the project ahead, make sure that we edit across the submissions. And we submit a lot more because we have put in the organization, you know, some human time resources, like that person is dedicating themselves as a human resource. And if you're on the fiscal year that ends June 30, I don't know about you, we're starting to talk budget. So we regularly put in an amount that says we're going to apply to awards and not just case, maybe some other ones, but we have a pool that we know we can use. And so we're not having to have that conversation multiple times a year. Excellent, excellent. Yes, I think that's so important. It's just part of your development and human resource budget and in your toolkit. Awesome. I wanted to acknowledge Amanda's question in the chat. Thank you, Amanda. So really wonderful question about national versus district awards. So yes, case has gone to a streamlined entry system, which means that there is only one point of entry, which is the circle of excellence awards. So that point of entry is open now. Once those awards have all been judged and scored, we move on to the district cycle. And so like, for example, within district six, we recognize all circle of excellence award winners, as best of district six, because obviously they are their best globally, their best of district six. But we also include a wider sloth of award winners as best of district because we recognize, oh, wow, that's, that is really great. As you mentioned, really relevant in our district, or that really rings true here in the Midwest, or, or just, you know, excellent work missed the global judging by a half a point, they should be recognized to kind of thing. So we are really proud to be able to recognize at the district level as well. And we will be recognizing at the district level, our joint conference in Chicago, I hope you all will be there. And so, but unfortunately, or fortunately, there really is the only the one point of entry, the nice thing that case did, I was very concerned when they went this direction is would they be pricing us all out. I come from a smaller school with a smaller budget. But they've really done a nice job with the tiered entry system, where if we get in at the early bird rate, it's extremely affordable, just as affordable as it was before to only enter the district award. So again, highly recommend you get that on your calendars and just enter and never fear if you don't win globally, you still have that opportunity to be recognized at the district level. On a district, hopefully that answered your question. Oh, I'm sorry. On a district level, I would say I'm really appreciative that the district level awards exist, because I think that there are some unique circumstances, especially when you're thinking about the mid when you're thinking Midwest versus coastal, that are highly, highly relevant that only anyone who's within this space can understand we won for a social media project that's called meet me in St. Louis, which is basically highlighting and showcasing all of these amazing things that are outside of our campus that showcase our city, because people have an unfortunate, like, if you're not from the Midwest have an unfortunate understanding of what it's like to be here. And so this is to kind of like tear that wall down and like really show that we have culture, and we have culture here and there's so many things to do. And we were able to win on a district level, where we know, like, where I'm kind of like wow, like to be recognized by this for like on a district level is from people who understand this predicament. So, it's awesome. Excellent. Thank you. Yes, Amanda your second question about district categories matching national Yes they do. So it's again streamlined, and they do match the national and if you have any questions, and I'm going to send out resources after feel free to contact me, or try to steer you in the right direction to give you the best opportunity to win. So, great. Okay, we are doing really well we've got about 20 minutes left in our time. I definitely want to open up for more questions thank you for not being shy about putting questions in the chat. Would you all any of you like to share a story of a specific past win that you found a lot of value out of what was the best thing you got from that win, or what, what made the most value or, or made you the proudest about that win. All right, I'm going to do the letter camp, the campaign one, because this is one where we ask endowed professors and chairs who are supported their position supported by private philanthropy and we asked them to like write a letter. But we're across a four campus system and a medical center and, and time is a commodity. And so we had great success you know we had to like right around 80 some percent in participation and we thought well that's awesome. But we wanted to like just keep on growing and getting better so once we submitted this award, we used it as a leverage because our faculty members. I think awards can tend to be an academic language that everyone understands. And so, once we won this award and we like invited everyone to being like, this is you, you did this. And I just love this project and I hate to say it but telling people how much their donors love to get these letters wasn't enough to like push us past that 80% mark which honestly is super successful and we didn't want to be too greedy with that. But we are now at 98%, because what we realized is the joint pride for the institution was actually kind of what we needed. And, and I think someone has mentioned about Cassandra about being familiar with categories. So this particular project had one in donor relations and stewardship initiatives, which was like a very natural, you know place for us to be, but we also submitted it for a target constituency engagement, because we were targeting donors of endowed funds. And again, just, I think because of everything we've talked about that is kind of my favorite it was it wanted a district level, but I just was really happy of that because now it's continued to be a thing that everyone, especially the faculty feel part of. And so it's really paid off in dividends much worth the hundred and $50 or whatever it is I mean trying to beg people to do something for you can be really challenging. Great story. I've got one. So a few years ago, you know, it's full pandemic everyone's working remotely, and we were asked to create a video. And that already has challenges. The team, I had never met the team still in office I think maybe one day we had a retreat outside, you know, socially distanced. And we figured out how to use digital whiteboarding and how to create a brain session online, and the video was about our license plates, like you get a license plate, and you give money to a scholarship fund. And I think they're really dry like there could be a very straightforward way to do that which is what we had historically done just like, get your license plate, show your pride. And instead we actually developed a story, I think it was short promo video category that we won, but we had this video concept come together where we had a student we use this student who was in the theater program, I think she might have been a graduate student so we had somebody who had that skill set partner with us, and in the video the mascot keeps showing up and surprising her and she can't figure out why. And so it was like, oh, there's the license plate so there was a story to it it was just really fun and whimsical and it seemed really hard because, you know, we were 10 people on a brainstorm online. And I think it brought us joy, and it won an award so I think our peers saw something in it that was just a fun way to get people thinking about, you know, buying that license plate. Thank you so much. I see one more question. Thanks Amanda no problem at all. And so yes, at the district level now, it's just straight across the board best of district, we don't try to say your gold your bronze or silver. And so it's just your, your best of district six. And as far as if that's fewer or more winners we actually have tried to keep it about the same. We like to recognize lots of great work. So we don't want to minimize the number of people who are being recognized. And so we've kept that overall total or percentage of winners, pretty consistent, even through the change. So I hope that answers your question. Okay. What makes event submissions stick out from others. Has anyone judged in the events categories before. For that kind of thing I love obviously a picture tells 1000 words if you have photo or video showing the feel of the events. I think that makes a big difference. I help oversee our donor events and while I have not judged an events category we've won in events categories and events are incredibly tactile and so specific on logistics so like I'm also weird. One events category that one for us is one that we did during the pandemic and you know you do a beam signing during a capital project and I don't want to wreck the sticker but we sent stickers to donors and have them sign them and send it back and then we peeled the sticker off and put it on, but like it. It was something that we did just like make it work kind of like Maria said like it was the pandemic like we were just on zoom and we were trying to make it work. But I think all of the details that you do to personalize an event or that's really special and unique. Don't overlook that because events have such, even though they're delivered sometimes in mass. There's really unique ways this was a COVID keeper for us we were able to engage donors who have never traveled back for maybe a midpoint capital project event. This one won a case award. We also had a recent award winning one where we engaged a donor and she donated some money to an East Campus expansion, where, you know, she picked strawberries in the field of the person. So like we had strawberry baskets on there, but like it all started because it was like super donor centric we named ice cream after her. So I think when you talk about events, think about all the personalized details you're doing, talk about what the tablecloths are if there's a reason there, we did a certain centerpiece over another ROI is great, but my final thought is, please don't make attendance numbers, be why your event is successful because we always know it's the right people in the right room and it's necessarily not because you had this huge gathering because the pandemic has told us that people can be selective with their attendance and also just know that if you have ebbs and flows that doesn't always necessarily mean a bad event versus a good event so I hope that helps with the event one. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. All the little mini mini little things that add up to a great event. So showcase all those little things for sure. And while you all are thinking of other questions I'm going to drop into the chat a couple of links on how you can volunteer as a judge. And so you can find out all about what that's like if you haven't done it before and complete the interest form, and that kind of puts you in the pool and then someone will reach out to you. And as I mentioned, because it is now global first, and you will be put on a panel with people from across the country and the globe, which is really very cool. Talk about expanding your network. I love to network with my district people, but now I get to meet people from the coasts and Mexico and England and it's it's wonderful. Excellent. Thanks, Aaron. Great. There is software that they use but they teach you how to use it. There's a tutorial so again, don't get caught up in like I don't know what I'm doing and I need someone to like put me under their wing. They want to make sure everyone feels really qualified, and there's so much follow up. So if you are a little bit of a procrastinator, they will politely persist that you get your stuff done so. Great. The other thing I maybe wanted to talk about before we close is the, the awards gallery and using those resources. So, both to maybe give you inspiration for what you might submit and how you might submit it but also to just give you inspiration in your daily work throughout the course of the year, you can find all of the 2023 circle of excellence award winners online. You can also find in our awards gallery for our district, all the way back to 2016 and review all of that work so it's fabulous. I don't know, can I share screen, Jacob would that be all right. I feel like I can. Okay, I'm going for it. Right. So I'm here I am on case.org if you just click on awards. And the first thing you'll see is congratulations to the 2023 winners, so meet the winners. You can see them all here. So you can actually search by keyword, look through all of them, you can look by category here. But what I love even better because I love our districts, I'm sorry I'm just biased I guess if you go back to you, you can either go from the awards page, and you can look at the district awards, or you can go from the district's page. Either way, we'll get you ultimately to the district awards. Here we are. Here's the winners gallery. So I can look at the 2023 winners gallery, or I can see who won in past years as well, reach out to them and visit with them about their work. The winner gallery here, this uses the same basic software that you'll use if you're judging this is the same platform. And you can actually click into any of these and learn all about them. Hey Aaron, there you are. Shout out to Aaron Rouse right on top. So, you can look by category here like, okay, I want to see about student engagement, I'm trying to get our students more engaged, what do I do. Well, it looks like Northern Iowa is doing some great stuff K-State and UMKC, I might view their nominations and reach out to their, their submitters, so I just think that's a fabulous resource. That's probably underutilized. And it's a great way again to give you inspiration for what an award winning entry might look like. I see a question from Matthew. Oh, great. Yeah, magazines, writing, communication based categories. What kinds of metrics and ROI are judges looking for. I'll be honest with you, I've judged, like the writing and magazine categories before and to what Maria said it is probably then also very qualitative and, you know, you know a good magazine when you see it, but Maria if you want to share some of the metrics that you've used as well. The metrics we use are not just print metrics which are difficult right you can say what you put out but it's hard to say what you're getting back so we also look at our digital metrics you know who's reading it what kind of feedback are we getting. Did we have a story that had really like a lot of page views and then you if you can look at the data and understand you know was that because we shared it or was it, you know, SEO was it organic search that was bringing people in. So in the nitty gritty that's the kind of data we look at also look at feedback. So sometimes, you know, we'll put quotes we are really persistent about requesting feedback letters to the editors of every digital story, multiple places in the magazines like send us your feedback. So when someone said, I just loved this issue I opened it up, and there was a story for everyone in my household I ripped it apart and I gave one to my kid I gave one to my other kid I gave it to my husband. That is gold. So, make friends with your editor, I wear many hats. I, one of them is the editor of the university magazine. So I have access to that inbox and my managing editor and I keep track of those and we just have like a kudos file. And then really think about what is your magazine's greater purpose, and that might be different for different institutions. But what is, can you define what your greater purposes and can you tell a story about what you're doing with the magazine to to connect to that. Awesome, Matthew. Good to hear from you. I saw people smiling I was like, what it was said. Yes, um, bravo, it's a big job. All right folks what other questions while we have these awesome panelists at your fingertips. All right. Well, I just really want to thank our panelists, I'm so happy to have met these folks, and they are amazing, and you all are amazing. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being a part of this profession. So I encourage any of you to connect with us on LinkedIn, connect with us via email and just let's, let's grow our network and grow this profession and continue to do what we do. I know we can all benefit from learning from one another, and I love this together format where we can just share what we know and meet some great people. So I encourage any of you to connect with us on LinkedIn, connect with us via email and just let's, let's grow our network and grow this profession and continue doing excellent and hopefully award winning work. And Jacob anything else we need before we close out. There I am. If I could just put a really fine point on the importance of volunteers at CASE, our awards department is two people. And so when you think about the scope of the international volunteers when you think about how many countries are receiving applications from none of that absolutely none of that can be done without motivated and excited groups of volunteers that are signing up to joyfully be a part of this. So, thank you all that have been volunteers thank you all that will be volunteers because it's absolutely crucial and necessary to all of case, and especially our awards. Fantastic. Well said, thank you for what you do, Jacob, and thanks again to the panelists, and hopefully we will see you all at conference. Take care.

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