After two years of zero entries, the NC3C Board voted at its retreat this summer to retire the 'Digital Resource' category. In its place, we are offering a new 'Reels & Shorts' category, aimed specifically at vertical videos of 90 seconds or less.
As we did last year, categories that have enough entries will be split between large and small population (typically 200,000 is the cutoff, but it will vary slightly based on who enters which category). This allows for a more level playing field for some of our smaller organizations and also encourages greater participation from our larger organizations, as they can go head to head against their peers with similar staffing levels and resources.
Our awards contest entry period opens on Friday, Jan. 2, and early bird rates are $50 per entry (you must be an NC3C member in good standing to enter). The early bird deadline is
Friday, Jan. 23,
at which point rates will go to the standard $75 per entry until the final entry deadline of Friday, January 30.
Our contest last year saw a record number of entries, and we want to keep that going, so show us all the awesome work your teams have done this past year! The contest is for work created and published during the 2025 calendar year.
When you enter into the Excellence in Communications awards, you agree to do judging in the spring for the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators' (MAGC) Northern Lights Contest. We have a reciprocal judging agreement with their organization, and it only works if everyone does their part.
Following a lengthy conversation this summer at our annual retreat, the board voted to apply a $25 per entry fee on next year's contest entries for any organization that does not complete its judging assignments for the Northern Lights contest.
We hope this will help reduce the number of unjudged entries that then fall on board members to have to judge at the last minute in order to meet our obligations for MAGC.
The TL;DR:
- Start thinking about what content you want to submit for awards, especially for our new 'Reels & Shorts' category.
- Please do your judging for our friends in Minnesota in the spring.
- And who can't wait to see Booyah Bradley dressed to the nines in Beaufort for the awards presentation?
