Excellence in Communications Awards Features New Category

Nicole Hricik • December 16, 2025

Award entry period: Jan. 2-Jan. 30, 2026

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?


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Did you know NC3C is celebrating 20 years?!

By Nicole Hricik • September 28, 2026
In honor of our 20th anniversary this year, we’re inviting our members to help shape the look of our next chapter! We’re launching a Logo Design Contest to refresh our organization’s logo and visual identity. As an organization created for and powered by government communicators, we can’t think of a better way to mark this milestone than by tapping into the creativity of our own members. The contest is open to current NC3C members, and entries must be original, human-created designs. AI-generated logos or design elements are not permitted. Before getting started, please review the full contest guidelines for design requirements, eligibility and submission details. Submit your logo concept through this entry form by Nov. 1, 2026 . After entries close, the NC3C Board of Directors will review the submissions and narrow the field to a group of finalists in December. Then we’ll turn it over to you! Finalist designs will be shared with the full NC3C membership for a vote to help select our new logo. And yes, there’s a prize! The member behind the winning design will receive complimentary registration to the 2027 NC3C Annual Conference, plus a complimentary hotel stay during the conference. We’ll also recognize the winning designer as we celebrate NC3C’s 20th anniversary at our annual conference in the spring of 2027 (we look forward to sharing these details too!) We can’t wait to see what our talented NC3C members create!

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