Community Achievement Awards a Resounding Success in 2019

For those who aren't aware of the Community Achievement Awards...here's the simple description.

We believe in the power of storytelling, that by sharing the inspirational stories of those making positive contributions to their communities it will motivate others to do the same and provide role models for us all to look up to.

It's extremely rewarding to work on a program like this and so I wanted to share a snapshot of just some of the outcomes from last year.

As we begin planning for the 2020 Community Achievement Awards and complete the final wrap up and reporting of the 2019 program, we have been finding ourselves taking a moment to reflect on the scale of these awards, and how many lives they have touched.

Last year's Gala Dinner events saw us host over 2,408 guests across six states as we visited Perth, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide, Blue Mountains and Brisbane. At these presentation events we recognised 357 semi-finalists, 159 finalists and celebrated 59 winners from a pool of over 1,996 nominations!

With so many nominations, our 168 judges did not have an easy time of it. First expert judges dedicated hours to reviewing nomination submissions in order to create a shortlist of semi-finalists. Then the full panel of judges met in person to determine finalists and winners. The entire process occupied many weeks, and much care was taken to ensure each nomination is carefully considered.

The awards program may culminate in the Gala Dinner, but it begins months in advance as our team starts seeking nomination submissions for each of the different award categories. This year saw an average of 10 awards categories per state, enabling us to recognise a range of people and groups within our community – from volunteers, community groups, regional achievers and hard-working teachers to aged care. We loved uncovering the stories of our nominees, and with 59 categories nation-wide you can be sure there was a huge variety. All nominees shared one thing however – their determination to give back to their community.

To keep in contact with our nominees and their supporters throughout, we turned to social media and were wowed by the response. Over 912 of our posts were shared across 14 program pages on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We achieved over a million impressions on Facebook and our People’s Choice Polls reached close to 143,230 people.

Keen to broaden our reach even further, we also sent out press releases to local newspapers for each nomination we received. This led to an amazing 582 pieces of editorial being placed in print, ensuring that our nominees’ stories were heard.

Two TV advertising campaigns were run with the support of our Media Partners, including the Seven Network, PRIME7 and Southern Cross Television to celebrate the winners across metro and regional audiences.

Of course, none of this would be possible without our Partners. Thanks to their support we’re able to continue to grow the awards each year, providing even more opportunities for those working hardest in our communities to receive the recognition they deserve. Rod Stewart, National Sales Manager at Prime Super, put it best when he wrote to us to say:

“I thoroughly enjoy working with the Awards Australia team because I can rely on their commitment to excellence and delivering outstanding and consistent branding, networking and community engagement benefits not only for Prime Super, but for the community members that nominate or are nominated for these impressive Awards.”

Following the success of this year’s programs, we will now be bringing the Community Achievement Awards to Northern Territory for the very first time. For more information about these awards and how you can get involved, please contact us.

To view this year’s winners and read their stories, visit the Awards pages here:

• NSW/ACT Regional Achievement & Community Awards 2019 Winners
• Victorian Regional Achievement & Community Awards 2019 Winners
• WA Regional Achievement & Community Awards 2019 Winners
• South Australian Community Achievement Awards 2019 Winners
• Tasmanian Community Achievement Awards 2019 Winners
• Queensland Community Achievement Awards 2019 Winners

Curious to see what goes on at one of our Gala Dinners? Watch the video below of our Victorian Regional Achievement & Community Awards presentation night, kindly produced by Fine Art Media.

Do you want to get involved?

There are a few easy (and FREE!) ways that you can participate:

1) Support a community champion - be it an individual, group or organisation - by nominating them in the awards. It doesn't take much effort, in fact our team is here to do the leg work for you, and you could really make someone's day...or even change their life!

2) Be a social media supporter of the awards and share posts about the program to encourage your network to make nominations. You can join our mailing list to receive notifications for when the programs launch for 2020 as well as updates on the awards.

3) Put your hand up to become a judge of the awards. We are always looking for new members to join our Executive Judging Panels and we often need Expert Judges too for the various award categories.

Or, to access incredible marketing results and find a meaningful way for your business to connect with the community, become an official awards partner. We'll help you find the perfect award category, aligned with your values and the core purpose behind your business to uncover incredible stories of inspirational community champions, that are relevant to what you do and why you do it. Contact me if this option interests you and we can chat more.