Awards at biennial conventions

[OPhiAGinger]

OPA is *FINALLY* moving to a biennial convention! Thank God!

But one of the issues we are grappling with is how to restructure the national awards that we currently give out at the annual convention. There is a wide variety of awards of different types:

• Some of them are given to multiple individuals (ex: individual achievement in service, outstanding chapter treasurer, etc).
• Some are given to multiple chapters who earn points by completing pre-defined activities in a program (ex: chapter excellence award, new chapter builder award).
• Some are based on convention travel at both the chapter level and individual level.
• Our most prestigious chapter awards are given to a single chapter. They compete with each other for this. (ex: service award, membership award)

As we plan our biennial convention rhythm, we are trying to decide whether to continue to give these awards on an annual basis because they drive great activity at the chapter level and we don't want to lose that on an ongoing basis. But if we don't give them out with a lot of hoopla at convention, will it still be as meaningful? Should we give them at convention during convention years, but leverage social media and technology to award them during non-convention years? We feel like the individual awards (where many recipients aren't at convention anyway) should continue to happen every year. And we feel like the convention-related travel awards should only happen in convention years. (Duh.) But we're torn about the other ones.

How do other GLOs on a biennial convention schedule manage their national awards?

[AGDee]

Our awards are based on performance over the biennium and are presented only at Convention.

[Sciencewoman]

^^^ Ditto for us, but our national facilities awards are moving from Convention to the facilities conference we have on opposite years, since more local housing board volunteers attend that event.

[jenidallas]

^ what Sciencewoman said.

A minor challenge is that the small handful of awards that are based on improvements are gauged across a specific two year window and not a rolling window. A chapter that I'm the managing regional officer for brought their GPA up from a 2.8 to a 3.3 in two years... but was not eligible for most improved scholarship because the starting/ending two year window did not match the correct two year window for the award. (This chapter luckily received other awards that helped reinforce their positive progress but they were a bit stumped on his they missed recognition for that major achievement!)

The other thing I'd note is that getting exec boards engaged in pushing for the types of activities that result in awards during the "off" years (when that exec won't be in office during the application/awarding) sometimes requires a bit of a nudge from advisors/supporting alumnae. It's helpful to keep the criteria at the forefront so it's a continual process not an ad hoc one.