Almost every district has their own local awards to encourage and recognize clubs to do their best (not coincidentally helping the district itself to be distinguished). There are good ways and bad ways to do this though.
First, avoid competitive recognition, where there is only one winner. There are competitions where there’s a fixed threshold, and any number of winners (like the DCP, or the district recognition program since 2012), and then there’s competitions where there’s only one winner (or some fixed number of winners, like 3 or 10), and the rest get second place or nothing. Clubs should compete against a fixed goal, or against their own past performance, not against other clubs.
Why? Well, many clubs will immediately ignore a one-winner competition, knowing they really have little chance of achieving it. It’s being practical and realistic. The only clubs that will participate are those that are already strong, and really don’t need even more recognition to do well. As the deadline gets closer, many clubs will drop out of the contest entirely, depending on how close they are to the leader.
Be careful to avoid being biased towards large clubs, with points coming from members doing things, such as getting educational awards. A club with 12 members will be doing well to get 2-3 CCs, but for a club with 50 members, getting 6-10 CCs will be relatively easy. (Or at least make it a ratio based on the club membership base.)
Keep the scoring objective, avoid self-reported subjective data (like attendance, participation, keeping minutes, newsletters, displaying a banner, having a printed agenda, press releases etc.). They make it too easy to play games with the numbers, no matter how well-intentioned. For example, “Howard was going to be at the meeting, but his car broke down, we should count his attendance.” (Or arrived just in time for the closing.)
Leverage the existing DCP where possible. Focus on encouragement for the weak clubs, not the strong ones that will do well regardless of any separate contest like this.
Here’s some suggested examples.
- Recognize any club that started the year with 12 or less members, and becomes distinguished by June 30. It uses the DCP, it models the club coach program (though just one year, not two), and recognizes the club as a whole, not just the coach. (Example title used in some districts: The Phoenix award.)
- Recognize any club that earns 3 more DCP goals than the previous year. This focuses on improvement. Yes, clubs with 8-10 goals last year would be inherently ineligible for this improvement-focused award, they already get other recognition.
- Recognize clubs that move up one level in the recognition program, from distinguished last year to select this year, or select last year to president’s this year. Yes, again, clubs reaching president’s last year would be ineligible.
- Recognize any club that has a net gain of 5 members by the end of the year. This also focuses on improvement, though it increases the chances of getting paper members. “It’s June 28 and we have a gain of 4, but Suzy hasn’t renewed! I’ll pay her dues.”
Or pick other numbers, but you get the idea here. You can see the focus on the clubs that need encouragement, and doesn’t limit how many can “win”.