My team and I have been assisting the brilliant Fresh Perspective Resourcing team with the administration side of The Freshies for the last few months.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project, but it has highlighted a few things for me that I would like to share with you today.
For the last two weeks, we have been facilitating the finalist interviews. There were 10 different categories, each with a panel of judges, for a total of 80 interviews (8 finalists per category… I did need to get my calculator out to add that up!!). Next week, we have the remaining 7 categories, for a total of 56 interviews.
The work that goes on behind the scenes in creating these events is HUGE!
Before we even got to the interviewing stage, Laura Leyland, Emily Leyland, and the team at Fresh worked hard to find the most amazing venue, advertise the awards, collect nominations for each category, and contact every person individually who had been nominated and shortlisted.
We provided each shortlisted person with a badge to share on social media—this helps small businesses show the world that they have been acknowledged for being at the top of their industry.
Once the voting had finished and we had our list of finalists, we then contacted each person individually again. This time, every person also received a telephone call to ensure they knew they were a finalist… all 136 of them!
Judges have donated their time to sit on category panels – as these awards are for charity.
My team and The Fresh team have been communicating daily (multiple times, some days) because, as you can imagine, organising this many people can be a bit like herding cats!
This part of the process has many moving parts and requires a lot of patience, but listening to the finalists tell their stories has also made it the most enjoyable part!
What has been frustrating, however, is that some people have decided that they don’t want to attend their interview because it no longer suits them. Sometimes, this has been with very short notice, and they have expected us to accommodate by changing the day or time of their interview.
This, to me, shows that they aren’t taking their role as finalists very seriously. Or that they aren’t taking ‘these’ awards very seriously.
If it is the latter, I am presuming they don’t understand the amount of work that goes into organising these events.
This is the 4th year for The Freshies Awards, and they are steadily growing each year. I don’t think it will be long before they are up there with other Northwest awards that have been running for much longer.
Like everything, these prestigious events must start from somewhere. They don’t launch in year one, with everyone wanting to win an award. They learn from each year and evolve bigger and better!
I can’t wait to see what is in store for the fifth year of The Freshies. If you want tickets to attend this year’s awards night, here is the link:
https://lnkd.in/eiAmHs3q
Chief Executive Officer at the Arlington Food Assistance Center
3mo5 Great women who have earned their promotions by their hard work & dedication to serving our families!!