Writing Award Self-Nominations for the Annual Report: Impact Is the Key to ChemLuminary Awards

One of the ways ACS recognizes the efforts of its local sections and volunteers is the ChemLuminary Awards. How the nominations are written counts for a lot!

The ChemLuminary Awards provide national recognition of the activities of local volunteers and are based on self-nominations by local sections. My experience from reviewing annual reports and selecting finalists is that many outstanding projects are either not nominated in the annual report or the write-ups are not comprehensive or poorly written.

Self-nominations don’t need to be verbose. However, you should follow these critical guidelines:

• Describe the activity as a narrative (for someone who has not experienced it).
• Indicate the amount of participation from the local section and community.
• Give a measure of the impact in the community, including participant reaction.
• Mention collaboration and cooperation with other organizations.
• Include any difficulties you encountered in planning and executing the activity and how you overcame them.
• Give past and future perspectives (if applicable).
• Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.

An example of a well-written self-nomination can be found on the Santa Clara Valley’s Annual Report (www.scvacs.org/annual_report/Part_IV.htm) for its Student Interview Training Workshop.

For smaller sections, the challenge is slightly different, because it is a matter of scale in terms of people, money, location, and time. Self-nominations should emphasize the ratios of members to volunteers, members to participants, and volunteers to participants. For example: A small section with 75 members holds an activity that has 8 volunteers and attracts 50 participants. This means 10% of its membership is involved, more than 60% of its membership was attracted from the community, and 6 times (600%) the number of volunteers participated from the community. These numbers are excellent! Imagine a large section with 1000 members having the same turnout -- not as impressive. When you write self-nominations, be sure to include this kind of

impact in your description. The reviewers look for “more bang for the buck” in self-nominations.

I look forward to reading your self-nominations for 2006 activities in your Annual Report!

Victoria Finkenstadt, Chair
Subcommittee on Technology, Tools and Operations
ACS Committee on Local Section Activities