Awards and Judging Criteria

<< Gumball Challenge Finances | Contents | Entrepreneurship Tips/Links >>

Again, these are merely suggestions to guide you as you embark on planning The Challenge. Feel free to edit and rework these ideas as you wish! We just require the submission of recommendations for the two national prizes. Gumball Capital would also like to have the team names that win in each category, to post on our site.

Judges:

Judges may be anyone you choose! A list of potential people to ask includes but is not limited to:

Faculty members

Local entrepreneurs

Representatives of local VCs

Representatives from corporate sponsors

Prominent members in the community

Members of Student Government

Members and officers of related student groups (business, entrepreneurship, international development, etc)

Be sure to ask several weeks in advance so they can fit it into their schedules. Approach them by giving them a little background on the Challenge, and then asking them if they would be interested in acting as a judge. Be up front about the time commitment, they would need to be present during the team presentations, and should be prepared to devote some time later that day or the next to assign the awards. This time commitment will vary depending on the number of teams that participate.

Judging:

The judging should take place on Sunday, Nov 11th. The Competitor Teams should have tallied their funds, and have a short presentation prepared to discuss their experience. You can have teams sign up for competitiontimes through doodle (see Useful Resources), your facebook group, or a good old pen and paper signup sheet posted somewhere on campus. We suggest that you have each team give a 4 minute presentation with 2 minutes to set up, and 4 minutes for questions/comments from the judges. This way, you should be able to get each groups in and out in 10 minutes. If the format is digital in some way (video, Powerpoint, etc.) set a deadline for these to be e-mailed to one member of the OC (Events Coordinator or Public Relations Coordinator). Depending on the number of teams, you may want to have more than one round of judging at the same time. Take care to select an appropriate number of judges, and schedule space accordingly.

Judging Criteria:

The judges will most likely have an intuition for what to look for in the teams, but here are suggestions for things to consider:

Creativity

Professionalism/Demeanor/Presentation Skills

Excitement/Motivation/Passion

Quality of idea - how well has it been thought through?

Vision - have they thought ahead to how it may be sustained in the future

Awards:

Prizes will be awarded in multiple categories to honor ingenuity, creativity and successful enterprise among teams participating in The Gumball Challenge. The Organizing Committee, particularly the Fundraising Coordinator, should be proactive and creative about finding prizes for the teams.

Awarding the prizes should be done at the end of the Closing Ceremony, and you may print out certificates for the winning teams, if you feel that is appropriate.

Suggested Categories:

Most Money Raised

Most Creative/Innovative Business idea

Most Daring idea - The idea of this prize is to encourage people to really think out of the box when coming up with their plan, and to go for something that is unconventional but just might work. Hopefully this will encourage diversity of submissions.

Greatest Number of People Reached - This will be difficult to quantify, but the idea is to see which team was able to get the word out the best, or inspire the most people to donate. Such information can be more easily maintained with every Competitor Team keeping a Balance Sheet of their activities. Interpret this category as you wish.

Best Education about Microfinance - At the end of the day, it's all about microfinance, and we would like to see teams that educate people about this topic.

Most Sustainable Enterprise - This award should go to the team/business idea that seems most capable of continuing as an enterprise past the Challenge

We strongly suggest prizes be rooted in entrepreneurship, and/or microfinance.

Suggested Prizes:

A meeting or dinner date with a VC, entrepreneur, CEO, or corporate sponsor

Grants from corporate sponsors to continue established ventures

Gumball Capital will also sponsor two nationwide Grand-prizes:

Most Money Raised Overall

Best Display of Entrepreneurship/Best Use of the Original $27

These last two prizes will be awarded on Sat, Nov 17th, after all of the competitions nationwide have been completed, and all the Challenge funds have been received. Have the judges compile a brief recommendation of the team(s) they feel are best suited for these last two categories, and submit them to Gumball Capital before the Closing Ceremony. The winners will be announced on our website.

Organizing Committee Prizes

Awards will also be handed out to Organizing Committees at participating Universities on Sat, Nov 17th.

The three Awards presented will be:

Most Money Raised

Greatest number of people reached - Calculated based on the number of Competitor Teams created at the OC's university, and the number of people reached by each Competitor Team

Best Education about Microfinance - This will be judged on a number of criteria, ranging from the educational materials and events your OC hosted prior to and during the Competition, to how each Competitor Team at your respective university spread the message of microfinance.

Prizes are still to be determined.

<< Gumball Challenge Finances | Contents | Entrepreneurship Tips/Links >>

Microfinance!

Alleviating poverty
by providing
financial services
to the poor.
Read more...

Micro-donate.

I, Emily Campbell,
pledge $20.00
to Gumball Capital.

I, Marcus Banks,
pledge $25.00
to Gumball Capital.

I, Lillian Crow,
pledge $20.00
to Gumball Capital.

See all...