What You Need to Know About This Year’s Awards of Excellence Program

Our NACIO Board is excited to once again open our Awards of Excellence competition for 2025. We do have a short entry period, so we encourage everyone to get your entries in sooner rather than later. Below are details on qualifying entries.


What can you enter? 

Work produced by counties and state county associations within the last year (January 1, 2024 – December 31, 2024).

All entries must have been created by agency staff and not by an outside contracted organization.

This year’s entry timeline is May 1-31, 2025


Updated Categories to Better Reflect Your Amazing Work

We have updated the award categories to better reflect the work of modern county communicators and PIOs. This year’s categories include:

Audiovisual

  • Short video (under 60 sec)
  • Medium-length video (1-5 min) 
  • Long video (more than 5 min) 
  • Video series 
  • Podcast series
  • Podcast episode 
  • Photo /photo series

Campaigns

(All-encompassing using multiple communication tools such as social media, print, electronic, graphics, websites, etc.)

  • Public Safety 
  • Utilities 
  • PR Campaigns 
  • Community engagement
  • Crisis (Response)
  • Quality of Life (e.g., parks, libraries, environment, etc.) 
  • Budget

Printed Publications

  • Short one-page/tri-fold 
  • Multi Page education booklet 
  • Annual report 
  • Newsletter

Electronic Communications

  • Website 
  • Email newsletter

Writing

  • Short article (less than 250 words) 
  • Featured article/editorial (500-700 words)

Social Media

  • Social media campaign (use of multiple social media platforms)

Graphic Design

  • Logo 
  • Special Graphics (t-shirts, posters, banners, ads) 
  • Banners/buttons
Enter now

When will the winners be recognized?

Winners will be recognized at the annual NACIO meeting in conjunction with the NACo conference in July in Philadelphia. Further information is forthcoming.


Entries close in