Select and Train Contest Judges

Challenge Planning—Step 7 of 9

Judges

• Recruit judges who are experts or influential in the challenge subject area to add authority to the judging. This expertise can come from professional experience or education.
• Consider a mix of judges from different parts of the country and different sectors—public, private, academia.  
• Judges can also be helpful in promoting the challenge within their networks.
• Don't select judges who have personal or financial conflicts of interest.
• If you get a lot of submissions, and are concerned about burdening your judges, you can share the responsibility. For example, your agency staff can review the submissions, and send only the best ones to the judges. At least two people should review every submission though.
• In some cases, judging will involve testing a product in field conditions. Think about when, where, and how you will test the product.

Special judging considerations for Challenge.gov

• When you post your challenge on Challenge.gov, you will need the names and email addresses of all judges. Their names will be publicly displayed, but not their email addresses. 
• Judges will get a confirmation email from Challenge.gov, and will be asked to create an account.
• When judges score submissions, they will use a five–star rating system to rate how well each submission meets each of the criteria. Five stars is the highest score; one star is the lowest. You should outline for your judges what warrants five stars, what warrants one star, etc. 

Next Step

After you've trained your contest judges, you need to select and train your contest administrators.

Content Lead: Karen Trebon
Page Reviewed/Updated: August 13, 2012