And the Winners Are ...

Judging for our eighth annual Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence went bicoastal this year (well, if you count Texas as the third coast, as many Texans do).

Last tally was a total of 129 entries from 37 agencies and organizations — our largest number of entries yet, if only by a few.

Veteran judges Joe Boland, FundRaising Success' managing editor, and Paul Bobnak, director of research for DMIQ and archivist at Who's Mailing What!, made the first cut in our offices in Philadelphia. Then the finalists made their way down here to me in Texas. I spent a lovely day in a conference room at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where Robyn Hutchinson Mendez, senior director of philanthropic resources at MD Anderson, and Cindy Gonzales, the hospital's communications specialist, joined me in making the final decisions.

As always, we were floored by the work we saw. Choosing winners is always a challenge … and an honor. This year was no exception. Winners were chosen based on a combination of brains and beauty — results and looks — and something a little more subjective that moved our judges in a certain way; something timeless done flawlessly or something innovative done fearlessly; something that the rest of the sector can look at, learn from and applaud.

If you've read our awards results even once in the past eight years, you already know that we feel almost every one of our entries is a winner and represents the very best of what goes into fundraising campaigns, no matter what the mission or channel. But choose we did, and here are this year's results. We'd like to thank every organization and agency that entered this year. Surrounding ourselves with your work for the time it took to judge the competition was an exercise in inspiration.