Awards

Grueling is the word that crossed the lips of the intrepid judges for our 2006 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence as they made their way out of our offices one hot afternoon in August.

Not that we’re particularly demanding taskmasters, but the competition was, indeed, fierce. Much to our glee, it grew from 33 packages in 2005 to nearly 90 this year (sent in by 21 agencies and four nonprofit organizations). Some of the categories remained the same, but we added a few and tweaked a few others.

Has it really been a year since I wrote a column announcing the First Annual Gold Awards for Direct-Mail Excellence? Must be, since it appeared in the March 2005 issue. But I haven’t even filed all of the paperwork from that competition. And it feels as though the awards just got mailed last month. (OK, they did just get mailed. But we won’t have that delay next time — I promise.) Wow, time really does fly. The deadline for this year’s awards is close of business on May 31. It’s a little earlier than last year because the competition already has grown, and judging

As I write this, Mother Nature has just now started to blow cooler breezes our way. My calendar says October. As you read this, yours probably says November.

Still, I have Christmas carols in my head. And this uneasy feeling that there aren’t enough shopping days left. Such is the fuzzy-logic limbo that is editorial planning. You live and breathe in quarters rather than days, and by the time a new season or even year rolls around, it’s been old news for three months.

Even though you can still spot a few happy little piles of rogue confetti that managed to outsmart the clean-up team after the FundRaising Success Gold Awards for Direct-Mail Excellence, we’re already about to launch our next awards effort — the 2006 Fundraising Professional of the Year competition.

The pumps are working again, belching putrid water out of New Orleans and back into Lake Ponchatrain. There was even a parade on Bourbon Street. But at this writing, America was still falling asleep to nightly images of bloated corpses, starving animals, armed patrols floating on boats through rivers that once were the streets of this country’s most joyous and charmingly decadent town, and the weary, misguided people who wouldn’t leave it.

What a grand time. FundRaising Success ventured into the tricky awards arena for the first time this year. And even though it was all new to us, it was a terrific experience from start to finish. We had a better-than-expected showing — 33 packages in all, submitted by 10 agencies and two organizations — a small but enthusiastic group of judges and a lot of fun.

It comes as no surprise that the hot topic of conversation whenever development pros gather these days — whether at a conference, a cocktail party or the water cooler — is the impending postal and legislative changes affecting nonprofit fundraising.

I admit it: I’m a dieter. If you could get paid for losing weight — or, more precisely, trying to lose weight — I would be part of the uppermost echelon of professional weight-loss superstars. I would lead my class in picking apart books, Web sites and the gray matter of medical professionals in search of the (drumroll, please) Keys to Weight Loss Success.