FIRST Impact Award Refresh

FIRST^® is always trying to evolve and improve our program. One area that we identified wanting to improve the past few years is the FIRST Impact Award. The current format of the FIRST Impact Award has been in place for many years now but has had slight modifications to the questions over the years. This has made slight improvements but has not fixed the larger issues that have been identified. Some of those concerns include (but are not limited to):

• The executive summary questions are too short for teams to fully answer. This leads to some teams shorting characters, using abbreviations, etc. It also means that some teams will touch on a topic here and then further explain info in the essay or completely duplicate between the two.
• The executive summary questions have some questions that are really specific. This leads to some teams not being able to answer a question, putting information not relevant to the question, or duplicating information between summaries.
• Many of the team’s essays have lots of duplicate information from the executive summaries.
• The level of work for the judges has become burdensome.
  • Judges have to read through all materials (16,500 characters per team) and then try to decipher the key points and how things relate back to our guidelines to help decide between teams.
• Some teams express a lack of confidence in their efforts to prepare a submission.
• Some teams do not want to submit due to the high amount of work and preparation needed to be submitted.
• The wording of some team submitted feedback questions was challenging for many judges to provide meaningful feedback.
  • This has produced feedback from both the judges and teams that the current process is frustrating and confusing.

Encouraged by the Hall of Fame teams, we explored what we would want to change if we could start over rather than continuing to make minor changes each season. We took the approach to think about what components were core to the award, while also thinking about how we could make this process easier for both teams and judges and what pieces we think teams needed to submit in advance.

The core components that we want the award to cover:

1. How a team is a role model for other teams
2. How they embody the mission of FIRST
3. How have they spread the mission of FIRST
4. How have they impacted their community
5. How have they promoted STEM
6. How the team sustains itself and its programs/initiatives

FIRST worked with our Global Judge Advisors to create a proposal for what we wanted to change and then shared the proposal with the Hall of Fame teams as well as several Judge Advisors and a few FIRST Impact Award Judges to get additional opinions.

We’re excited to share today that the FIRST Impact Award is getting a refresh this season with the following changes (see the Submitted Awards webpage for full details):

• The executive summary questions are removed entirely.
• The Essay has been split into 3 questions with new character counts. All 3 questions are weighted equally, and they are purposefully structured to allow teams to focus on their unique efforts.
• The Feedback questions have been altered to provide valuable information to teams on how they are being memorable, as well as changes that would be more interesting to the judges.
• The FIRST Impact Award Definitions were updated and added a new term.   

There are no changes to the optional FIRST Impact Award Video or the Documentation Form. In addition, there are no changes to the interview process either. Finally, we will be adding a way for teams who submit for the FIRST Impact Award to be recognized during the ceremonies, similar to what is already done for the FIRST Leadership Award & for the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award.

While finalizing these changes, we also reviewed the FIRST Impact Award Definitions. We have added a new defined term for “sustained” and have also made other minor changes to the definitions. See the updated FIRST Impact Award Defined terms for full details. As a reminder, teams who submit for the FIRST Impact Award should be using the correct defined terms, and judges may ask questions to ensure teams are using them correctly.

We believe this direction helps address many of the concerns including:

• Less information to be submitted by teams, which also means less information needed to be reviewed in advance by judges.
• More open questions to allow teams to address the topics that are most important to them.
• Provide more direct ways for judges to get the information they are looking for.
• Public recognition in ceremonies to acknowledge team efforts in their community and the work required to submit.
• Reinforces the effort to communicate to both teams and judges that there is no singular expectation of a winning FIRST Impact Award team, but rather the uniqueness that comes from the key attributes of their particular impact efforts.

We’re excited about these changes and cannot wait to see what teams submit this year! As with other changes, we will review feedback this season to see if any other tweaks are needed for future seasons.