2023 Superstars in Business Application or Business Organizations

2023 Superstars in Business Application - Nonprofit Organization

Important information before you begin...
Please read thoroughly before submitting your application.

ELIGIBILITY:
• In business for at least three continuous years.
• 150 employees or fewer.
• Previous Award of Excellence recipients and applicants that were not selected for an award may resubmit their same application up to three years back.
• Previous Superstars in Business winners may re-apply after five years.

Please answer all questions. Incomplete or blank questions will be marked against the applicant. Each question has a 450-word count limit. Applications should be a team effort and always reviewed by the organization’s Owner/CEO or Director.

DEADLINE TO APPLY:

Thursday, July 13, 2023, at 4:30 pm. No late entries will be accepted.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING YOUR APPLICATION:

When are you finished:
Simply click "Submit." You will be notified in early September whether or not your organization was selected as a Superstar winner.

If you would like the ability to edit your application until the July 13 final deadline:
You will have the ability to edit your application up until the process is closed on July 13 at 4:30 pm.

How to edit your application:

Click "Save" and enter the email address where you would like the URL link sent. You can reopen the application when you're ready to enter more responses.

Once submitted, a confirmation page will appear with a link to edit the submission if desired.

1. Contact Information

Contact Information
Nonprofit Organization Name*
Business Address:

Street Address

Street Address Line 2

CityState / Province

Postal / Zip CodeCountry
Business Phone Number
Please enter a valid phone number.
Primary Contact Information
Name*

First NameLast Name
Title
Email*
example@example.com
Phone Number*
Please enter a valid phone number.
Executive Director (or equivalent title) Contact Information
Name

First NameLast Name
Phone Number
Please enter a valid phone number.
Email
example@example.com

2. Background Information
Please describe the work of your nonprofit. (Superstar suggestion: Assume the reader has no understanding of your industry.)

0/450
List the number of years serving the community.
Number of paid staff and average tenure (Please distinguish between full-time and part-time.)
Number of volunteers and their average tenure.

3. Please provide your organization’s mission statement and/or philosophy, including core competencies and strengths. How do you align your day-to-day operations to this statement / philosophy? Also please provide the number of people or groups that benefit from your organization (Please provide results for each of the last three years).
Superstar suggestion: Provide your mission statement, vision statement, guiding principles or strategies for success. How is your mission statement communicated to your beneficiaries, staff, board, contributors and/or the general public (i.e., word of mouth, through marketing materials, etc.)? Also, explain how they were developed – were they constituent or leadership driven, and how do you ensure they are understood by your entire organization? Tell us here if you have team building meetings, strategy sessions and/or safety meetings that may include a regular discussion on these important guiding statements.

0/450

4. When thinking about your key constituents (i.e., recipients of service, board members, donors and / or customers), what makes your organization stand apart from your peers and / or similar nonprofits?
Superstar suggestion: Please use this question to outline how you identify constituent needs and priorities. Are you measuring their satisfaction? How do you engage your constituents? Share with us how you brand your organization and how you maintain it (i.e., social media, online networking, marketing campaigns, etc.) Tell us if you have a database or process to retain information about your constituents to use in the future. If you have a formal process for tracking and resolving complaints, please highlight your program here and brag about your results.

5. A qualified workforce and board of directors are main concerns for all nonprofits. How do you recruit and retain your staff, board members, and volunteers?
Superstar suggestion: What are your key workforce practices, and how are they directed toward creating and maintaining a high-performance work environment? How do you determine and meet the needs of your staff, board and volunteers? How often does your board meet, and are there term limits? What is the percentage of board members who make financial contributions to your organization? If associate training or education reimbursement programs are a big part of your employee retention program or your quality/safety programs, please tell us about that too. Specific examples are appreciated.

0/450

6. What recent or current significant challenges other than Covid-19 have you had to overcome to continue to be a successful nonprofit? Identify and describe the steps you took.
Superstar suggestion: How were the challenges identified, and did you anticipate them coming? If they couldn’t be predicted, what did you learn for the next time to make the company stronger? For these opportunities, financial or otherwise, how did the leaders of the organization rally and engage associates to adapt to change and meet the challenge? Please list challenges within the past two years.

0/450

7. List your organization’s functional expense allocation as a percentage of total expenses:
Program Services
Fundraising
Management & General

8. Additional Financial Information:
What is the calculation of your unrestricted net assets to current operating expenses?
How many months of cash do you have on hand?
Note: For help with the calculations, please refer to your 990 or 990-EZ and use the guide below. (For 990, see pages 1-4. For 990-EZ, see pages 5-8)

9. Please use the space below to provide a narrative that will help the selection committee understand the strength of your nonprofit’s financial position.
Superstar suggestion: A well-run nonprofit should meet standards where at least 65% of its total expenses are on program activities. Please explain if your organization’s ratio is below that. Also, a well-run nonprofit should avoid accumulating funds that could be used for current program activities. To meet this standard, the organization’s unrestricted net assets should be no more than 3x the size of the past year’s expenses or 3x the size of the current year’s budget, whichever is higher. Please explain any variance from this standard. Examples may be that your organization is planning on a large capital project, introducing a new program, or in the midst of a capital campaign, in which the organization is accumulating funds for that expense.

0/450

Attachments
You may attach up to 2 pages of supporting documents to your application. Attachments may be items such as one page of testimonials, graphs to support responses, a one-pager marketing piece, etc. (Files accepted: pdf, doc, docx, jpg, jpeg, png)

Attachments are highly recommended by the Selection Committee.
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If are you finished with your application:
Simply click "Submit." You will be notified in early September whether or not your organization was selected as a Superstar winner.

If you would like the ability to edit your application until the July 13 final deadline:
You will have the ability to edit your application up until the process is closed on July 13 at 4:30 pm.

How to edit your application:

Click "Save" and enter the email address where you would like the URL link sent. You can reopen the application when you're ready to enter more responses.

Once submitted, a confirmation page will appear with a link to edit the submission if desired.
Should be Empty:

2023 Superstars in Business Application - Nonprofit Organization

1. Contact Information

Primary Contact Information

Executive Director (or equivalent title) Contact Information

2. Background Information

4. When thinking about your key constituents (i.e., recipients of service, board members, donors and / or customers), what makes your organization stand apart from your peers and / or similar nonprofits?

5. A qualified workforce and board of directors are main concerns for all nonprofits. How do you recruit and retain your staff, board members, and volunteers?

6. What recent or current significant challenges other than Covid-19 have you had to overcome to continue to be a successful nonprofit? Identify and describe the steps you took.

7. List your organization’s functional expense allocation as a percentage of total expenses:

8. Additional Financial Information:

9. Please use the space below to provide a narrative that will help the selection committee understand the strength of your nonprofit’s financial position.

Attachments