Community Awards of Excellence

Call for entries January 2, 2023

Deadline: Friday, March 10, 2023 at 4:30 PM MST

Entry Fee:  $115 + GST 

The application form will be enabled January 2, 2023

Apply Now                                                                      

AWARD CATEGORIES 

There are four award categories:

1. Economic Development Renewal Project (Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Retail, Tourism): This category is intended to highlight projects that transform a vacant or underutilized asset into a driver of economic activity in a community. Can include projects such as beautification of downtown/retail/commercial/residential spaces, incentive programs, renewal of underutilized tourism assets, etc.

2. Regional Collaboration and Partnerships: This category is intended to highlight projects where regional collaboration and/or strategic partnership was the key contributing factor to the success of the project.

3. Innovative Approach to Economic Development: The world has rapidly changed in the past few years and economic developers have also had to adapt and change the way we do things. This category is intended to highlight projects that implemented a new and innovative approach to economic development. 

4. Marketing for Economic Development Outcomes: This category is intended to highlight economic development marketing and/or promotional campaigns with demonstrated and measurable outcomes.

COMMUNITY SIZES

Each award category has a total of three awards open based on size of community, for a total of 12 Community Awards of Excellence.

• Small community/region = population up to 25,000
• Medium community/region = population from 25,001–100,000
• Large community/region = population 100,001 +

Note: If there is a multi-community or regional submission, the total population of all participating communities must be considered when submitting your entry.

All Community Award Winners in each population group are eligible to receive an Alex Metcalfe Award. Read about the Alex Metcalfe Award here.

ELIGIBILITY

An EDA member in good standing (eg. individual, corporate or group) can apply for an award in any of the categories and will be judged against entries from other applicants within the same community size. 

Read the Submission Procedure here

We offer the opportunity to entrants to judge one other in a category or group submission. This is allows EDA members who have not participated on the EDA board an insight into the process and to assure that we have an open and fair adjudication process. 

Read the Judging Criteria and Weight here