***June 17, 2021 UPDATE: We will allow an additional week for entries! Entries are now due by Friday, June 25th!***
The 2021 GRA Awards are open for applications! Click here to see the 2021 awards competition rules. Applications are due by June 18, 2021 JUNE 25, 2021 and winners will be announced at the virtual conference July 19-21.
The Awards recognize exceptional research and educational efforts on state, regional and local governmental issues performed by members. The awards competition, judged by fellow GRA members, offers staff of member organizations and individual GRA members the opportunity to showcase their work and learn from their peers, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the overall quality of the GRA’s contribution to the field of governmental research.
There are a few exciting changes to the Awards this year. First, we’ll be accepting projects from 2019, 2020 and 2021 up to the cutoff date of June 18, 2021 JUNE 25, 2021. This is due to the awards competition’s pandemic hiatus last year. Second, there are two new categories of awards:
- Best COVID-19 Response and
- Communications Awards for best data visualization, short video, short form research and best original commentary.
The Best COVID -19 Response Award will recognize the overall quality of the research, communication, and educational activities of a governmental research agency or individual GRA member that are intended to inform the public and/or public officials about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on public health and government. The Communications Awards recognize that GRA members are finding new ways to engage the public, honoring outstanding creative efforts by governmental research agencies and individual GRA members to deliver high-quality information, data analysis, and/or research findings.
Third, there are new online entry forms, which we hope will make the application process easier. They are Google forms, so you must have an active Gmail account to complete. The entry forms were emailed to GRA members today, but if you did not receive the email for any reason, please contact GRA President Sarah Wetmore at president@graonline.org.
Thank you to our Awards Committee members, to the GRA Trustees who made the overhaul of the Awards possible and to all of our members for their extraordinary work in the public interest!