Our premier category celebrates New Zealand’s champion plain English communicators

The Plain English Champion category has two awards.

You can switch between them here:

• Plain English Champion — Best Organisation
• Plain English Champion — Best Individual or Team

Each entry in this category costs $143.75 including GST or $74.75 including GST for registered charities. This fee goes completely towards running the Awards.

Plain English Champion — Best Organisation award

The award for Plain English Champion — Best Organisation is the premier award. This award is open to any New Zealand-based organisation that can show evidence of a successful campaign to create an organisation-wide culture of plain English communication.

Please note that the award for the Best Organisation will only be awarded if entries of a high enough quality are received.

What you need to know

Present your entry in two parts: project description and supporting evidence.

By entering this category you agree that if you win, you’ll meet the timeframes and other criteria for using your prize.

1. Project description

Please describe your project in up to 2500 words, using the three headings below. We’ve given some examples of content, but you can include whatever information you need to support your entry.

Planning

Content could include:

• a business case for the project
• project objectives
• ideas to achieve management commitment
• a detailed plain English project plan.

Activities and resources

Content could include:

• staff training
• documents redrafted into plain English
• internal and external publicity campaigns
• internal or external plain English standard
• a style guide that supports plain English
• intranet materials
• publications
• online forums
• staff champions
• plain English editing software.

Results to date

Record successes, milestones achieved, and lessons learned, including:

• audits or other measures of plain English use
• solicited and unsolicited feedback from readers, staff, or clients
• ‘before and after’ documents and results
• other tangible results.

2. Supporting evidence

You can include as much supporting evidence as you like.

Prizes for this award

The winner of the Plain English Champion — Best Organisation award will receive plain English consultancy services to the value of $5,000 from Write Limited. The prize is to be used on a specific plain English project designed to produce measurable results for the winning organisation or their stakeholders (that is, savings in time or money, or improved service levels and better feedback from customers).

The winner must start and complete the prize project within a 6-month period and produce a publishable case study shortly after.

The winner will also receive:

• a stunning steel and bronze trophy produced for the Awards by Wellington sculptor Campbell Maud
• the latest StyleWriter plain English editing software — single-user licence (from Editor Software)
• a place on any of Write Limited’s 1-day public workshops.

What projects have previous winners supported with their major prize?

Examples of previous winning projects supported by Write’s consultancy include:

• Training in proposal writing to empower organisations bidding for funding — to streamline the process of allocating funding and reduce time needed for questions and retendering)
• Training for ESOL personnel — to support the investment in personnel with specialist skills
• Consulting on methodology of reviewing and user-testing documents — to produce an effective document for a multi-faceted audience from medical specialist to patient and whānau.

Please email [email protected] if you have any questions.