Prizes and awards

["James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>]

The issue of prizes and awards depend upon a number of factors:

1. If the AGA is willing to act as a sponsor of the event or not.....
2. If the AGA wishes to shell out bucks to actually buy prizes....
3. "Awards" (read as "certificates") would be cheaper than actual
merchandise, if the AGA was required to buy them..
4. If we decided to or are forced to levy "entrance fees" we had better give
careful thought to having at least _some_ nice prizes to attract people's
attention and make it worth their while.... (in _my_ opinion anyway...)
5. Karen has already stated that the AGA has good relations with the
"industry" I know a few people in major companies as well. It might be very
possible, once this is approved as an official AGA event, to approach
companies within the hobby and ask for donations of prizes, gift
certificates, eitc. I have been involved with a number of charity events
here in Toronto over the years where we have gone to local businesses and
asked for such "donations". You might have to ask 5 businesses for every one
"hit" but a lot depends on how you ask and whom you target.

If we approached companies like Dupla (looking for fertilizers/laterite),
Tropica (looking for fertilizer), Seachem (looking for fertilizer or
flourite or test kits), LaMotte (test kits), Hach (test kits again), Tetra
(pretty much anything), Rolf Hagen (power filters), Eheim (canister filter
would be _real_ nice), That Fish Place and Pet Warehouse (gift
certificates), etc., etc., etc.... the list could go on for days..... we
could end up with some nice prizes.... especially if we agree to give the
companies involved a "plug" on the web-site....

Personally, I think that if "Honorable Mention" awards are given out by the
Judges, these need be nothing more than a "certificate" which can be done up
in a DTP program and printed out on demand. If we really wanted to get
expansive, things like that can be mounted and laminated (small ones cost
one group I was involved with last year under $20.00 each and they looked
_really_ nice).

The number of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes will of course depend upon the
number of categories we divide the entries into. Best of Show would probably
merit a nice prize.

People's Choice might also merit something, or it could get a certificate.

Regardless, this can't really be finalized until the AGA MC gets involved
and let us know what they think of the whole thing but we should have
several options to present to them in the proposal.

But what do people think????

James Purchase
Toronto

  ------------------
  To unsubscribe from this list, e-mail majordomo@aquatic-gardeners.org
  with "unsubscribe aga-contest" in the body of the message.
  To subscribe to the digest version, add "subscribe aga-contest-digest"
  in the same message.
  Old messages are available at http://lists.thekrib.com/aga-contest