The Charles R. Stephens Excellence in Diversity Chapter Award

The AFP Global Awards Program Nomination Period Is Now Closed.

The Charles R. Stephens Excellence in Diversity Chapter Award is named for the 1992-1993 AFP Chair Charles R. Stephens, CFRE, and recognizes his efforts in bringing AFP’s diversity programs to the forefront.

The Charles Stephens Award honors the year’s most outstanding demonstration of leadership, creativity and initiative in building diversity in membership or programming by AFP chapters. The award is designed both to recognize achievement and to promote the sharing of ideas among AFP chapters and nonprofit organizations.

Diversity and Inclusion

AFP defines “diversity” as the seeking and achieving of a broad representation of experiences, perspectives, opinions and cultures. Inclusiveness is an essential source of vitality and strength for the effective pursuit of an organization’s mission.

Diversity and inclusion are one of the key pillars in the AFP Strategic Plan for 2017-2019: Promote Inclusion and Expand Influence. From the plan:

AFP reflects a diverse and inclusive community, evolving and enhancing our global influence and mission impact. Our objectives are to:

1)     Engage diverse nonprofit and chapter leaders in creating an AFP vision and core principles for diversity and inclusion.

2)     Create a welcoming environment for diverse fundraising professionals.

3)     Broaden AFP’s role as an influencer, building on our skills, expertise, and the strength and impact of our chapters, members, volunteers, and strategic partners.

Awards Process

AFP uses an online nomination system. All nominations MUST be submitted using this system.

Separate awards will be given in each chapter size category.

Chapters can see a past winning nomination in the Attachments section, below. Note: This is a previous nomination when the award had just two criteria. However, the information requested is all the same, only this year the criteria have been broken out into five points.

Questions about the Charles R. Stephens Excellence in Diversity Chapter Award can be directed to afpawards@afpglobal.org.

Eligibility

The Charles Stephens Awards honors chapters for outstanding programs, projects and initiatives that are innovative, creative and push the boundaries in what chapters can do to promote diversity and inclusion, above and beyond what chapters might do to earn the Friends of Diversity Designation.

Chapters who have received this award in the past five years are ineligible for nomination.

The application must be certified by the chapter president.

Criteria/Judging Factors

Nominees will be considered for the award based on the responses to the following:

1)     Describe the diversity challenges in your community that this project was seeking to address

2)     Describe the project or initiatives that the chapter put together and how it was implement.

3)     Describe how the project or initiative turned out.

4)     Describe the impact of the project or initiative on the local community and/or the fundraising profession and charitable sector.

5)     Describe what the chapter learned from this project or initiative and your plans to move forward in the future.

Note: The maximum number of words for the entire nomination is 2,000. This includes text for ALL of the criteria. Nominators are free to split up the words for each criterion however they like, but the total number of words should not exceed 2,000.

Judging

The Charles R. Stephens Excellence in Diversity Chapter Award honorees will be selected by the AFP Awards Committee in conjunction with the AFP Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Because of the number of applications submitted, it is not possible to provide chapters with written evaluations of their entry.

Awards will be given in separate chapter size categories. However, the committees do not have to choose an honoree in every size category should, in their judgment, no nomination in that category meet the needed high standards for earning the award.

Presentation of Award

The winning chapters will be honored at an upcoming AFP event. The honoree’s accomplishments will also be recognized in AFP’s publications.