Confidentiality & Judging Integrity

All nomination materials, supporting documents, scoring sheets, verification findings, background checks, and Jury deliberations are handled as confidential information.

Only authorized members of the Spicy Awards Secretariat and the assigned Jury have access to nomination materials required for the evaluation process. Information is shared strictly on a need-to-know basis and only for the purposes of administering the Awards.

Jury members must protect confidential submissions, internal scoring, deliberations, and other sensitive Awards information except where disclosure is expressly authorized or required.

Confidentiality is maintained at every stage of the Awards journey.

• All submissions are securely received and reviewed for eligibility and completeness.
• Supporting documents are used exclusively for verification and assessment.
• Information provided by nominators and nominees is not disclosed to unauthorized parties.

Every Jury member receives a comprehensive Judging Toolkit containing:

• The official Judging & Scoring Rubric
• Conflict of Interest Declaration
• Confidentiality Agreement
• Jury Code of Conduct
• Judging Timeline and Procedures

Before participating, every juror must formally declare any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest and commit to maintaining strict confidentiality throughout the judging process.

All Jury discussions, evaluations, scoring, and recommendations are conducted in confidence.

Jurors agree not to:

• Discuss nominations with anyone outside the official judging process.
• Share scoring, rankings, or deliberation outcomes.
• Disclose the identity of shortlisted nominees before official announcements.
• Retain or distribute confidential nomination materials after the judging process.

Jury deliberations may consider written submissions, evidence, verification findings, scores, category fit, and other relevant information available through the official Awards process.

The Jury may request clarification or additional evidence where appropriate.

Information submitted through nominations may include personal details, organizational information, photographs, impact evidence, references, and supporting documentation.

These materials are used solely for:

• Eligibility verification
• Due diligence and validation
• Jury assessment
• Official Awards administration

Submitted information is not sold, shared, or used for unrelated commercial purposes.

Where nominees become finalists or winners, only information approved for public recognition will be published through official Spicy Awards communications, subject to applicable privacy and consent requirements.

To protect the integrity of the Awards, Jury members must immediately disclose any relationship or circumstance that could influence—or reasonably appear to influence—their impartiality.

Jurors, judges, Board members, staff, advisors, partners, and other decision-makers must disclose actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest where relevant.

Where a material conflict exists, the affected person may be required to recuse themselves from reviewing, scoring, discussing, deliberating, or making decisions relating to the affected nominee or category.

Participants must not attempt to improperly influence judges, jurors, organizers, or other decision-makers.

The Jury is expected to exercise independent professional judgment.

Sponsors, partners, nominees, nominators, media personalities, public figures, and other stakeholders must not direct or determine competitive judging outcomes.

Commercial relationships do not create a right to influence award decisions.

The Spicy Awards recognize changemakers whose work demonstrates meaningful contribution to positive social, environmental, cultural, economic, or community change.

The purpose of the Judging Guide is to ensure that Jury members:

• apply the same fundamental standards across nominations;
• understand what each scoring criterion means;
• distinguish evidence from assertion;
• evaluate impact in context;
• avoid rewarding popularity, wealth, visibility, or organizational size by default;
• recognize different forms of changemaking fairly;
• identify category fit accurately;
• manage conflicts of interest;
• maintain confidentiality;
• and make decisions that can be explained through the published criteria.

The Jury is not being asked to identify the most famous, largest, wealthiest, most established, or most visible nominee.

The Jury is being asked to determine:

A nominee should not receive a higher score simply because they:

• have a large social-media following;
• are well known;
• have significant media coverage;
• are associated with prominent institutions;
• have wealthy or influential supporters;
• have a large organizational budget;
• operate internationally;
• have received previous awards;
• or have access to substantial resources.

Visibility may help establish evidence, but visibility itself is not impact.

Impact must be assessed relative to context.

A grassroots initiative serving a smaller community may demonstrate significant impact within its environment. A larger organization does not automatically receive a higher assessment simply because its numerical reach is larger.

Jurors should consider:

• resources available;
• problem severity;
• operating environment;
• stage of development;
• intended beneficiaries;
• barriers encountered;
• and the nominee's stated objectives.

A compelling story is valuable, but a compelling story alone is insufficient.

Jurors should distinguish between:

For example:

"We empowered 10,000 young people."

should lead the juror to ask:

• What does "empowered" mean?
• How was it measured?
• What actually happened?
• Over what period?
• What evidence supports the number?
• What was the nominee's contribution?
• What changed as a result?

Jurors should consider whether evidence demonstrates:

• Relevance — Does the evidence relate directly to the nomination?
• Credibility — Can the source reasonably be trusted?
• Specificity — Does it demonstrate what actually happened?
• Consistency — Is it consistent with other available information?
• Recency — Does it relate to the relevant assessment period?
• Attribution — Does it reasonably demonstrate the nominee's contribution?

Materially false, fabricated, manipulated, or misleading evidence may result in disqualification or withdrawal of recognition.

Do not automatically equate:

• more people = more impact;
• more revenue = more impact;
• more countries = more impact;
• more followers = more influence.

Scale should be considered where relevant, but alongside depth, quality, relevance, sustainability, equity, and significance.

Large geographic reach, large budgets, high revenue, large staff numbers, or large social-media followings do not automatically constitute greater impact.

The Jury should consider impact in proportion to:

• the problem addressed;
• resources available;
• operating environment;
• stage of development;
• community served;
• and the nominee's stated objectives.

Nominees must not claim collective or community achievements solely as individual achievements.

Where impact was produced through a partnership, team, organization, movement, or community, the nomination should explain the nominee's specific contribution.

Where appropriate, the Jury may consider whether communities affected by the work participated in its design, influenced decision-making, benefited from the work, contributed knowledge or resources, or have meaningful ownership of the resulting change.

Something that has already happened and can reasonably be supported.

Projects, campaigns, ventures, initiatives, research, movements, and programmes that are ongoing may be considered where the nomination clearly distinguishes completed results, current results, ongoing activities, and projected or anticipated outcomes.

Potential should not be presented as achieved impact.

Where an innovation or emerging initiative is still developing, the Jury may consider credible demonstrated potential where the applicable category or judging framework allows it, while maintaining a clear distinction between what has happened and what may happen.

Depending on the category, the Jury may consider the following assessment lenses:

Where scoring is used, scores should support—not replace— reasoned judgment.

The scoring framework may vary by category while maintaining the overarching principles of fairness, integrity, impact, evidence, inclusion, and independence.

Jurors should assess the nominee against the published definition of the category and the relevant Changemaker Archetype rather than relying solely on the wording used by the nominator.

A nominee should demonstrate a genuine connection to the category for which they are being considered.

Where multiple eligible nominees demonstrate strong work, jurors may compare the strength, significance, relevance, evidence, sustainability, and contextual importance of the contributions presented.

Until the official announcement:

• Nomination status remains confidential.
• Jury scores and comments remain confidential.
• Shortlists are not disclosed publicly.
• Winners remain confidential until officially announced.

Judging decisions remain subject to the published evaluation framework, the official Rules, applicable governance procedures, and any formal determinations made through the Awards governance structure.

Public participation or voting mechanisms, where applicable, remain distinct from Jury-determined competitive categories.

View Spicy Awards Rules & Eligibility