Rules Summary

1. Awards are open to all voluntary sector organizations (international, national, provincial and local), especially those who raise funds from the general public, whose head office is located in the province of Ontario. Divisions of national organizations that produce annual reports in Ontario separate from their national organizations are also eligible.
2. Voluntary sector organizations, for purposes of this year's awards, are defined as those organizations that are registered charities (i.e. have received status to give income tax receipts under the Income Tax Act) and actively solicit funds from the general public excluding organizations whose principal activities are run by or for municipalities, universities, hospitals or school boards (i.e. the MUSH sector). Please enquire to CA-Queen's Centre for Governance if there is some doubt about your organization's status.
3. Only publicly available annual reports (accompanied by the audited financial statements) will be accepted and judged.  All annual reports must be available online in order to be eligible for nomination.  The report can be an interactive part of the website, a PDF format or downloadable Word document. The audited financial statements are recommended, but not required, to be posted online.  If the audited financial statements are not available on-line the nominator must submit a copy of the audited financial statements as an email attachment with a statement explaining when and how they are distributed to the organization's relevant community of stakeholders. Adequate explanation that this distribution is all that is necessary to meet this organization's accountability to stakeholders MUST be provided.
4. Entrants must submit the most up-to-date annual report (accompanied by the audited financial statements) for the most recently completed fiscal period (relative to the deadline for submissions see item 12 below). All entrants will be subject to pre-screening by the Director of Technical Scoring to ensure that basic entry requirements are met and that the annual report has sufficient information to be scored.  All potential entrants that do not meet the pre-screening criteria will receive a package of information to enable them to meet the minimum standards for the completion in future years.
5. Entrants should ensure that the online annual report remains online and is not altered in any way over the judging period.
6. Awards shall be made based on three sizes of organization with size based on total revenues from all sources plus the categories of national and international focused organizations headquartered in Ontario. The nominator makes the initial classification in the nomination, but the CA-Queen's Centre for Governance classification based on review of the annual report is final. The Centre reserves the right to combine categories for purposes of making awards.
7. The Awards are only open to organizations with financial statements drawn up in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and that have been audited in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards applicable in Canada.
8. Once the awards have been announced, each entry will receive a copy of the technical screeners' completed checklist providing feedback about annual report content, format and presentation issues.
9. Entrants that make the short list for an Award will receive any additional comments from the judges panel on their individual reports.
10. The judge's panel decision is binding and no correspondence about the results is possible.
11. Award recipients are limited to receiving three Awards in any five year period.  If a recipient is considered an exemplar of transparent financial reporting they may be so designated as an "Exemplar" at the third award ceremony.
12. Nominations must be received by Monday September 7, 2012 at 12:00 noon by CA-Queen's Centre for Governance using the nomination form available through this link.