Use the operational planning software
Use the prize desk to challenge criteria, nominate a specific published contribution and record conflicts, reasons and dissent. The unit is a piece of public work, not the worth of an organization or a person. A local decision packet is not an awarded prize.
The workspace includes separate institutional-readiness records. Those records track what responsible people still need to establish; they do not grant approval or verify a legal, funded program. The longer-term charter below remains an institutional proposal.
Save each form, inspect the generated kit and export a backup. Your records stay in this browser. Imports are validated, destructive changes offer undo and newer work from another tab is protected. Fictional examples contain no real commitments, participants or results.
What it is
The Charitology Prize would honor, once a year, published work that changed where generosity goes or how well it is aimed: a study, a dataset, a method, a tool or a report. It would recognize pieces of work, not rate organizations. One category would be reserved for the best published failure, an honest account of something that didn’t work, written so others can learn from it.
Awards for failure already exist. In the Netherlands, the Institute of Brilliant Failures gives Brilliant Failures awards in fields such as health care and the use of AI in the public sector.
How it works
An independent jury would choose winners from public nominations against published criteria, and each choice would be announced with its reasons. The failure category would be judged on honesty, on how useful its lessons are to others and on whether the people a program served were protected in the telling. Before the first award, the criteria would go through public red-team review, in keeping with Charitology’s rule that no named organization is ranked until its method has passed that review.
Why it matters for the system
The Prestige Economy gives status to the size and visibility of a gift rather than to what it achieved. A prize is a status signal, and this one would point that signal at results.
The failure category would treat the Silence About Failure directly. Today a published failure can cost the next grant. A prize would turn the same act into an honor and give funders a public reason to treat honesty as a strength.
Risks and limits
Any prize can be gamed or turn into one more gala. This one would sell no naming rights, publish its jury’s reasoning and keep its own costs small next to the work it honors. Whether recognition changes behavior at all is a hypothesis, and testing it is Open Problem 15, the Status Flip.
What success looks like
Within five years of the first award, organizations cite the prize when they publish their failures, and the failure category draws more entries every year.
Prize nominations and jury packet desk
Draft criteria, gather public-work nominations, record conflicts and preserve reasons and dissent in a local jury packet.
No award, appointed jury, funded prize or approved organization ranking is created. The unit is a published piece of work. There is no automatic winner or numerical rating.
Your work stays in this browser. No account or server submission. Save each form, then export a backup before sharing or changing devices. Sample records are fictional. Backups support up to 500 records (250 per collection) and 8 MB, including formatting; large projects must be split before that limit.
Opening the local record snapshot…
Software and institutional readiness are separate
This workspace is available now. These requirements are not established by using it:
- Governance and legal home. Identify an accountable host and seek appropriate independent review before any external operation.
- People, resources and permission. Confirm real roles, resources, consent and any required agreements; this software creates none.
- Conflicts, safeguards and correction. Set independent review, recusal, access, retention and challenge procedures before launch.
Track evidence and outside authorization in the readiness records below. No local status confers legal approval, funding, accreditation or independent review.
1. Set the scope and assumptions
2. Review the current picture
3. Prepare a usable draft
Preview the generated kit below. It includes the context, every saved record, calculations, working documents and unresolved review prompts. Exports include all records even while a filter is active.
Read generated draft
Use Backups and recovery above to restore native JSON, remove this saved key, undo a record change or retry a failed save. Unfinished fields have a separate recovery download.
After a failed save, Retry keeps that exact change. To replace it instead, review the context or an existing record form below. Before adding a new record in another form, resolve the failed save; keep unfinished-field copies first.
Connect your program work
Keep chosen copies of records from Charitology Prize and the other partner workspaces together. Explain how a plan, evidence note or decision connects to another record, then review that connection when a copy changes.
This private browser notebook records your own snapshots and explanations. It does not establish permission, independent review, causation or observed results. The original workspaces stay separate. Files and records are not sent anywhere.
The companion notebook is loading. The original workspace remains available above.