Team Innovation Award

The Team Innovation Award is designed to honor the achievements of work units, groups, or teams (3-10 individuals maximum) in one or multiple DC Government agencies. Teams must demonstrate that they are able to develop and implement an ongoing customer-focused initiative that drives innovation in the public sector and produces measurable and sustainable results. Teams need to have met one or more of the following Selection Criteria.

Selection Criteria

The Cafritz Awards selection committee is specifically seeking initiatives that:

• Introduce a unique concept, idea, policy, or a distinctively new approach to a problem in the context of given agency mission(s)
• Build government capacity to serve its constituents, using innovative methods, tools and techniques that are applied to themes such as: modernization, change of organizational culture, and administrative reforms
• Encourage partnerships between the public sector, civil society and the private sector in the design and implementation of the innovation initiative
• Improve access and promote equity by extending service delivery to vulnerable groups (e.g. the poor, women, minorities, the youth, elderly, the disabled and others) and/or extend service delivery to a wider population than before, particularly through mechanisms that promote social inclusion
• Provide high quality service delivery through improvement in timeliness, effectiveness, and client-orientation in public service delivery

Eligibility Criteria

• Former Cafritz Awards finalists and winners working as part of a team are eligible for the Team Award
• Any work unit, group or team (3-10 individuals) within one or multiple DC Government agencies may apply for the Team Award
• Initiatives that involve other organizations, private sector and/or community-based organizations are also eligible, but only if the initiative is sponsored by a DC Government organization

NOTE: Eligible initiatives can be large in scale, and impact the entire District/agency/organization, or they can be small-scale, focusing on a specific problem.

Application Requirements

To proceed for further consideration, all ELIGIBLE nominated and self-nominated teams are asked to submit an application. The application allows you to tell us more about your team's accomplishments, and consists of the following sections:

• Team Applicants’ Information
• Description of Team Accomplishments (essay not to exceed 1000 words)
• Description of individual contributions to the project (not to exceed 200 words per team member, not including profile information such as name, position, email, etc.)
• Supplemental Materials: photos and articles (optional)
• 2-3 Letters of Recommendation

If you are self-nominating, you may skip the nomination and directly submit an application.

Only one Application per team is required. Individual team members do not need to submit separate applications.

NOTE: Applicants are advised to ask for recommendation letters from those individuals who can speak to the impact of their initiative, in order to highlight how these have benefited their respective organizations, and the greater DC community.

...One leader is only as good as the team they have put in place. This is why I am so thrilled that Cafritz is now giving a Team Innovation Award. Frankly Cafritz has selected phenomenal people for their award but each and every one of these people, whom I have known for years personally, would say that they could not have done it without a great team around them...