1. Submitting an S.O.S Award nomination
Webinar

2. What are the S.O.S awards?
The Secretary of State Awards are Division of Historical Resources way of showing appreciation to local communities and their dedication to successfully executing the Main Street process.
Nominate the people, businesses, events, or type of promotions within your Main Street who have put extraordinary effort into the Four Point Approach
throughout the year.

3. How many winners can there be for one category?
For each category there is an Honor and a Merit award.
There is only one winner for the Honor award
(unless nomination committee votes are counted as tie)
Some categories may have more than one Merit award
(number varies based on committee votes)

4. What do S.O.S award winners receive?
Award winners are recognized at the Secretary of State Awards Banquet during the Annual Florida Main Street Conference.
Winners receive a framed award and are photographed with the Secretary of State.

5. How Many nominations can you submit?
Each program may submit up to 5 nominations per year.
Do NOT:
Submit two nominations for the same category (e.g. You can’t submit two businesses for “Business of the Year”
Submit any program/event/project that is more than 1 year old (anything before January 2016)
Exception: Larger projects (i.e. new construction of a courthouse) that have taken longer than 1 year, and have recently been completely within this fiscal year can be nominated.

6. Who can submit a nomination?
Only ACCREDITED Main Street programs are eligible to submit and win a
Secretary of State Award.
At the time of the banquet all programs that have winning nominations (Honor or Merit) must also be up-to-date with Quarterly Reports. Otherwise, the award may be withheld during the ceremony.
All submitted projects must have been completed with the past 12 months to be eligible.

7. Who picks the award winners?
Winners of the Secretary of State Awards are selected by a committee of seasoned Main Street executive directors.
Winners are officially announced during the Secretary of State Awards Banquet, Tuesday evening, August 15th. (Award recipients will be notified in advance in order to make arrangements to attend the banquet).

8. Only submit pages 5 & 6 of the Nomination Form.
Length of Submissions
Only submit pages 5 & 6 of the Nomination Form.
A brief description must be included. (Please limit word count to no more than 80 words, which will be added to the award program. Make it as clear and succinct as possible.)
If supplemental material is needed please limit to 2 pages.

9. Images for submission Do: Do NOT:
Send two or more high resolution photos in the form of a jpeg or png
Can send them through or Dropbox (Submissions must be digital)
Do NOT:
Insert images within the text of the application
Scan them all on one piece of paper and them
Send blurry or low resolution photos (if they look blurry or grainy to you they will also be too blurry or grainy for the graphic artist.

10. How do I know if my photo is high resolution?
Here are some tips and tricks:
Any JPEG image less than 500kb will only be the size of a thumbnail (which means the graphic artist can’t use it)
High resolutions images are 300ppi ( in a JPEG it should be about 3.5mb). Anything 3.5mb and up is what we are looking for.
Images downloaded from Facebook may not be reliable, especially if been cropped or edited in any way.
The best images are ones directly taken from a digital camera (or phone) that haven’t been edited

11. There will be NO late submissions accepted this year!
Submission deadline
Nominations must be submitted on time, before 7:00pm EDT on the deadline day:
April 8, 2017
There will be NO late submissions accepted this year!

12. Submit nominations to:
If you have more than one submission or have large files please via Dropbox
Submissions via snail mail are accepted, however, please make sure images are also submitted digitally
Copies of the nomination form can be found HERE

13. Questions? Concerns? Contact Katherina or