One of our greatest strengths as a Network is working together to spread impact and know-how.
In that spirit, the Eddies—advocate-nominated and voted awards—provide an annual opportunity to feature outstanding policy and advocacy wins from the past year, telling the story of how education policy was advanced one community and campaign at a time.
Eddies winners are announced at the annual PIE Network Summit during an evening ceremony where advocates can laugh together and learn about and celebrate powerful campaigns across the country.
Meet the 2024 Nominees & Winners
Game Changer Campaign of the Year Recognizes local, state, or national advocacy campaigns that tackled a big problem and achieved a new, game-changing policy. Sometimes a policy window opens quickly, and advocates move fast; sometimes, the window opens after years of sustained advocacy efforts. Either way, nominees in this category pushed the envelope to make a significant impact for students and families—paving the way for others to replicate or adapt this strategy in their communities.
Suzanne Kubach PIE Network Weaver of the Year Honors an individual local, state, or national leader who embodies the “give and get” spirit of PIE Network. Recipients of this award consistently work to build and strengthen the impact of the Network and the sector. This category recognizes individuals who are super connectors, working behind the scenes to share ideas, resources, and strategies and to support, connect, and amplify the policy and advocacy work of their peers and intentionally support the leadership of other advocates.
*Beginning in 2024, nominations must come from outside the leader’s organization.*
Best Collaboration Features coalitions of leaders and organizations who worked together to achieve a significant impact for students and families. Working in a coalition can be incredibly powerful—and incredibly challenging. This category honors the hard work of coalitions that organized artfully to respond to opportunities or challenges in their states and communities, contributed to a policy win, and inspired others to take up similar efforts. Leaders and organizations in this category not only advanced or protected critical policy to impact students—they did it in partnership and across lines of difference.
Best Defense Highlights campaigns that strategically defended important policy at significant risk and overcame significant odds using innovative tactics; sometimes, the most significant wins are actually holding the line. Nominees in this category provide models for how to deploy sharp strategies to defend policies or efforts that benefit students.
Best Implementation Highlights the necessary work to ensure that breakthrough policies or laws lead to sustained impact. Advocates know passing policy is only the beginning of the work to change outcomes and opportunities for students. This category features implementation work on laws or policies that were passed at least three years ago. Nominations for this award must include specific data showing the impact on outcomes and describe a PIE Network member or partner organization’s involvement in implementation (setting regulations, data monitoring, stakeholder engagement, professional development, etc.). While individual leaders may have changed over time, nominations in this category should reflect sustained advocacy or policy work that PIE Network member or partner organizations have been involved with since the policy or law was passed.
Most Actionable Tools & Research Spotlights resources or tools that shed new light on pressing and widespread problems or solutions and that state and local advocates across the Network leveraged to make a compelling case for policy change and achieve breakthroughs.
For the first time, we will use rank-choice voting to determine the winners in each category. This shift comes from many conversations with Network leaders, including the 2024 Eddies Nomination Committee, to ensure that voting captures the full extent of members’ views.
How It Will Work
Network-wide voting opened in mid-August; check your inbox for a link to vote, or log in and vote here. You will be prompted to rank your top finalists in each category. (Reminder: anyone who works at a PIE Network member organization can vote.) If no finalists receive more than 50 percent of the vote, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes will be discarded, and those votes will be redistributed to the remaining candidates based on those voters’ next-highest choice. These folks said it better: check out resources on rank-choice voting from NPR, PBS, Fair Vote, and New York City Votes.
- Nominations must be submitted through the online nominations form June 11-July 19. PIE Network members, check your inbox for this link.
- A PIE Network member organization may only have one nomination per category.
- Beginning in 2024, nominations for Suzanne Kubach PIE Network Weaver of the Year must come from outside the leader’s organization.
- Please select the category your work best matches. On occasion, the Nominations Committee, made up of Network leaders, will recommend moving a nomination to another category. The PIE Network team will reach out if this happens.
- Should your nomination win, we will only provide up to seven crystal Eddies awards per winner. If you list more than seven organizations, please specify which seven should receive a crystal award—or if you’re interested in cost-sharing to provide more awards to all partners.
Who is eligible to be nominated? PIE Network members are eligible to be nominated. Non-member organizations that partnered with PIE Network members can also be named in nominations.
Who can vote? Any staff member who works at a PIE Network member organization is eligible to vote. Each person can only submit a ballot once. The staff member must have an email address with a member organization.
What is required of Eddies winners? We will ask Eddies winners and finalists to share best practices, replicable strategies, and key insights with the Network. This could be through a speaking role at the annual Summit or in a future virtual discussion. We will also feature key materials from winning campaigns on the PIE Network Policy Portals.
