Eligibility Rules

Virginia Beach Small Business or Non-profit Organization of the Year Contest

Awardees to receive four weeks of free advertising

Eligibility
• Open to small businesses and nonprofits headquartered or doing business in Virginia Beach.
• For this contest, a small business is defined as under100 employees.
• Must be in business a minimum of one year.
• Nonprofit organizations must be registered as a 501(c)(3) with the IRS.

Judging Criteria
• Each business nominee will be judged on its Social Responsibility in Virginia Beach, which includes any or a combination of the following verifiable community involvement efforts: blood drive participants, volunteer work with children/seniors/animals, EMS volunteers, donations to charity, hospital visits, membership in humanitarian service organizations (i.e. Rotary, Kiwanis), and more.
• Each nonprofit nominee will be judged on one verifiable, extraordinarily great deed done by one or more employees/volunteers in Virginia Beach.

How To Register
• Submissions can be made here.
• An individual can register as many businesses or nonprofits desired.
• Owners, employees, customers, recipients, or friends are permitted to submit registration forms.

Contest Judging
• Judging will occur in two rounds.

Round One. Submissions will be reviewed by a professional panel to ensure eligibility, verify information, and determine finalists.
Round Two. From the finalists, up to three winners will be selected by a panel of five judges representing Virginia Beach business and civic organizations.

Awardees
• Each winner will receive four weeks of advertising on an Adams Outdoor Advertising 12’ x 25’ poster display. Adams Outdoor will design the ad at no expense to the winners, and select which period and billboard location the ad will appear. All ads will be posted by April 1, 2009.

Contest Timeframe
• Any small business/non-profit efforts from January 1 – December 31, 2008 will be considered in judging.
• Entry deadline is January 2, 2009. Awardees will be announced January 23, 2009.

Publicity
• By accepting one of these awards, each winning business entity and nonprofit grants Adams Outdoor Advertising and those acting under its authority permission to use the winning business's and nonprofit's company name, trademarks and comments for advertising and publicity purposes without payment.