Top 3 Characteristics Shared by Winners of the Deborah Vesy Systems Change Champion Award

From May 27 – July 1, DF will accept nominations for the 2025 Deborah Vesy Systems Change Champion Award. This recognition, which comes with a $50,000 unrestricted financial award, is to recognize success in workforce systems change or scalable innovation projects.  Now in its fifth year, the team (both board members and community members) who review applications have seen an incredible number of excellent, and worthy, nominations.  But there are some commonalities between those which have been the winners, which may be valuable for anyone considering writing a nomination for 2025!

• Their work always involves multiple stakeholders within the ecosystem. There has never been an organization which has won this award for executing its own work well. Instead, all the winners have built multi-stakeholder collaborations which have worked together to achieve something they could not achieve on their own. Often, they have multiple services providers working together, or service providers and employers, or services providers and government entities; the combinations haven’t all fit one profile. It makes sense, because systems change requires understanding across roles, and creativity and change across stakeholder groups.
• Their results are significant. This is in recognition of significant efforts and results, efforts which will truly change the trajectory for workers and employers. Or said differently, the award recognizes work completed, not work which is at the idea stage or is being piloted.  It’s not surprising that often, organizations apply for multiple years for the same initiative before the results are significant enough (to be recognized as stronger than other applicants.)
• The winners identify if they are creating systems change or scalable innovation (but not both.) It’s tempting, when seeking an award, to identify all the features of  good work which are changing behaviors, processes and outcomes, whether they are systemic or innovative. But there’s a clarity of purpose in the winners, enabling them to clearly articulate exactly what they are successfully achieving. Some of this might be the result of the maturity of the winning initiatives.

I recognize these three characteristics also apply to many of the finalists, as well.  It’s a sign of emerging maturity that our ecosystem is developing many strong systems change and scalable innovation initiatives every year. That’s a winning outcome every day.