You spent months recruiting a stellar group of members to judge award entries. But three days before the deadline, you’re sending desperate follow-up emails. Four judges have gone silent. Two are asking for extensions. And you’re wondering if any of them will agree to judge again next year.
Judges flake out for all sorts of reasons, but a big one is the judging experience itself. When volunteering feels like a second job—juggling spreadsheets, wrestling with email attachments, wondering if their scores were even recorded—judges don’t come back. They don’t complain. They just quietly disappear or decline your invitation next year.
So what’s the solution? You don’t have to bribe judges or beg harder, you have to fix the judging experience itself.
Effective judge retention strategies change how judging works by respecting their time, preventing fatigue, and making the process more enjoyable.
Five common problems drive awards judges away:
Juggling multiple tools. Judges bounce between spreadsheets, email attachments, cloud folders, and paper forms, sometimes for a single entry.
No progress visibility. Judges can’t tell how many entries remain or whether they’re halfway done or barely started.
Inflexibility. They can’t judge on their own schedule or in the way that works for them, like reviewing entries during the commute home or knocking out a few scores at lunch.
Unbalanced workloads. When one volunteer breezes through 15 entries while another is drowning in 50, you lose the overwhelmed judge and their trust in your oversight.
Administrative friction. Judges spend mental energy figuring out how to get the job done.
When judging becomes a pain, scoring quality suffers, frustration builds, and you lose your volunteers. Not because they don’t care about your awards program, but because you’re using general-purpose tools that weren’t designed for awards judging.
How do you improve judge retention for your awards program?
Judge retention depends on six strategies: offering flexible access on any device, providing progress visibility, distributing workloads evenly, breaking judging into manageable rounds, automating communication, and building in fairness structures. These approaches transform judging from a spreadsheet nightmare into a rewarding volunteer experience that keeps judges coming back year after year.
What’s the most important factor in judge retention? Flexibility. Busy professionals don’t have three-hour blocks to sit at their desks judging entries. They have 20 minutes on the train, a lunch break, or an hour after the kids go to bed.
Give your judges online access to award entries from any device. Add save-and-resume functionality so they can work in short sessions across multiple days. Make sure materials are viewable in one place, without toggling between tools.
When judges can fit their assignments into their lives rather than rearranging their lives around them, completion rates soar. Flexibility equals retention.
Nothing creates anxiety like not knowing how much work remains. With progress tracking, judges know at a glance how many entries they’ve completed versus how many remain. When they can see the finish line, they manage their own workflow effectively. The task feels achievable, not endless.
What causes the most judge resentment? Unequal workloads. Unbalanced assignments burn out overburdened judges and damage program credibility.Smart judging assignment means distributing entries fairly using rules-based criteria—by category, expertise area, or other factors. Preview assignments before finalizing to ensure fairness.
Fair workloads respect everyone’s time equally. And for staff, moving beyond manual spreadsheet assignment eliminates hours of work and prevents the errors that happen when you’re assigning hundreds of entries to a group of judges.
Asking judges to evaluate dozens of entries leads to decision fatigue and poor evaluation quality. Multi-round judging reduces the burden while improving outcomes:
Use different evaluation criteria appropriate to each round, and different judges based on expertise and availability
Judges need reminders, but staff shouldn’t spend hours sending individual emails. Send targeted reminders to judges with incomplete reviews, schedule deadline reminders at key intervals, and maintain a real-time dashboard showing completion status.Stop chasing judges and start supporting them. With timely reminders, judges don’t feel micromanaged and don’t have to dig through old emails for instructions. Everyone stays informed without anyone drowning in communication overload.
Judges want to be fair, but bias can creep in—sometimes unconsciously, sometimes because they don’t have a clear way to handle conflicts of interest.A fair judging platform should include four key features:
When judges have clear criteria and transparent ways to handle conflicts, they can score entries without second-guessing themselves. If someone questions your process, you can confidently show them exactly how decisions were made. Your fair, consistent approach is backed by actual data, not just good intentions.
Better systems streamline judging, but appreciation keeps judges coming back. After judging wraps, do these six things to recognize them:
Recognition can’t be an afterthought. It’s the bridge between this year’s positive experience and next year’s “yes” when you invite them back.
Implementing these judge retention strategies creates an experience that respects judges’ time, values their expertise, and makes participation rewarding. But delivering that experience is impossible with spreadsheets and email alone.
Every strategy above—mobile access, progress tracking, balanced assignments, multi-round judging, automated communication, and bias prevention—requires awards management software designed specifically to help you retain judges and streamline your awards program. These capabilities save you countless hours of administrative work while improving judge satisfaction and review quality.
Are you ready to improve your awards program’s judging experience? Download our guide to awards management software to learn how technology can help you retain your best judges and save you tons of time.