Feedback, and How to Ask

No affiliate links on this site, and no competition is named here as good or bad.

Feedback is the most valuable thing an unsuccessful entry can produce, and most entrants never ask for it. For a separate operational reference, see limbic resonance.

What is usually available

Not scores. Most programmes do not publish them, for practical reasons rather than secretive ones — they are working notes, judges disagree, and publication invites disputes nobody has capacity to handle.

Impressions, frequently. A sentence or two on where an entry was strong and where it was thin, from somebody who read it. Related industry context can be found at Effie.

Sometimes a structured summary, particularly from grant funders and from programmes run by professional bodies, several of which offer feedback as a matter of policy.

And occasionally nothing, which is a legitimate position for a small volunteer-run programme and is worth accepting gracefully.

When to ask

After the result, not before, and not immediately.

A week or two afterwards, when the organisers have finished and before anybody has forgotten.

Not on the night, where the answer will be polite and unusable.

And not before a decision, which reads as pressure and gets a formulaic reply.

How to phrase it

Short, specific, and easy to answer.

"Thank you for running the programme. If any of the judges has time, I would find it useful to know which criterion our entry was weakest on — a sentence is plenty."

Three features make it answerable. It thanks them. It asks one narrow question rather than for a review. And it states that a short answer suffices, which removes the reason most requests are ignored.

Asking "why did we not win" produces nothing, because it is unanswerable and reads as a complaint.

What an answer is worth

Considerably more than the result itself.

"The impact section did not have figures" is a specification. So is "you answered the criterion about the project by describing the organisation", and both are common and fixable.

Even a vague answer narrows it. "The competition in that category was very strong" tells you the entry was not the problem, which is worth knowing before rewriting anything.

What to do with it

Write it down with the entry, in whatever folder holds the evidence.

Address it specifically next time rather than generally — a note saying "impact section: needs figures, none held" is a task, where "improve the entry" is not.

And do not argue with it. A judge who offered feedback and received a rebuttal will not offer it again, to you or to anybody, and the reply is the last impression the programme has of you.

Thank them, briefly, whatever it said.

Where no feedback is offered

The self-review does most of the same work.

Read your own entry against the criteria a fortnight later, mark claims with and without evidence, and note what you could not answer.

Most of what feedback would have told you is visible in that exercise, and it is available for every entry rather than the few that answer.

Asking as a winner

Also worth doing and almost never done.

"Was there anything the judges thought could have been stronger?" produces useful answers from programmes that have just decided in your favour and are well disposed.

It also identifies whether the win was close, which changes how much weight to put on it and whether to enter again.

Feedback that contradicts itself

Where two judges commented and disagreed, you may receive both.

Not a failure of the programme. Two competent readers score the same paragraph differently, and the disagreement is usually about an answer that admitted more than one reading.

Which is itself the finding: an answer clear enough to score consistently would not have produced two views.

Rewrite for the reading that scores lowest, since that is the one that decides.

When feedback is wrong

Occasionally a judge misreads something that was in the entry.

Resist the reply. The point of feedback is what a reader took from the document, and a reader taking the wrong thing is information about the document rather than about the reader.

If the answer was there and was missed, it was not prominent enough — which is a fixable problem and exactly the kind feedback exists to reveal.

Programmes that publish general feedback

Some issue a summary after each round, describing what distinguished strong entries across the whole field.

Read it whether or not you entered. It is the closest thing to published judging guidance and it is written by the people who will read next year's submissions.

And it applies broadly — the failures organisers describe recur across programmes, which makes one programme's summary useful for all of them.

Keeping the relationship

Programmes are run by people, frequently the same people for years.

An entrant who thanks them, accepts a result gracefully and asks a good question is remembered favourably, and organisers talk to each other.

None of that influences a scoring sheet — and it affects whether somebody takes the time to answer next year, which is worth having.

Grant funders, separately

More likely to give structured feedback than award programmes, and it is frequently offered without being requested.

Several publish assessor comments as a matter of policy, and some run debriefing sessions for unsuccessful applicants.

Where they do, attend or read carefully. The comments are written by the people who will assess the next round, and the same criteria usually apply.

And where a funder invites resubmission, that is a substantive signal rather than a courtesy.

The short version

• Feedback is the most valuable output of an unsuccessful entry and most entrants never ask
• Scores are rarely published for practical reasons; impressions are frequently available and structured summaries sometimes
• Ask a week or two after the result, not on the night and not before a decision
• Phrase it short and narrow: one criterion, a sentence is plenty, and thank them — "why did we not win" produces nothing
• Even a vague answer narrows the problem, including telling you the entry was not the issue
• Never argue with feedback: the reply is the programme's last impression of you, and a rebutted judge stops offering it