Annual Competition-
The TRUE HERO™ organization will award money for travel and community service project expenses to qualified high school, colleges and community youth organizations. The awards will be granted to those community service projects receiving the most eligible votes from the general public during the current school year (July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010). At a minimum, for community service projects posted for the school year beginning July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, the TRUE HERO™ organization will award 15 grants totalling $25,000 divided into the following categories:
· Top eight College Projects - $ 4,000, $3,000, $ 2,000 and five $1,000 awards, respectively
· Top four High School Projects - $ 3,000, $ 2,000 and two $1,000 awards, respectively
· Top two Community Organization Projects (non-school & middle school) - two $1,000 awards.
· Best Service Project Video posted on YouTube (most views) - $ 2,000
Additional awards for more schools may become available if sufficient donations and corporate sponsorships are received by True Hero, Inc. prior to June 1, 2010. See DONATE and SPONSOR for more details.
Special Competion for Haiti Assistance-
True Hero will award $2,000 each to the top five schools (colleges and high schools in the same competition) receiving the most votes through June 30, 2010 for projects that assist Haiti, including fundraising projects. These projects need to be posted under the category "Haiti Assistance". Reference letters for the winning schools will be required from the Haiti relief or non-profit organization that benefited from the project. The winning schools can decide to use the awards for additional Haiti Assistance projects or can donate the winnings to a Haiti relief organization of their choice.
It is FREE for your school or qualified community youth organization to submit your community service project for award consideration. Just go to POST and enter the requested information, including your school/organization, contact information, project description, location, category (including "Haiti Assistance"), etc. You will be given a member ID and password that will enable you to enter up to five projects for each school year. You will also be able to update and edit your project information as the school year progresses, including posting photos, testimonials and links to YouTube videos of your project, if available.
CONTEST RULES
1. Community service projects must be submitted by sponsoring organizations that are state licensed high schools, licensed colleges and community colleges or non-profit community youth organizations with 501(c)3 status from the IRS (“sponsoring organizations”). An adult contact person from the sponsoring organization must be submitted to truehero.org, including name, address, e-mail and work phone number. A sponsoring organization can win no more than one prize in a particular school year, except for winning the Best Service Project Video and the Haiti Assistance project, in addition to winning a prize for the best service project in a particular category.
2. The community service project must involve at least three volunteers younger than 23 years old.
3. True Hero, Inc. will contact the destination organization where the community service project was performed, as well as the adult contact person at the sponsoring organization, for each of the top voted community service projects during the contest period (July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010) in order to validate the accuracy of the information submitted for the project, including the project description, the sponsoring organization, the location of the project and the number of volunteers.
4. Grant awards will be paid to the winning sponsoring organizations in September 2010 for the contest period ending June 30, 2010, after votes are validated in July and August. We will publish Preliminary Results on July 1, 2010, and then Final Results, after vote validation, on September 1, 2010.
5. “Eligible Votes” are defined as follows:
a. A valid e-mail address must be submitted with each vote, and it must be confirmed (replied to) before the vote is registered for a specific community service project. The email address must be confirmed by midnight (eastern standard time) on June 30th for the competition then ended.
b. The same e-mail address can vote for more than one community service project during the contest period, but it cannot vote for the same service project more than once.
c. An individual cannot use multiple e-mail addresses to vote for the same community service project. Any attempt, computerized or otherwise, at aggregating e-mail addresses for the purpose of voting multiple times for the same service project, may cause those votes to be ineligible. Again, we will be validating the votes during the months of July and August, and may eliminate any duplicate and suspicious votes at our discretion.
6. The winner of the Best Service Project Video posted on YouTube during the contest period will be the service project video with the most views on YouTube from the later of July 1, 2009, or the date the project was posted on the TRUE HERO website, until June 30, 2010 at midnight (eastern standard time), meeting the following conditions: 1) The video must be from a service project listed on truehero.org during the contest period with links to YouTube; 2) The service project video must include video of the student volunteers working at the actual service project location; and 3) The video must include the following words in the "Tags" section on YouTube: "Vote at truehero.org"
7. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of the TRUEHERO.org Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.