<p>Some weeks ago I nominated an executive for a very prestigious international award, and I am working on the documents now.</p>
<p>The problem is I hate my premise. The main document has a 500 word limit, and, I am trying to apply the concept “make every word count”, and, the document just isn’t coming together very well. The content must contain empirical data points, not platitudes. I have enough data, but don’t want to use a lot of it because of competitive intelligence issues.</p>
<p>Can anyone suggest how to write a nomination letter that will be read by an international committee of judges, that may have a reasonable chance of succeeding? Should I try to use a “big picture to small detail” scenario, restricted to the 500 words?</p>
<p>Can you organize it like a resume, then make it into complete sentences? That is, organize the pieces of data that you can’t specifically mention into broader categories that you *can *mention? </p>
<p>Or write “backwards” - rather than saying, He wrote such and such computer program to catch bank fraud, say, “In the past 3 months, 14 would-be terrorists were unable to transfer money due to the work of --.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean by “I hate my premise.” Since it’s data points, it the premise simply your opening sentence? </p>
<p>I may be way off base for what you’re trying to do. Just want to help!</p>
<p>Use brief anecdotes to describe the characteristics about the applicant that would impress the committee. Focus on only about 3 important characteristics. </p>
<p>Include a line or two about yourself that demonstrates that your judgment is to be trusted. For instance, if you supervise 500 employees, and this person is the most creative of the group that includes 10 national art award winners, then include the info about # of employees and their achievements.</p>
<p>Binx, you have it. I guess my challenge is the well of terrorist financing is so deep that the data points seem miniscule when compared to the gravity of the problem, now that I look at it all in black and white. And if I get into too much detail there are other implications. </p>
<p>I wish the foundation could be more on personal characteristics but unfortunately they want that as a separate document - although fortunately that piece was easier to write.</p>