We will provide you with awards to hand out at your event, but you should probably not have any additional prizes.

Everything Should Add to the Attendee Experience

Because most CodeDays don't have prizes, judging and winning are an absolute afterthought to most attendees. A lack of prizes makes beginners feel qualified, and encourages experienced programmers to explore challenging ideas. It means taking a break to socialize or help beginners is a positive use of time, not a competitive disadvantage.

Prizes, rather than adding to the value of CodeDay, usually remove from it.

(Why have judging at all? Mostly because it bookends the competition, helping students feel like they finished something exciting.)

Good Prizes

While almost no CodeDays have prizes, wanting to provide more value to students is an admirable goal. If you really want prizes, here are a few guidelines you can use to find prizes that fit the CodeDay experience:

1. Prizes should not seem obviously valuable. People mostly address value monetarily, so stay away from large gift cards and expensive gadgets.
2. Prizes should encourage CodeDay principles. A Raspberry Pi encourages a lot more creativity and effort than an Apple Watch.

Prize Logistics

One problem with prizes is figuring out how many you'll need: team sizes can technically range from 1-6 (and in practice sometimes the judges allow larger).

The easiest solution is to announce, but not purchase, the prizes in advance of judging. By collecting a shipping address, prizes can be mailed to participants at the conclusion of the event.

If you'd like a prize to display, you can purchase a single one, and mail the rest to team members.

Alternatively, you can assign prizes for an individual-limited special award, such as MVP (bonus: helps the prize encourage CodeDay principles). As a downside, giving a prize for non-MVP awards discourages collaboration.

For sponsor prizes, sponsors can be advised to budget for a maximum number of prizes, in which case the team size restrictions must be strictly enforced.

Sponsor Prizes

Sponsors sometimes want to offer prizes, particularly to those who use their API or service. This is strongly discouraged because we are not in the business of bribing students to inflate usage metrics.

If you do accept a sponsor prize, it must:

• Not be cash or gift cards.
• Be worth under $100 per-person.
• Not be tied to a specific product (e.g. "best telephony app" is OK, but "best Twilio app" is not).

Again, you should push sponsors toward gifts that encourage the same things as CodeDay: creativity and exploration. Our sponsors guide has some suggestions.