All nominees are formally requested to accept their nomination, nominees are obviously free to accept or decline if they so wish. Those who formally accept are given the opportunity to submit additional supporting information to cement their nomination. There is no obligation to complete and supply such material, we have found that many nominees value this stage, in the process, as much as our research team do. The shortlisted nominees are then forwarded for evaluation to the jury.

Our dedicated Jury team will assess all information presented to them. The team gather information independently from a variety of publicly accessible sources, which are assessed alongside any material supplied by a nominating party or by the nominee themselves. The jury team casts their final judgment, based on various criteria such as including business performance, job creation, longevity, diversification, growth (either sustained or rapid), any significant innovations, feedback from stakeholders. Once the list is generated it is announced and classified into the different categories and rolled out for voting process.

The committee of judges is set in two ways:

1. Many of the judges are invited professionals and are assigned categories by WNBQA Awards staff, based on their industry, function, expertise, and experience. These individuals may accept or decline the offer. Those that accept the offer will then be grouped into three groups of five members each. The different groups are based on the nature and category of the competitions.
2. Apply to be a judge. As a judge you will be able to see the entries submitted by many organizations around the country, and you will develop a better sense of the types of entries that judges score highly. (You will not be allowed to judge entries in categories in which you have submitted entries, however.)

If your application is accepted you will be assigned categories based on your function and experience. As a judge you will be able to judge as few or as many nominations as you like, at your convenience.

Conflict of Interest: In situations where a judge has a conflict of interest in one way or another such a member is expected to relinquish his or her rights of sitting in the vetting process of the companies involved. The chairperson also has all the rights of requesting a member to stand aside if he believes such a situation is existing. Conflict of interest may arise in many forms but where the jury member has a company in the same race, a relative or third party company or business in any category then they are not expected to sit in the committee vetting that category. Thus, this member is expected to declare and recurse themselves of the duties of the vetting panel.

Disciplinary Action: If for any reason and evidently discovered that a member participated in a vetting for which beyond reasonable doubt he or she is believed or shows an interest of conflict, such a candidate will be disqualifies expressly.

Voting and How winners are determined

Voting will be done through the Online system on the website and using the USSD provided to voters

Once winners are tallied as per the results of the online votes, they are personally notified before any public announcement is made, allowing time for any communications throughout the wider business and the coordination of marketing strategies. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a winner; however, all who take part are encouraged to come back next year, details of our award winners will be made public via the website, award winners' magazine and subscriber newsletter.

Vetting: Judging or vetting of entries will be conducted over two sittings in July by the jury focused on the main category groups. Each committee will have 5 members with two rights of votes. Judges will be both volunteers and invitees. Judges' average scores will determine the competitors to ran for the category award. The nomination with the top three scores in a category will run for the votes in that group. then they both qualify for the same race and this shall be treated as an exception thus the race will have more than three competitors.

The votes will be tallied by the online system but the principle of scoring is the same. In a scenario where two or more candidates have the same score, then the jury will sit and re vote for the best winner to be awarded: The different categories of awards will depend on the scores as indicated on the table below.

Every other nomination in the group of B and C will each win a Silver Award medal and Bronze medals respectively. Other nominations with an average score of less than 5 in group D will have no awards but shall be mentioned.

During judging, each entry is reviewed and rated by no fewer than five (5) judges. All entries are viewed and rated at the judges' convenience over the Internet. Rating is done on a scale of 1-10.

All judges' comments on entries will be available in entrants' entry-submission accounts when Award winners are announced.

The veracity of claims made in winning entries may be audited. Any entry found to contain false or misleading information will be disqualified. Gold -winning entries will be published on the web site. Winners will have the opportunity to redact any confidential or non-public information from their entries before publication.