FIRST Impact Award Executive Summary: Questions + Fill-In Worksheet

The FIRST Impact Award executive summary is a set of 13 required questions, each capped at 500 characters (including spaces and punctuation), plus a 14th, optional, 250-character question where the team asks the judges something for feedback — submitted alongside a separate 10,000-character essay. Strong answers are specific, measurable, and sustainable: they name the program, attach a real number, and show the work will outlast this season's students.

The Impact Award (renamed from the Chairman's Award starting in the 2023 season) is FIRST's most prestigious award, given to the team that best serves as a role model for spreading the FIRST mission. This page is a fill-in worksheet for the executive summary specifically. It complements a fuller How to Win the FIRST Impact Award guide, which covers the essay, the 12-minute judged interview (up to a 7-minute presentation plus judges' Q&A), and the video.

Format at a glance

Two accuracy notes. First, 500 characters is roughly 75–90 words — these are tight, so every word must earn its place. Second, the exact question set changes: FIRST revises wording and occasionally adds or drops a prompt from year to year. Always confirm the current list on the official FIRST Submitted Awards page before you write, and enter your final text in your team's Dashboard. Submissions are due in early-to-mid February (for the 2026 season, February 12 at 3:00 p.m. ET).

The current executive-summary questions

As published for the 2026 season, the 13 questions are:

1. Impact on participants — Describe the impact of the FIRST program on team participants within the last 3 years (graduation rates, college attendance, STEM careers, leadership, alumni returning as mentors/sponsors).
2. Your community — Describe your community and its unique opportunities and circumstances (geographic region, diversity, language, socioeconomic barriers, cultural expectations).
3. Spreading the mission — Describe the team's methods, emphasizing the past 3 years, for spreading the FIRST Mission in ways that are effective, scalable, sustainable, and creative.
4. Goals vs. the Vision — Describe your team's goals and the progress you've made toward fulfilling FIRST's Vision.
5. Measuring impact — What impact has your team seen from those efforts, and how does your team measure impact?
6. Role models — Specific examples (past 3 years) of how your team and members act as role models, and how you share best practices with other teams.
7. Mentoring/starting teams — Your initiatives to Mentor and/or Start other FIRST teams, emphasizing the past 3 years.
8. Other initiatives — What else you've created, grown, sustained, or participated in (FIRST or otherwise) to inspire young people, and the outcomes.
9. Partnerships — Partnerships and relationships built with other organizations (teams, sponsors, schools, government, philanthropy) and what you accomplished together.
10. STEM for Everyone — Efforts in the past 3 years to promote STEM for Everyone within your team, FIRST, and your communities.
11. Sustainability — How you ensure the team and your initiatives will be sustainable.
12. Area to improve — One area your team needs to improve and the steps actively being taken.
13. Other matters of interest — Briefly describe other matters of interest to the judges, including anything unique, noteworthy, or high-impact that doesn't fit the topics above.
14. Optional — Ask the judges (250 characters) — Ask one question you'd like the FIRST Impact Award judges to answer with feedback after the event.

Optional (250 characters): one question you'd like the judges to answer with feedback after the event. Avoid asking "what does it take to win?" — the judges won't answer that.

Fill-in worksheet

Copy this into a doc. For each row, gather the raw material first (names, dates, counts), then compress it to fit 500 characters. Write past-3-years data wherever a question asks for it.

Per-question guidance: lead with the noun (the program), not with "We are passionate about." Cut adjectives ("amazing," "incredible") — judges score evidence, not enthusiasm. Reuse a program across questions only if you show a different angle each time (e.g., a robotics camp appears under "other initiatives" for reach and under "sustainability" for its funding model).

What a strong answer looks like

Every executive summary answer should pass three tests: Specific (you can name it), Measurable (you attached a number), and Sustainable (it continues without this year's seniors). Watch the difference on a "spreading the mission" style prompt:

Weak (vague): "Our team does lots of outreach and has inspired many kids in our community to love STEM. We are passionate about giving back and helping others discover robotics."

Strong (specific + measurable + sustainable): "Since 2022 we founded 3 FLL Explore teams at Title I elementary schools, trained 6 of our students as volunteer coaches, and wrote a 20-page handoff guide so each school runs its own team after we leave. 140 students have participated; 2 of the 3 schools now re-register without our funding."

(That example is illustrative and hypothetical — not any real team's submission.) Notice what it does: names the program, counts the reach, dates the effort, and proves it survives handoff. That is the entire game.

A few durable rules for strong answers:

• Numbers beat superlatives. "Reached 800 students across 12 schools" outperforms "reached countless students."
• Answer the question that was asked. If the prompt says how do you measure impact, describe the measurement (survey, re-registration rate, alumni tracking), not just the activity.
• Show the trend, not a single event. "Grew from 1 to 4 mentored teams over three seasons" reads as a program; "we visited a school once" reads as a one-off.
• Be honest on Question 12. Naming a real weakness and the step you're already taking scores better than a humble-brag ("we work too hard"). Judges reward self-awareness.
• Don't duplicate the essay. The executive summaries are the data-driven index; the essay is the narrative. Give judges numbers here and story there.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Running out of characters mid-thought. Draft long, then cut to 500. Certain special characters can also break the save in the Dashboard — paste plain text.
• Front-loading feelings. The first 100 characters should already contain a program name and a number.
• Copying last year's answers unchanged. Judges want the past 3 years, refreshed — recycled text with stale dates is obvious.
• Assuming last season's questions still apply. Re-download the current set from the Submitted Awards page every year before writing.

Finish the executive summaries first, use them as the skeleton, and let the essay and presentation build the story on top. For the full picture — essay structure, documentation form, video, and the judged interview — see the companion How to Win the FIRST Impact Award guide.