Character-Limit, Definitions, and Submission-Logistics Bugs

These are the 'compile errors' of the Impact Award — purely mechanical, fully preventable, and fatal if missed.

Bug 1 — Counting words instead of characters. Each executive summary is limited to 500 characters including spaces and punctuation; the essay is 10,000 characters including spaces and punctuation. Teams draft to a word count, paste in, and get truncated or rejected.

Fix: draft in a tool that counts characters live (Google Docs > Tools > Word count, enable 'Display while typing,' read the character line), and leave a safety margin. The portal counts spaces and punctuation — em dashes and semicolons cost characters, so spend them deliberately.

Bug 2 — Ignoring the official Definitions. FIRST publishes the FIRST Impact Award Definitions (Rev. Jan 2026), which formally define seven terms: Started, Mentored, Published Resources, Host, Supported, Reached, Advocated. The 2026 update's stated focus was 'to ensure that the defined terms were needed, making wording clearer, and capturing what we wanted to highlight,' and teams are told they 'are responsible for policing their own choice of words.' Teams who use their own vocabulary force judges to translate.

Fix: before drafting, read the current Definitions PDF and adopt the exact terms. When you write 'Mentored 14 teams,' you're speaking the rubric's language, and judges can score you directly. Remember the precise bar: e.g. you only 'Started' a team if it competes in an official FIRST event and agrees you started it.

Bug 3 — The interview that can't 'describe'. A key 2026 change: 'The phrase, "A team must be able to describe..." was added to several of the awards to place emphasis on the interview process as opposed to judges having to discover award attributes on their own.' If your students can't verbally describe each pillar of your impact, you lose ground the essay can't recover.

Fix: drill students to answer each prompt out loud in 30 seconds, with a number and a story. The judges now expect you to tell them, not make them dig.

Bug 4 — Deadline and logistics. The submission is due before competition — for the 2026 season the team-submitted deadline is Thursday, February 12, 2026, 3:00 PM ET. Miss it and there is no robot or interview that saves you. Portals also tend to choke under last-day load.

Fix: treat the real deadline as 48 hours early. Confirm in advance who has submission access (Student Award Submitter or Lead Coach 1/2 via the FIRST Dashboard), that the team profile is complete, and that all links are live. Submit the day before, then use the buffer to fix anything the portal rejects.

Bug 5 — One person, one point of failure. A single adult or student holds the doc, the logins, and the knowledge — then gets sick the deadline week.

Fix: shared ownership. Multiple people with the right Dashboard roles, the master doc in a team drive, and a written submission runbook (links, logins, steps). Students should drive it — judges value student-led submissions.

Mechanical pre-flight checklist: every summary ≤500 chars; essay ≤10,000; official defined terms used; deadline calendar-blocked 48h early; Dashboard submission access confirmed for 2+ people; all links live in incognito. Green across the board before you submit.