---
title: The Charitology Prize
group: Funding
order: 4
summary: Prepare public-work nominations, criteria, conflicts and jury discussion packets with reasons, uncertainty and dissent.
status: live
statusNote: Live local nomination and jury-packet software is available. No independent jury, funded prize, announced award or approved organization ranking is established.
conditions: [prestige-economy, silence-about-failure]
firstMilestone: Published categories, judging criteria and an independent jury, with the criteria tested in a public red-team review.
help:
  - Open an issue labeled program proposing a category and how it should be judged.
  - Add a published failure report you learned from to the Failure Archive, so the field has examples to judge against.
  - If your institution could host the award or serve on the jury, open an issue labeled program.
related: [/record/failure-archive/, /open-problems/the-status-flip/, /open-problems/the-failure-commons/, /programs/failure-lab/]
sources:
  - title: Instituut voor Briljante Mislukkingen (Institute of Brilliant Failures)
    publisher: Instituut voor Briljante Mislukkingen
    url: https://www.briljantemislukkingen.nl/
    note: In Dutch.
---

## Use the operational planning software

Use the [prize desk](#partner-workspace-the-charitology-prize) to challenge criteria, nominate a specific published contribution and record conflicts, reasons and dissent. The unit is a piece of public work, not the worth of an organization or a person. A local decision packet is not an awarded prize.

The workspace includes separate institutional-readiness records. Those records track what responsible people still need to establish; they do not grant approval or verify a legal, funded program. The longer-term charter below remains an institutional proposal.

Save each form, inspect the generated kit and export a backup. Your records stay in this browser. Imports are validated, destructive changes offer undo and newer work from another tab is protected. Fictional examples contain no real commitments, participants or results.

## What it is

The Charitology Prize would honor, once a year, published work that changed where generosity goes or how well it is aimed: a study, a dataset, a method, a tool or a report. It would recognize pieces of work, not rate organizations. One category would be reserved for the best published failure, an honest account of something that didn’t work, written so others can learn from it.

Awards for failure already exist. In the Netherlands, the Institute of Brilliant Failures gives Brilliant Failures awards in fields such as health care and the use of AI in the public sector.

## How it works

An independent jury would choose winners from public nominations against published criteria, and each choice would be announced with its reasons. The failure category would be judged on honesty, on how useful its lessons are to others and on whether the people a program served were protected in the telling. Before the first award, the criteria would go through public [red-team](/programs/red-team/) review, in keeping with Charitology’s rule that no named organization is ranked until its method has passed that review.

## Why it matters for the system

The [Prestige Economy](/diagnosis/prestige-economy/) gives status to the size and visibility of a gift rather than to what it achieved. A prize is a status signal, and this one would point that signal at results.

The failure category would treat the [Silence About Failure](/diagnosis/silence-about-failure/) directly. Today a published failure can cost the next grant. A prize would turn the same act into an honor and give funders a public reason to treat honesty as a strength.

## Risks and limits

Any prize can be gamed or turn into one more gala. This one would sell no naming rights, publish its jury’s reasoning and keep its own costs small next to the work it honors. Whether recognition changes behavior at all is a hypothesis, and testing it is [Open Problem 15, the Status Flip](/open-problems/the-status-flip/).

## What success looks like

Within five years of the first award, organizations cite the prize when they publish their failures, and the failure category draws more entries every year.