Our selection methodolgy has evolved a little since the beginning. All teams are entered into a spreadsheet with columns for their sequential order of receipt, state, school name, and coach's name. They are initially sorted by date of receipt of the application. At the time of selection, schools are re-sorted by coach's name. Each state that has at least 10% of the total applications (we round down) is guaranteed at least 1 grant recipient. We have been using, and will continue to use, the random number generator found at Random.org to select our teams. We will generate 1 set with the number of unique random integers equal to the number of applications being considered for the drawing. We will select the 1st school for each of our 10% states (see example below). From there, we will select the remaining applicants in the order they appear on the list. The numbers generated are matched to the row number in the spreadsheet. This particular random number generator uses atmospheric noise to generate the number(s). We would like to believe that Matt has some say in which teams are selected.
On occasion, we receive applications from more than one team at the same school (such as a HS and a Junior High team). In these cases, we will accept and consider the applications from both teams in our random selection process. If by some chance, multiple teams from the same school are selected, only one grant will be awarded to that school and a team from a different school will be selected for the remaining grant. We believe this is the fairest way to handle this situation.
Our selections for the special grants awarded in memory of Matt's Dad Mike will be selected based on speed of response on Facebook or inclusion of a specific key word in the 'Remarks' section of the application. On November 20th (Matt's birthday), we will announce a contest of some sort on the Matt's Buzzers Facebook page OR let you know what our key word is. The first team to identify the person, place or thing in the photo OR the first appliation to conatain the key word will be awarded the grant.
The first photo used for this grant, on Nov 20, 2017 was a photo of Mike's favorite White Sox Player, Frank Thomas.
In 2019 we scanned for the key word 'history'.
In 2022 we chose the 2 Chicago teams who had applied.
In 2023 we chose 1 ND school because it was close to home and a 2nd school because they had such a unique after school and weekend program
Example: We have applications from 20 schools and will be awarding 8 grants. The schools are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, and T. G & M are from the same state. B, H & L are from the same state. The Sequence Generator placed them in this order: N, C, E, J, K, R, G, F, A, D, M, L, O, B, T, H, P, Q, S and I. Our recipients would then be: G, L, N, C, E, J, K & R. Hope this helps....or maybe it doesn't really matter....