Supporting and Sustaining Friend of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) Awards

Nominators are encouraged to view previous recipients to see examples of what support has been awarded in the past:

• Previous Supporting Friend of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Award Recipients
• Previous Sustaining Friend of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Award Recipients
• All MGA Award Recipients by Year

• given to those individuals who have provided recurrent or unusually intense help to a member volunteer of IEEE;
• generally, recipients of this award are not eligible for IEEE membership;  typical recipients might be administrative assistants, fellow workers that are not engineers, local business people, etc.

• provided to those companies or divisions of a company that encourage volunteerism through their practices;
• in particular, the atmosphere created by the company should be to facilitate the IEEE volunteer) to do his or her job; support may include:
  • time off to travel to IEEE meetings;
  • full or partial reimbursement of travel and/or per diem;
  • offering company space to conduct IEEE meetings;
  • encouraging and/or promoting membership in professional organizations;
  • underwriting all or a portion of IEEE dues for its members;
  • supporting the volunteer by permitting free or discounted use of company resources for such things as telephone, fax, electronic mail, printing newsletters and/or other circulars.

• in general, the proposed recipient should have a long (minimum of one full year) history of providing support to the volunteer;
• Supporting Friend awards can be made for truly extraordinary examples of singular events;
  • for example, assistance provided to host an IEEE conference or meeting;
• nominators must wait at least one year from receipt of the Supporting Friend award before they can resubmit the same recipient for another Friend award.

• recipients of these awards:
  • must meet all of the conditions of the Supporting Friend award;
  • must have demonstrated this support for a minimum period of three years; and
  • must have won a Supporting Friend award at least once during the period in question, usually three to five years.
• Sustaining Friend awards are not given for singular events;
• nominators must wait at least three years from receipt of the Sustaining Friend award before they can resubmit the same recipient for another Sustaining Friend of IEEE MGA award; however, recipients can be resubmitted for a Supporting award after one year. 

• nominations may be submitted at any time during the year;
• the MGA Awards and Recognition Committee (ARC) will review nominations received during each of its meetings;
• nominators and recipients will be notified soon after each MGA ARC meeting;
• recipients will receive a certificate or specially engraved plaque attesting to the support provided;
• MGA ARC can, at its discretion, downgrade a Sustaining Friend award to a Supporting Friend award if it feels that there is insufficient justification for the higher award;
  • In these cases, the nominator will be contacted and told of the decision;
  • If the nominator chooses, he/she may elect not to present the lesser award and can resubmit the nomination for the higher award with added justification.