Awards are often treated as a seal of approval. For organisations that work with people who are in prison, on probation or in crisis, the bar should be higher than a nice case study and a few quotes. This page explains how digital evidence and traffic logs can help awards bodies and funders test whether a story really matches the record.
This is written in the context of the Criminal Justice Alliance Awards and The Recruitment Junction, but the principles apply to any award that trades on the idea of impact, integrity and lived experience.
In any dispute between a charity and a service user, there are usually two stories. Without evidence, the version held by the organisation is far more likely to be heard, especially if they have public relations support and a long list of partners.
Digital evidence changes that balance. Email headers, access logs, FOI responses and preserved PDFs are hard to argue with. They show who sent what, when systems were accessed and how public statements changed over time.
For an awards body or funder, the question is simple. If you are going to lift an organisation onto a stage and call it outstanding, are you willing to look at the boring logs and documents that might contradict the sales pitch.
The TRJ case is an example. The public funding record and email trail existed well before the award decision. The question is whether anyone chose to read it.
Multiple email addresses used by a disabled service user were blocked while a Subject Access Request and Equality Act questions were active. This is not a matter of opinion. It is visible in rejection headers, server responses and the timing of messages.
See Evidence and document archive for preserved PDFs and timelines.
The Recruitment Junction publicly stated that it received no public funding. Official grant records and FOI responses show more than one hundred thousand pounds of public money from named bodies, including awards from Newcastle City Council alone.
See TRJ funding breakdown for the full grant list and sources.
Server and Cloudflare level logs show when staff, partners or external advisors visit public interest articles or evidence pages. They record patterns like sudden traffic from a particular organisation after a letter is sent or after an award shortlist is announced.
These patterns do not prove motive, but they do show who had the opportunity to read key material before taking decisions.
Screenshots, PDFs and static captures of LinkedIn posts and YouTube videos record what was said at a particular time. When the live version is later edited or deleted, the preserved copies allow a fair comparison between the original claim and the corrected story.
Examples are listed in the section on public statements within the TRJ evidence archive.
An awards team does not need a security engineer or a full legal department. Most of the useful checks take less than an hour per shortlisted organisation and rely on public information.
Search 360Giving, GrantNav and Companies House or the Charity Commission register for the organisation. Compare grant totals and descriptions with public statements about funding sources and independence.
If the claims and the record do not match, that should trigger follow up questions before any prize is given.
Use the organisation name with words like complaint, tribunal, safeguarding or whistleblower. Public interest articles will usually show up long before any court judgment.
An awards body does not have to take every accusation at face value, but it does have to show that it looked and that it asked for an explanation where needed.
If concerns are raised, ask both sides to supply a dated timeline with documents that support each point. Honest organisations are usually relieved to do this because it clears the air.
In the TRJ case, that chronology exists on The Reasonable Adjustment because the organisation chose not to engage with it directly.
Awards panels should record what evidence they considered and why they decided to proceed. If serious concerns were ignored or minimised, that fact should not have to be reverse engineered months later.
The Reasonable Adjustment uses logs to support public interest reporting. That includes timestamped captures of key pages, records of access from relevant organisations and version control for PDFs and articles.
This allows readers and regulators to see when information was first published and whether it has been quietly altered later.
Ki-Ki takes the same thinking and applies it for clients. It focuses on fast static sites, Cloudflare security rules and evidence grade logging that can be shared with boards, auditors or investigators without needing specialist software.
For more on that side of the work, visit ki-ki.co.uk.