Challenge Manager FAQs

You (or someone from your challenge team) will create the listing for your agency’s prize competition or crowdsourcing campaign using the platform’s Challenge Creation Wizard. The wizard will walk you through the steps to create the tile that will appear on the Challenge.Gov homepage, as well as the details page. When setting up your listing you will have options for: publication date & time; single or multiple phase competition; collection of submissions via Challenge.Gov or an external site or email; default or custom URL.

Once your competition content is created, you will submit your challenge to the Challenge.Gov support team for review. Please allow up to two business days for the team to complete this review.

YES! You are in full control of your listing content and can make updates as needed at any time. Any updates you make to a published prize competition do not need review by the Challenge.Gov support team, and will go live on the site once finalized by you.

No. The system does not automatically notify Challenge.Gov visitors when updates have been made to your listing. Communication regarding these updates is up to you. Should you wish to provide notification of an update there are two ways you can do this: (1) display an “important announcement” banner on your listing; (2) send a bulletin email to followers of your challenge.

YES! There are three options for exporting your listing: (1) save as PDF, (2) download CSV file, (3) download JSON file.

YES! The challenge manager who initially created the challenge can request to have additional challenge managers added.

The Challenge.Gov platform supports having multiple challenge managers for a single prize competition - be they from the same or a different government agency. The challenge manager who initially created the listing will need to send a request to the Challenge.Gov team to give others access to help manage it.

YES-with some limitations. Contractors without a government email account (.mil or .gov) can be granted special access allowing them to help you with challenge creation and management. However, only a user with a full Challenge Manager account can submit challenges for official review and approval by the Challenge.Gov support team.

Note: Contractors who are operating in an official government capacity, and have a .gov or .mil email, will be able to obtain a Challenge Manager account with full permissions.

You have three options for collecting submissions from public participants:

1. Challenge.gov platform: Use the Challenge.Gov portal submission management feature
2. External Website: Direct solver to an external challenge website
3. Email: Provide an email address for solvers to send their submissions to

No. The submission data fields are standard across all challenges. These fields are as follows:
Title, Brief Description (up to 500 characters), Description. In addition to the information provided in these fields, solvers can upload one or more files as part of their submission.

If there are specific pieces of information you wish to collect, you can include a submission template as part of your “How to Enter” instructions detailing the information solvers must provide. The completed form can then be uploaded and included as part of their submission.

Challenge Managers should limit the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) solvers are requested to provide as part of the submission process. Examples of PII that should generally not be collected via the Challenge.Gov submission form include: SSN, financial documents, agreements, participant address.

Challenge Managers should also consult their agency’s Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) office for review and approval of any questions solvers are asked to answer.

For challenges collecting submissions via the Challenge.Gov portal, using the Download Submissions feature you can export participant submissions to a CSV file to share with judges for review. You also have the option to include any attachments provided by the solver as part of the submission. Selecting this option will generate a ZIP file with the solver’s attachments in their native file format (e.g. PDF, DOC, JPG, etc).

This will be accomplished outside of the Challenge.Gov platform. Using the Download Submissions feature, you can export a CSV file with a list of challenge submissions. Reviewers and judges can add their notes to this file to provide a record of any decisions made regarding a particular submission.

There are two ways to communicate important updates with challenge visitors and potential solvers: (1) display an “Important Update” on your challenge listing; (2) send a bulletin email to challenge followers.

Challenge managers collecting submissions via the Challenge.Gov platform can take advantage of the platform’s built in Message Center to communicate with participants. The Message Center allows you to send and track correspondence with individual participants or a group of participants.

Note: If you choose to collect submissions through an external site or via email you will not be able to use the Challenge.Gov Message Center. For challenges collecting submissions externally, you will need to use external communication tools to connect with participants.

You can find the number of people following your challenge under the “subscribers” column of the Challenge Management -All Challenges Page.

Note: The system does not provide subscriber details such as name or email address.

No. Challenge.Gov does not facilitate payment of prize awards. Facilitation of prize awards will need to be managed external to the platform. Consult with your budget officer to determine the payment process.