How the Palo Alto Weekly runs its Short Story Contest on Dapple
For four decades, the Palo Alto Weekly has run one of California's most beloved community writing competitions. Moving to Dapple replaced a patchwork of email and spreadsheets with a single platform — collecting hundreds of entries across three age categories, routing them to separate judging panels, running a structured blind-review process, and automatically notifying every entrant of the outcome.
Background
What is the Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest?
Now in its 40th year, the Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest is one of the Bay Area's longest-running community writing competitions. Now moving online, the contest invites local writers from a wide geographic footprint spanning Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Los Altos, Redwood City and surrounding communities to submit original short fiction.
The contest runs three separate age-based categories: Teen (ages 12–14), Young Adult (ages 15–17), and Adult. Entry fees apply — $20 for Adult entries, $10 for Teen and Young Adult — with prize money of up to $500 for Adult first-place winners and gift certificates for younger age groups. First-place stories are published in the print edition of the Palo Alto Weekly and online at Palo Alto Weekly.
The judging process is rigorous. Entries are reviewed blind with no author names or identifying details visible to judges. Each category is reviewed by separate panels of local published authors. Managing that process, across hundreds of entries and multiple independent judging panels, had become a serious logistical challenge.
The Problem
What broke down when running a multi-category literary contest without the right tools?
Running a writing competition across three age brackets, with separate judging panels, entry fees, and a blind-review requirement, pushes the limits of what email and spreadsheets can manage. Before Dapple, the contest administration relied on a familiar but fragile combination: web forms for initial submission, manual file management to strip identifying information, and email chains to coordinate judges.
Entries arrived as email attachments or form submissions and had to be sorted manually by category before any review could begin
Ensuring blind review meant manually checking and renaming every PDF file — a time-consuming, error-prone process with no audit trail
Separate judging panels had no shared workspace — feedback was gathered via email and collated by hand
Entry fees were handled outside the submission flow, creating reconciliation work and delays
Communicating outcomes to all entrants meant composing and sending individual or bulk emails without a system
Getting Started
How did the Palo Alto Weekly set up its first Dapple-powered contest cycle?
Getting the contest onto Dapple was a straightforward setup process. The Dapple customer success team worked with the Weekly's contest coordinator to map out the full submission journey before a single line of the form was built — identifying the categories, the fee structure, the judging stages, and the communication touchpoints that the platform would need to handle.
"Dapple is well designed, easy to learn, and incredibly comprehensive. Every feature needed to run our contest was handled perfectly."
Carla Kong — Marketing and Analytics Specialist | Palo Alto Weekly
The submission form was configured to collect all entry details — category selection, author contact information, entry fee payment — while keeping the story file itself clean of identifying information for blind review.
The Solution
How did Dapple handle entries across three age categories and two judging panels?
The core of the contest's operational challenge is its structure: three age categories, reviewed by two distinct panels, with a blind pre-screening pass before the main panel sees any work. Dapple handled this through its built-in category and panel management tools.
Once the submission window closed, the coordinator divided the entry pool into its three categories — Teen, Young Adult, and Adult — within the Dapple dashboard. Entries were then routed to the appropriate review panel. Each panel member received their own login, allowing them to read, vote on, and comment on assigned entries independently.
Entries split into Teen, Young Adult, and Adult categories within the platform — no manual sorting
Separate judging panels assigned per category with individual accounts for each judge
Blind review maintained automatically — story files reviewed without author names visible
Judges used voting and written comments to assess each entry in their assigned pool
Admin moved shortlisted entries into a final round for collective group assessment
Full audit trail maintained throughout — every vote and comment timestamped and logged
Payments
How did the Weekly handle entry fees through the submission process?
Entry fees are a core part of the contest, priced at $20 for Adult entries, $10 for Teen and Young Adult. Previously, they had to be managed separately from the submission itself, creating reconciliation headaches and occasional gaps where entries arrived without payment confirmation.
By connecting Stripe to Dapple, the Weekly brought payment collection inside the submission flow. Entrants paid at the point of submission and the form didn't complete until payment went through. This meant that every entry in the system was a paid entry. No chasing. No cross-referencing spreadsheets.
Stripe connected directly to the contest submission form
Payment required as part of submission — no separate invoicing or follow-up
Adult ($20) and Teen/Young Adult ($10) fee tiers handled automatically by category selection
Payment records visible alongside each entry for easy reconciliation
Judging
What did the panel workflow look like for the Short Story Contest judges?
The Palo Alto Weekly relies on local published authors as its judges — credible voices who take the process seriously and expect a process that respects their time. The contest runs two separate panels: one for the Teen category, and one for Adult and Young Adult combined.
In Dapple, each judge received their own personal account and was granted access only to the entries assigned to their panel. They could read submissions, register a vote, and leave written comments, all without any visibility into what other judges were doing until the coordinator opened up the group discussion stage.
Once individual scoring was complete, the coordinator moved the strongest entries through to a final round. After more scores and comments were left in this round, group discussion and final choices could be made.
Each judge had a personal account with access only to assigned entries
Two independent panels supported in one contest cycle
Voting and written comments captured directly in-platform
Individual review completed before group discussion stage opened
Final-round consensus managed centrally by the coordinator
"The judges were used to receiving a pile of PDFs by email. When they could just log in and see their assigned stories already waiting for them, in a clean reading view with space to leave their thoughts, it changed the dynamic completely."
Carla — Marketing and Analytics Specialist | Palo Alto Weekly
Applicant Communications
How were all entrants notified of the contest outcome?
One of the most labour-intensive parts of running any writing competition is communicating results — not just to winners, but to every entrant who submitted and is waiting to hear. For a contest receiving hundreds of stories across three categories, that's a significant volume of individual communications.
Using Dapple's bulk email tool, the coordinator sent outcome notifications to all entrants directly through the platform. Successful entrants received tailored communications reflecting their result. Those who were not shortlisted received a respectful, timely notification, all from within Dapple, with no manual export to a separate email tool.
All entrants updated on their outcome via email sent through Dapple
Outcome communications segmented by result — winners, shortlisted, and unsuccessful entrants
No manual export to a separate email platform required
Communications sent on the day results were published without delay
Results
What changed when the Palo Alto Weekly moved its contest to Dapple?
The headline is simple: the same contest, run to a higher standard, with substantially less manual effort. The workflow that previously involved exporting data, renaming files, coordinating judges by email, and manually reconciling payments now runs inside a single platform.
| Area | Before Dapple | With Dapple |
|---|---|---|
| Entry intake | Web form submissions sorted manually into categories | Entries collected and categorised automatically on submission |
| Payment | Separate from submission, requiring manual reconciliation | Stripe integrated — payment required to complete entry |
| Blind review | Files manually checked and renamed to strip identifying details | Entries reviewed through Dapple without author info visible to judges |
| Judging panels | PDFs emailed to judges; feedback collected by email | Judges log in to personal accounts; voting and comments in one place |
| Final round | Shortlists collated manually for group discussion | Admin moves entries into final round directly in the platform |
| Outcome comms | Individual or batch emails composed and sent manually | All entrants notified through Dapple on results day |
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