• Any individual adult, nonprofit organization, and/or business entity (such as a corporation, partnership, or limited liability company, etc.) may register to participate in this SC2 Challenge, but only multi-disciplinary teams, consisting of more than one individual, may receive cash prizes. You must complete registration to participate. 
  
  If there are portions of the Entry that are encumbered by third-party intellectual property rights, it is your responsibility to disclose them, but the City reserves the right to disqualify you from this SC2 Challenge for submitting any Entry that is not your own. 
• Your team may participate in this SC2 Challenge by registering to compete in one or more of the SC2 Challenges (designated by each city), but you may not participate twice in any one. In other words, you cannot join more than one team for a particular City, and you may not submit multiple Proposals or Plans for a particular City. No individual may register using more than one true and uniform identity; multiple registrations for an individual using multiple identities are not allowed. The City reserves the right to disqualify any Entry made by a team, a participant of which has violated this limitation, regardless of whether the other members of such team had knowledge of such violation. 
• Should your team be selected as a winner, cash prizes will be divided equally between team members. For example, if a prize of $100,000 is distributed to a team with five members, then each member will receive 20% of the prize (or $20,000). Therefore, it is important for you to divide the workload accordingly; we will not accept any petitions for a division of prize funds that is other than an equal division between the winning team members. If a prize is awarded to a team consisting of a business entity, then such entity will receive the cash prize, and it is the responsibility of the governing individuals to make any distributions.

  The prize amounts for the first phase are:

  • 1st place: $55,000
  • 2nd place: $35,000
  • 3rd place: $10,000

  The prize amounts for the second phase are:

  • 1st place: $500,000
  • 2nd place: $150,000
  • 3rd place: $100,000
  • 4th place: $ 75,000
  • 5th place: $ 50,000
  • 6th place: $ 25,000

  The City reserves the right to disqualify any Entry that does not comply with the requirements during each phase.

• While RAMPIT, LLC, is providing an online platform for this SC2 Challenge, it is not responsible for the payment of any cash prize(s). Payment of all prizes is the sole responsibility of each City, and under the Terms each participant has agreed to look solely to each City for the payment of any cash prize(s). Please note that the winner of a prize may be subject to certain taxes and Governmental requirements. Under the Terms, the winner of a cash prize will be solely responsible for paying such taxes and complying with such requirements. RAMPIT, LLC and the City will have no responsibility for paying such taxes or complying with such requirements.
  
• This SC2 Challenge is scheduled over a specific period and requires specific deadlines for submitting Entries in the form of Proposals and/or Plans. Those deadlines are posted in various places on this Website and on pages dedicated to specific challenges for each City. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with the schedule and to comply with any and all deadlines.
  
• The City reserves the right to disqualify any Competitor who violates these Rules, the Terms and any standards of behavior expressed or implied in them. It is your responsibility to conduct yourself in a manner that is respectable and to refrain from any inappropriate or profane behavior.
  
• The City reserves the right to disqualify Entries for consideration, based upon the requirements contained in either the Proposal Instructions or Plan Instructions. Every completed Entry must comply with all of those requirements. Following the deadline for Proposals, the City will conduct an Administrative Review of every Proposal, to determine whether the submissions are complete and/or comply with the Proposal instructions. Further, the City reserves the right to disqualify Entries that do not comport with other standards contained in the Terms (see Rule 7 and Section 5.1).

Interview Rules
Finalists may interview city employees as long as no questions are asked or conversation elicited that:

• Seeks endorsement of the Finalist’s idea, strategy, or project as expressed in their phase one executive summary or proposal as well as in their phase two plan and videos (hypothetical or actual).
• Seeks evaluation of the ideas, strategies, or project(s) contained in other Finalists’ phase one executive summary or proposals as well as in their phase two plans and videos (hypothetical or actual).
• Reference, compare, or contrast their phase one executive summary or proposal as well as their phase two plan (in-process) to the executive summaries or proposals as well as the phase two plans and videos (hypothetical or actual) of other Finalists.

In short, the conversation of the interview must be impartial in nature and objective in its process. The terrain of the interview may not delve into the evaluation of phase one submissions or upcoming phase two submissions. Submissions would include any executive summaries, proposals, videos, and plans.

Additional Rules for Finalists:

1. No Finalist may engage any judge of the Selection Committee privately regarding their competitive actions in the City’s SC2 Challenge. This prohibition specifically refers to their phase One executive summary, proposal, video and phase two plan and video (hypothetical or actual). 
2. No Finalist may solicit City Council or any City employee, officer, agent, and/or consultant for an endorsement or “Letter of Endorsement” regarding their idea, strategy, and/or signature project as expressed or not expressed in their submitted phase one proposal, executive summary and video or planned to be expressed in their phase two plan and video (hypothetical or actual). 
3. The City will not provide assistance to Finalists that requires the creation of new data or information or requires the use of City employees as labor or City facilities as resources above what is “usual and customary” and/or is already publicly available. Please refer to the City’s PIRT policy accessible here. The City is not a partner with any Finalist but is the administrator of the prize competition. All Finalists are responsible for the resources required to complete their phase two submissions. 
4. Requests for City assistance by Finalists must be submitted via email and are required to “CC” (carbon copy) Prince John Gaither-Eli at this address, [email protected] and Mary Vigue at this address, [email protected]. To be considered, all requests must be reviewed and approval is required before the assistance may be provided. 

Additional Rules
In addition to the preceding Rules, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration (EDA) is providing the following provisions governing each SC2 Challenge:

• Licensing Agreement. Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 105, the City and the Economic Development Administration (EDA) will obtain royalty-free nonexclusive and irrevocable rights to reproduce, publish or otherwise use the “Economic Development Proposals” and “Economic Development Plans” selected to receive financial prizes in phase one and two of the competition, respectively, or allow such use by other entities for government purposes. The City may elect to copyright any or all portions of the Proposals and Plans selected to receive a financial prize in either phase one or phase two of the competition, provided doing so does not impinge on the right of EDA to use and disseminate the copyrighted material.
• Conflict of Interest. The City shall maintain written standards of conduct governing the performance of its employees engaged in the award and administration of the prizes (i.e., subawards). No employee, officer, or agent shall participate in the selection, award, or administration of a subaward supported by Federal funds if a real or apparent conflict of interest would be involved. Such a conflict would arise when the employee, officer, or agent, any member of his or her immediate family, his or her partner, or an organization in which he/she serves as an officer or which employs or is about to employ any of the parties mentioned in this section, has a financial interest or other interest in the organization selected or to be selected for a subaward. The officers, employees, and agents of the City shall neither solicit nor accept anything of monetary value from subrecipients (i.e., Competitors). However, the City may set standards for situations in which the financial interest is not substantial or the gift is an unsolicited item of nominal value. The standards of conduct shall provide for disciplinary actions to be applied for violations of such standards by officers, employees, or agents of the City.
• Parties Not Eligible to Apply for SC2 Awards. No Interested Party is eligible for a prize under the SC2 competition. An Interested Party is defined as any officer, employee or member of the board of directors or other governing board of the City, including any other parties that advise, approve, recommend, or otherwise participate in the business decisions of the City, such as agents, advisors, consultants, attorneys, accountants or shareholders. This also includes immediate family and other persons directly connected to the Interested Party by law or through a business arrangement. For the purposes of this award, Interested Party also includes members of EDA and immediate family members thereof.
• Disclaimer Provision. The United States and EDA expressly disclaims any and all responsibility or liability to the City, Competitors or third persons for the actions of the City, Competitors or third persons resulting in death, bodily injury, property damages, or any other losses resulting in any way from the performance of this award or any subaward or subcontract under this award. The acceptance of this award by the Competitor does not in any way constitute an agency relationship between the United States and the Competitor.
• Requirement to Abide by All Federal, State, and Local Laws. In administering and applying to this competition, all federal, state, and local laws must be followed.

These five provisions from EDA supersede all other Rules and the Terms and Conditions governing the SC2 Challenge.