The Arrowtown Trust failed to win the supreme award in the TrustPower National Community Awards, but trust chairman David Clarke said it was always going to be a "tall order".
The trust won the supreme award at the regional TrustPower Community Awards last year, with Mr Clarke and Bill Dolan attending the awards in Ashburton, along with Queenstown Lakes District Council deputy mayor Lyal Cocks and his wife Diana.
Mr Clarke said yesterday 25 projects from across New Zealand - some of which boasted 500 volunteers who had contributed 19,000 volunteer hours - were entered.
"There were so many amazing things. It's always hard to know how you're going to go.
"There was such an eclectic mix of commercial, service, heritage and natural history projects ... we knew it would be a tall order."
The runner-up for the 2011 award was a Tauranga-based project called Homes of Hope, which provides foster care to abused and/or neglected children.
This year the judges could not separate two projects and in the end announced them as joint winners.
One was Ashburton-based "Trev's Barbecue", which went from a two-person operation to hundreds in the aftermath of Canterbury's February 22, 2011 earthquake.
Mr Clarke said that following the quake, the couple behind the enterprise went to Christchurch with their barbecue and began cooking - and ultimately became one of the main providers of food for displaced people, with hundreds of people volunteering to assist them.
The joint-winner was the group behind the Denniston Mine Experience, which now features interpretive boards, walking tracks and viewing platforms around the historic area.
Mr Clarke said while slightly disappointed not to win, "to be in a room with all of those people was an amazing experience ... everyone is a winner".
"We were thrilled to represent the district and hopefully we did it proud."
The trust was selected to represent the Queenstown Lakes District for the work it did to restore three historic but deteriorating cottages on Buckingham St, Arrowtown, and the Millers Flat Church, which was restored, relocated and now used for low-impact commercial use.
Volunteers were involved in every aspect of the project, from background work, co-ordinating the construction, and fundraising the more than $700,000 needed to complete the project.
