Baldrige Award

Award Criteria | How to Apply | Award Cycle Overview | Is Your Organization Eligible | Award Process Fees | Application Format | Secretary of Commerce Message

Demonstrate Your Organization’s Resilience and Be Recognized as a National Role Model

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award® is the highest level of national recognition that a U.S. organization can receive for performance excellence, particularly in relation to resilience and long-term success. The new award criteria for 2024 focus on eight performance dimensions:

• Leadership and Governance
• Strategy
• Operations
• Operational Continuity
• Workforce
• Customers and Markets
• Community Engagement
• Finance

Organizations don't receive the award for specific products or services. To receive the award, an organization must demonstrate organizational resilience and long-term success through favorable performance levels and trends, comparisons to competitors and industry benchmarks (as appropriate), and relevant metrics.

About the Award

Up to 18 awards are given annually across six eligibility categories: manufacturing, service, small business, education, health care, and nonprofit. Award recipients that are nominated for a subsequent award are not included in the total cap of 18.

Award recipients must share information about their exceptional performance practices with other U.S. organizations, but they don't need to share proprietary information, even if they included this information in their award applications. The principal mechanisms for sharing information are The Quest for Excellence® Conference, and the Baldrige Fall Conference (held in collaboration with state local Baldrige-based programs). Sharing beyond the Quest for Excellence® Conference is voluntary.

The Baldrige Program keeps the identity of all applicant organizations confidential unless they receive the award or special recognition. We treat all information submitted by applicants as strictly confidential, and we have numerous protocols and processes in place to protect applicants and ensure the integrity of the award.
 

Message from the Secretary of Commerce

For more than 35 years, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has helped businesses and other organizations improve their performance and long-term success in part through the Presidential Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. 

The reinvigorated Baldrige Award will recognize role-model manufacturers, small businesses, and organizations that demonstrate success and sustainability and that want to share their best practices to enable other organizations and their communities to become more resilient.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo