The OpenWater Blog

Are Association Awards Programs “Worth It”?

Award programs can be expensive. If your award program is charging fees it could be a lucrative money maker for your organization. However, if you’re like a lot of associations your award program might, on paper, bring in a loss. This can lead to some awkward conversations with a board or uninformed executive team who are just looking at the numbers.

What a lot of organizations don’t realize is the ripple effect that award can have not only to the bottom line but to the industry in general. An awards program provides great PR exposure and marketing opportunities for your organization which could lead future financial benefits (think more members, donations from charitable organizations, etc.). A program can also benefit your industry as a whole, by giving credibility and exposure.

In some cases this impact is felt on a massive scale. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, managed by NIST, recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence.

“The benefit-to-cost ratio of 820 to 1 . . . certainly supports the belief that the Baldrige Program creates great value for the U.S. economy.”

That’s the finding from a new economic study* to determine the practical value to organizations using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence—the benefits of the program outweigh the overall cost by 820 to 1.

In 2001, the duo estimated the total potential economic benefits of the Baldrige Program to the U.S. economy at nearly $25 billion and its total operational cost at $119 million, a cost-to-benefit ratio of 207 to 1.** The finding was derived using data from a Baldrige Criteria benefits survey of corporate members of the American Society for Quality (ASQ)—showing an 18 to 1 cost-to-benefit ratio—and then extrapolating the results to the entire country based on the assumption that other companies in the economy used the Baldrige criteria and benefited to the same extent as the firms responding to the survey.

In their latest study, they took a more direct approach, surveying the 273 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award applicants since 2006. They also expanded their assessment of the practical value of the Baldrige Criteria to these organizations on three levels—cost savings, customer satisfaction and financial gain (gains from increased value of sales). It’s estimated that the benefits outweigh the overall cost of the BPEP by a ratio of 820 to 1.

Think about the awards in your industry right now. Is winning that award a ‘big deal’? Most of the time it’s game changing for the organization that receives it and leads to a tremendous amount of attention and exposure.

Your members love it. Your industry is clamoring for it. Give them the recognition and help they deserve.

Learn more about association awards in our guide!

Timothy Spell

Timothy Spell co-founded OpenWater in 2007 with the goal of helping organizations tackle and better manage the oftentimes overlooked awards and contests industry. As an author and speaker in the awards industry, Timothy provides unique insight on how to use awards to boost membership, social media followers and search engine traffic.

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