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Our Journey to World Class#

What is the Malcolm Baldrige Award?

The U.S. Secretary of Commerce awarded the City of Fort Collins with the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2017. The City is one of only a handful of municipalities to ever receive the award, which is the nation’s highest presidential honor for performance excellence through innovation, improvement and visionary leadership.

Congress created the award in 1987 to enhance the competitiveness and performance of U.S. businesses. Since 1988, 106 organizations have earned the award named after Malcolm Baldrige, the 26th Secretary of Commerce.

For more information on the Baldrige Program, visit: https://www.nist.gov/baldrige

Why Pursue the Malcolm Baldrige Award?#

The City selected the Baldrige framework for its journey to excellence based on:

  • Customer/community focus: Pursuing excellence starts with the needs, expectations and satisfaction of the customer - residents, businesses and overall community service.
  • International best practice criteria: The Baldrige evaluation process is one of the best, most cost-effective and most comprehensive performance assessments of an organization.
  • The feedback report: The City receives a detailed, individualized written assessment of the organization's strengths and opportunities based on the Baldrige Award application. The feedback report is compiled by a team of Baldrige Examiners who have extensive training in the Baldrige Excellence Framework, and are experts in their sector/industry. Read the most recent report.

Terri Runyan, Director of Performance Excellence#

trunyan@fcgov.com

Terri Runyan has more than 27 years of experience working in organizational excellence and leadership development. Her diverse working background includes industries such as healthcare, local government and education.

Throughout the course of her career, she has led organizations through culture change, using criteria set forth by organizations such as the Baldrige Excellence Framework and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) MAGNET certification process. She serves on the Board of Examiners for Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) and has been an examiner for Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence (RMPEx) for 10 years.

Since 2011, she has worked for the City of Fort Collins, leading its performance excellence world class journey.  The City achieved the RMPEx Peak award in 2014, a Baldrige site visit in 2016, and the Baldrige Award in 2017.