Quality awards are formal award programs that have been established to recognize organizations (or sub-units thereof) for achieving excellence in quality and productivity. The criteria of these awards require a systematic and comprehensive program that is mature either from time or results. These awards are issued on a regular, typically annual, basis. The administrators of the awards can range from individual companies to state governments to the federal government. Recipients of these awards can be organizations or sub-units of organizations. Further, the recipients could involve specific projects and programs. The recipients are ultimately defined by the specific award process. This thesis describes the quality award program in the State of Virginia. Overall, this thesis is a formative evaluation of the U.S. Senate Productivity and Quality Award for Virginia. This research reviews the processes used in determining winners for this award. Recommendations are made to improve the application evaluation and feedback processes, in particular. The thesis describes the types of key performance indicators that organizations report in their applications. A set of common key performance indicators were collected to form a type of measurement system to assess the “health” of organizations in the State of Virginia. The purpose of this measurement system is to provide benchmarks to other organizations in the state. As a final output, this research compares the key performance indicators reported in applications to two measurement frameworks provided in the literature. / Master of Science