Are you curious about what's inside an application for the Excellence in Family Business Awards?

Application Overview

The Excellence in Family Business Award application can be a valuable tool for both your family and business. Completing an application will help highlight areas of family business in which you excel or where you may need to focus more attention.  It’s also a great way to spend time with other family members to talk about the future and legacy of the business.

Peek Inside the Application

Aside from contact information and a few questions about your particular business, the application focuses on three categories of family business excellence: family harmony, business renewal, and generational development.

Each category contains a set of agree/disagree questions and one short-answer essay question where you can provide a little more detail on your particular practices. Take a look at a sample of the questions from the business renewal section:

Essay Question:


The questions allow the judges to understand your family business strengths, and after consulting other family members and reviewing your business processes, you will have a deeper understanding where your enterprise excels and where you need to focus for improvement.

Benefits of Applying

Each year we hear from Excellence Award honorees and applicants who tell us that the process of going through and completing the application was the most valuable part of the process. Many say it allowed them to look at their business from a new perspective, or it strengthened bonds between family members as they worked through the questions. See what past honorees have said about the benefits of applying for an award:

“We were so caught up in the day to day that the award process gave us a chance to see quite an impressive journey.” – Scott Pillsbury, Rose City Labels, Portland

“Applying for the award makes you pause and think about what is really important to sustain this family business.” – Alan Turanski, GloryBee, Eugene

“Since the first time we applied, we have advanced in our communication. I think we do a lot of talking, but we now actually put a lot more into play.” – Jennifer Lee, Second Glance, Corvallis

“The application was where the real benefit was…it was about what we learned about ourselves, and about our organization in the process.” – Lori Bouquet, Roe Motors, Grants Pass

“We learned so much about ourselves and it helped us to figure out our direction as a family business. That was a huge benefit of going through the process.” – Andrew Martin, Willamette Valley Pie Co., Silverton

Are you ready to apply?

You can complete an application online or contact Melissa Elmore at Melissa.elmore@bus.oregonstate.edu or 541-737-3326 to request a hard copy application in the mail. For more information visit the Excellence in Family Business Awards webpage.

up