Blackbaud Award Management

Formerly AcademicWorks

Keeps awarding data in one central hub

Allows users to easily review awarding history and application history

Easily customizable for the average user

The interface that students see is not the most user-friendly

Exporting data sometimes results in weird symbols showing up throughout text in place of quotation marks or commas

Support can be hit or miss

Scholarship award organization

Donor reports

Award tracking

Increased emphasis on donor stewardship through the software

Connecting reports in RE NXT

More filters on forms

This platform integrates our current university image, so students are not confused when they open the page. It was completely customizable so it had the same look and feel as our own university websites, which helps when switching to a new platform.

This system automatically matches students to scholarship opportunities based on their existing data in the university system! This saved us a TON of time from having to individually look at student records and manually match them to scholarships across our colleges and units.

We have had a few cases where we awarded a student a scholarship out of a single fund, and then later decided to increase that scholarship. Unfortunately, once a student has been assigned to a fund, we can't re-assign them or increase their amount - so we've had to clone opportunities in order to increase funds. This has been a headache when it comes to post-acceptance, because it prompts the student to complete the post-acceptance again as if it were a new award.

With cloning opportunities, we are unable to rename the opportunity so it stands out. For instance, if I want to clone an opportunity so I can award the same student an additional amount, I have to "guess" on the drop down menu because the name of the opportunity is exactly the same as the original. It would be great if the dropdown menu gave some additional context into whether it was a cloned opportunity, which aid year it correlates to, etc.

All colleges and universities have differences in the way scholarships are awarded at their schools. AcademicWorks listens to the individual needs of each college/university/scholarship provider and will either add system enhancements or help users to find ways to best utilize the system to meet their needs/requirements.

The AcademicWorks help desk is very good about support. They are timely in contact and work to resolve issues quickly and effectively.

AcademicWorks has worked closely with our IT Department to ensure that the imports and the system will work efficiently despite changes and updates.

Students need to only complete one application to be automatically matched to hundreds of scholarship opportunities. This is a very efficient use of the applicant's time and efforts to apply for scholarships.

Our school is unique in that we require a minimum of two references to be completed per applicant and they must be the right references. One must be a teacher/instructor if the applicant has been a student in the last 5 years and the others must be professional level references. To date there is no way for the system to identify and qualify students based on their references, so this process falls to us.

Reporting - pulling reports in AcademicWorks is so simple and quick. Whether I am putting together a report of applicants for a donor, or the pulling the applicants from a specific school or major, I can do it by the click of a button.

Support - if I ever have questions or need help problem solving, the support desk is readily available.

Flexibility - we can customize pretty much every aspect of how the user experiences AcademicWorks

Ability to personalize applications - we serve many companies, and we get requests all the time to use their logo, but we can't do that in AcademicWorks.

Selective reviews - some review committees don't want to review specific parts of applications, but we can't pick and choose which questions are reviewable for specific opportunities.

Ease of set-up of the scholarship applications every year.

The report functionality allows us to be able to sort through the applicants easily.

The review functionality is user-friendly that anyone new to the system can easily learn it.

There could be improvement when attaching documents. Students sometimes get errors on uploading documents due to file names with certain characters.

Room for improvement could be mobile functionality.

Customer Service - Although sometimes frustrating that reps are not immediately available by chat or phone, they usually do respond and resolve within two business days.

Implementation - Training and working with IT and primary users to get the most out of the system.

Listening - When users have suggestions to improve the program, AW actually listens and has an enhancement request list. If several users ask for the same thing, we are likely to see that addressed in an upcoming enhancement.

Customer Service - Has slipped in the last year, since merging with Blackbaud. Not as responsive or knowledgeable overall.

Customer service

Sorting of student applications per scholarship opportunity

The cycle review in order to set up the next application cycle was always great!

Some users may like a bit more customization

If it's not currently a thing, an "if, then" algorithm for the general application would be helpful

Easier searching in their client resource portal

Easy to use reviewer portal for decentralized application review.

Easy to design general scholarship application.

Easy to use for data analysis/report generation.

EXCELLENT customer service from the vendor when questions arise.

At this time, there is little we have encountered that we would change.