Post-Acceptance (Student Thank You Message) without connecting it to fund Opportunity in Blackbaud Award Management

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Hi! We are in the process of setting up our BAM awarding system and were recommended to post to the community to see if anyone had insight into the following question:

Is it possible for a student to complete a thank you note (similar to the post-acceptance feature) without connecting to a fund Opportunity in BAM (Blackbaud Award Management)?

Our stewardship team will need to request thank you notes from student beneficiaries who were awarded funds via an opportunity that is not managed directly through BAM.

An example would be a student receiving a donor-funded internship stipend or prize (for highest GPA, best essay, etc). These types of opportunities (internship, prize funds, etc) have not been loaded into BAM, but we would like to use the system to request thank you notes from all recipients of donor-established student support funds.

Is it possible to direct these students to BAM to complete a generic “thank you” note/form without it being tied to a specific Opportunity? Has anyone else used the system in a similar manner?

I appreciate any thoughts/input!

Comments

  • Hello!

    As far as I'm aware, students must have an application file to use the post-acceptance system in BBAM. So, to answer your specific question, the answer would be no.

    With that said, if you are saying that you require the initial application via BBAM, but you then export the information to complete the process, you could just create a general auto-match opportunity, target the students via ID or a manual import indicator, then just select them for the post-acceptance without needing to have them complete an additional application. We do something akin to this with our award notifications.

    Or, if you don't have General Applications as a requirement, you could use a flexible application? Set it up as Always Hidden and email the students a direct link to the application and just treat this application as post-acceptance (i.e. ask for the thank you letter through this)? We don't do this, but this could be a valid work-around.

    Here is a knowledge base article about flexible applications

    I hope this helps!
    Jonathan Blevins

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