What is the process of moving award management to financial aid and how is your college doing it?

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Sasha Toledo
Sasha Toledo
Second Anniversary
in Blackbaud Award Management™ & Blackbaud Stewardship Management™ Discussions

Hi all! HCC is looking to remove barriers for our students in the scholarship process. We are seeking to remove the application altogether and award based on our institution's import system that we would import onto AW, eliminating the need for a student application. I know other colleges have removed the application process and have shifted the awarding over to financial aid. I am looking for someone to explain this process, so we can help better serve our students. Thank you.

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  • Crystal Bruce
    Crystal Bruce admin
    Ancient Membership 2,500 Likes 1000 Comments Name Dropper

    @Sasha Toledo Hi! Did you mean to post this in Altru or Award Management? If AM, I can move it over. Thanks!

  • Christin Grissom
    Christin Grissom
    Third Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper

    Hi, @Sasha Toledo! I am Christin Grissom, the Product Manager for Awards & Stewardship Management. Many of our customers use the Create User Upon Import functionality to help eliminate the need for students to manually create applications. It would be great to hear how others are handling this at their institution, too. Also feel free to reach out to your Blackbaud Account Executive to help brainstorm other options that may work for HCC.

  • Corrine Knox
    Corrine Knox
    Fifth Anniversary Photogenic First Comment Activity: First Reply

    @Sasha Toledo Something that you may need to investigate before you make a change is the language of your endowment agreements. We have some that are worded very specifically so that an application is necessary since some information, such as work experience or a parent's employer, is not in our student information system. Members of our Financial Aid and University Advancement offices are working with donors and General Counsel to get some endowment agreements revised to remove some of this language to indicate a preference instead of a requirement, but it's a slow process.

    Currently, we allow our individual colleges and schools to make determinations on their awarding process for scholarships specific to the college or school and then Financial Aid awards on the general scholarships or cross-listed ones. We have 5 broad questions on our General Application plus one that authorizes us to use their student information for the award process. We do use the “Create Users from Imports” setting, which is very helpful for the colleges and schools that use only AutoMatch opportunities.

  • Victor Swindell
    Victor Swindell
    Sixth Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper

    @Sasha Toledo
    One of the things we did here at CofC is to put as much prepopulated data into the system so that students can log in and see which awards they already qualify for….then they just need to apply for them.

  • Michael Elliott
    Michael Elliott
    Sixth Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper

    @Corrine Knox we do almost exactly the same process here at my school. We use CUUI and have success with that process. Our General App is pretty much the same as yours, short and sweet with the same acknowledgment question.

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