Blackbaud Award Management (formerly AcademicWorks) is a scholarship point solution for collecting applications and tracking awards. Awarded is a purpose-built scholarship management platform — with deeper awarding automation, more powerful compliance tools, and donor stewardship capabilities designed for the full fund lifecycle.
Institutions that choose Awarded typically see higher student engagement rates, achieve better fund utilization, and save weeks of time per team member — not to mention the donor reporting and stewardship benefits
Awarded is designed from the ground up for scholarship fund management — with advanced award automation and compliance tools, plus stewardship tools for advancement, all in a single platform that connects to your ERP, not just your CRM.
Blackbaud Award Management (formerly AcademicWorks) is a scholarship point solution for collecting applications and tracking awards, with links to gift records for schools on Raiser's Edge or Blackbaud CRM. It covers one part of the scholarship process; awarding decisions, compliance and donor reporting still happen elsewhere.
Blackbaud Award Management covers one part of the scholarship process. Awarded works across your entire scholarship operation — whether or not you use Blackbaud for anything else.
Blackbaud Award Management handles applications and award tracking. Awarded was purpose-built for the full scholarship lifecycle — every workflow, every automation, and every report is designed around how financial aid and advancement actually manage scholarship funds.
Blackbaud Award Management tracks awards after people make the decisions. Awarded's advanced award automation works from your fund criteria and live student data, so your staff reviews exceptions, not every award.
Scholarship disbursements need to reconcile with your student information system and general ledger. Awarded integrates directly with Banner, Colleague, Workday, PeopleSoft, and Jenzabar — an area where Blackbaud Award Management has limitations outside its own ecosystem.
Every scholarship fund has gift agreement criteria. Awarded stores the agreement, parses the restrictions, and flags any award that would violate donor intent before it's disbursed. Blackbaud Award Management tracks awards well, but has more limited compliance capabilities around original gift agreement terms.
Awarded generates personalized donor impact reports with recipient photos, academic progress, major details, and thank-you messages — automatically, for every fund. Blackbaud users typically export data manually and format reports separately, which takes considerably more time.
Blackbaud Award Management focuses on awards. Awarded gives financial aid and advancement a shared view designed for their respective workflows, so nothing gets lost between departments.
Awarded supports full fund audit workflows and manages non-scholarship fund types — giving your team a single source of truth across your entire restricted fund portfolio, beyond just scholarship awards.
| Feature / Capability | Awarded | Blackbaud Award Management |
|---|---|---|
| Scholarship award tracking & record keeping | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Gift record linkage to awards | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Online student application portal | ✓Yes | ◐Limited |
| Advanced award automation | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Gift agreement compliance tracking | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Donor intent compliance alerts | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Fund utilization dashboards (real-time) | ✓Yes | ◐Limited |
| Automated donor impact reports | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Thank-you letter collection workflow | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Fund Audits | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Gift Agreement Creation | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Non-Scholarship Fund Management | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| ERP integration (Banner, Workday, PeopleSoft) | ✓Yes | ◐Blackbaud ecosystem only |
| Financial aid staff portal (FA-native UI) | ✓Yes | ✗No |
| Student text + email automation | ✓Yes | ◐Limited |
| Shared FA + Advancement platform | ✓Yes | ✗No |
Awarded integrates with Raiser's Edge and Blackbaud CRM rather than replacing them. Your development team can continue using Blackbaud for fundraising and major gift work. Awarded handles the scholarship management layer — awarding, compliance, and stewardship — and syncs relevant data back to your CRM.
Awarded supports multiple integration approaches including Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT and connects via API or file exchange. If your institution uses a separate student information system, Awarded integrates with both — connecting scholarship data to your ERP for disbursement reconciliation.
Absolutely. Advancement teams use Awarded to track fund utilization, generate donor impact reports, collect thank-you letters from recipients, and manage stewardship workflows. It's designed from the ground up to serve both financial aid and development — giving both teams a shared platform designed for their respective workflows.
Institutions that previously spent months manually pulling recipient data, formatting in Word or InDesign, and mailing reports are now generating personalized donor impact reports in under a week. The content is drawn automatically from recipient records already in Awarded.
Awarded's team handles fund data migration from your existing systems, integration setup with your ERP and CRM, criteria configuration for your fund portfolio, and staff training for both financial aid and advancement — with a dedicated implementation partner through go-live.
Attract and retain more students and donors, starting this awarding cycle.
