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Most financial aid offices start with spreadsheets. At 20 scholarships it's manageable. At 200, it's a compliance liability. See what's possible when you automate the full awarding 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 replaces the entire spreadsheet-and-email workflow with a rules-based engine that matches, awards, renews, and tracks compliance automatically — while keeping advancement, financial aid, and finance on one shared platform.
Financial aid teams across the U.S. manually track donor-funded scholarships in spreadsheets — matching students to criteria by hand, emailing awards, copy-pasting data between systems, and praying nothing gets out of sync.
Why Institutions Switch
Spreadsheet awarding means copy-pasting data, cross-referencing eligibility manually, and re-entering information across multiple systems. Awarded's rules-based engine does this in bulk — your team reviews exceptions, not every single award.
Spreadsheets have no concept of donor intent. Awarded stores the original gift agreement for every fund and validates each award against those terms — creating an audit trail that can answer any donor or auditor question instantly.
With spreadsheets, renewals mean rebuilding your tracking sheet every cycle. Awarded's auto-renew engine handles re-evaluation automatically — and removes awards when students fall out of eligibility, based on rules your team sets once.
Spreadsheet matching applies all criteria equally, often leaving funds unspent because students are disqualified on soft preferences. Awarded separates hard requirements from soft preferences — finding more eligible students and maximizing fund utilization.
When awarding lives in a spreadsheet, advancement has no visibility. They email financial aid asking "how is Fund X doing?" and wait for a manual update. Awarded gives both teams a shared, real-time view of every fund — awarding, utilization, and compliance.
Spreadsheets can't flag a fund with illegal criteria, excessive restrictions, or missing documentation. Awarded automatically audits your entire portfolio and surfaces compliance gaps — before they become problems at an audit or donor review.
Many institutions sit on underspent donor-funded scholarships while simultaneously discounting tuition with unfunded institutional aid. Awarded's replacement awarding module swaps that institutional discount for the donor-funded scholarship — recovering real budget dollars.
Spreadsheet-based offices manually email award notifications and chase students for missing documents. Awarded automatically sends award notifications, application reminders, and document requests via text and email — with no manual follow-up required.
Feature Comparison
| Capability | Awarded | Excel / Manual Process |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-match students to scholarships | ✓ Rules-based, bulk automated | ✗ Fully manual, row by row |
| Auto-renew awards | ✓ Automated on configured rules | ✗ Manual rebuild each cycle |
| Auto-remove awards when eligibility is lost | ✓ Automated | ✗ Manual — often missed |
| Auto-realign awards | ✓ | ✗ |
| Gift agreement storage | ✓ Only platform that does this | ✗ Files scattered across email/SharePoint |
| Donor intent compliance engine | ✓ Policy engine + audit trail | ✗ No validation possible |
| Gift Agreement Creation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Fund Audits | ✓ Flags illegal criteria, missing docs | ✗ No visibility at all |
| Non-Scholarship Fund Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Requirements vs. preferences | ✓ Finds more eligible students | ✗ All criteria treated equally |
| Concurrent award cycles | ✓ | ✗ Separate spreadsheets, version chaos |
| Student text/email notifications | ✓ Automated | ✗ Manual emails one by one |
| Document request tracking | ✓ Automated reminders | ✗ Manual follow-up |
| Fund utilization dashboard | ✓ Real-time | ✗ Manual pivot tables |
| Advancement visibility into awarding | ✓ Shared platform, role-based | ✗ Zero — separate silos |
| Donor reports & stewardship | ✓ Automated branded PDFs + microsites | ✗ Manual InDesign/Word compilation |
| Scholarship swapping module | ✓ Dedicated replacement awarding | ✗ |
| SIS integration | ✓ Banner, Colleague, PeopleSoft, Workday, Jenzabar | ✗ Manual export/import |
| Audit trail for compliance | ✓ Every award traced to gift agreement | ✗ No traceable record |
The quality of the product, the ease that the platform provided — it's just lightyears ahead of what we were doing before.
Dr. Richard Clark, Vice President of Advancement — Johnson University
Common Questions
We only have 40 scholarships. Do we really need a platform?
Even 40 scholarships involve real compliance risk if you're not storing gift agreements and tracing awards to donor intent. Many of our customers started with fewer than 50 funds and chose Awarded because they couldn't afford a compliance gap — and because the time savings during peak season paid for the platform in staff hours alone. We do the full data migration, so the transition is low-lift for your team.
Our team is very comfortable with Excel. How hard is the transition?
Awarded's implementation team handles the full data migration — fund creation, gift agreement read-through, and criteria setup. We also come on-campus to train your team in person. You don't need to know how to configure the system; we configure it based on your existing process.
What does Awarded cost compared to "free" spreadsheets?
Spreadsheets aren't free — your team is paying for them in labor. If your staff spends 200+ hours per cycle on manual matching, re-entering award data, chasing students for documents, and manually compiling renewals, the real cost is likely far higher than an Awarded subscription. Add compliance risk — one audit finding on a misapplied restricted fund can cost far more than software. Contact us for a custom quote.
Does Awarded integrate with our SIS?
Yes. Awarded integrates via API with Ellucian Banner and Colleague, and supports two-way data transfers via CSV/SFTP with PeopleSoft, Workday Student, Jenzabar, and other major SIS platforms. Your awarding data stays in sync with your SIS without manual exports.
What happens to all our existing scholarship records and criteria?
Awarded's implementation team migrates everything — your fund list, eligibility criteria, historical award data, and gift agreement documents — into the platform. We read through each gift agreement to configure the criteria correctly. You don't start from scratch; you pick up where you left off, but with automation driving every step from there.
Attract & retain more students and donors starting today.
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