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ScholarshipUniverse is a point solution that helps collect applications and match eligible students to restricted funds. Awarded goes much further — with deeper automations, more robust and customizable donor stewardship, and more powerful compliance tools to better serve the end-to-end financial stewardship challenge.
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 handles applications — but more importantly, it automates everything that happens after: matching, awarding, compliance tracking, fund utilization, donor reports, and renewal. Financial aid and advancement share one platform instead of trading spreadsheets.
ScholarshipUniverse is a scholarship application and matching portal designed to collect student data and surface scholarship opportunities. But it's a legacy tool from past acquisitions, and hasn't been the primary focus of their product suite in many years.
Why Institutions Switch
ScholarshipUniverse solves the application collection problem. Awarded solves the whole fund management problem — including the parts that happen before and after the application.
ScholarshipUniverse shows students scholarships they qualify for, but your staff still decides, notifies, and tracks each award manually. Awarded's rules engine auto-matches and auto-awards based on your fund criteria — staff review exceptions, not every single award. And when students fall out of eligibility, Awarded removes awards automatically too.
Every donor fund has restrictions. Awarded stores the gift agreement, parses the criteria, and flags any award that would violate donor intent — before the disbursement goes through. ScholarshipUniverse has more limited compliance capabilities in this area.
Your development office needs to show donors their gifts are making an impact. Awarded generates personalized donor impact reports with real recipient stories and fund utilization data. ScholarshipUniverse's reporting lacks the level of branding, customization, and workflow automation that donors deserve.
Multi-year scholarship renewals require re-evaluating GPA, enrollment status, and major against the original fund criteria each year. Awarded automates this entire cycle — including removing awards when students fall out of eligibility. With ScholarshipUniverse, renewal season means starting the manual process over.
ScholarshipUniverse is designed to work within the Ellucian ecosystem. Awarded integrates with Banner, Colleague, Workday, PeopleSoft, and Jenzabar — so your scholarship management platform isn't tied to any single ERP vendor, an area where ScholarshipUniverse has limitations.
Finance and advancement need to know: which funds are over- or under-utilized? Awarded provides real-time dashboards showing fund balance, award pace, and projected utilization — an area where ScholarshipUniverse has limitations.
Financial aid and advancement both work in Awarded — no more emailing spreadsheets between departments. Advancement sees fund status in real time; FA sees donor intent requirements before awarding. ScholarshipUniverse is more focused on financial aid.
Awarded supports full fund audit workflows and manages non-scholarship fund types alongside traditional scholarships — giving your team a single source of truth across your entire restricted fund portfolio. These capabilities are outside ScholarshipUniverse's scope.
Feature Comparison
| Feature / Capability | Awarded | ScholarshipUniverse |
|---|---|---|
| Online scholarship application portal | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Student-facing scholarship matching | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Student text + email automation | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Automated rules-based awarding engine | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Automated award removal when eligibility is lost | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Automated multi-year renewal logic | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Gift agreement storage & compliance tracking | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Donor-intent compliance alerts | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Fund utilization dashboards (real-time) | ✓ Yes | ⚬ Limited |
| Donor impact reports & stewardship tools | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Advancement / development office portal | ✓ 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, Jenzabar) | ✓ Yes | ⚬ Ellucian only |
| Financial aid + advancement on shared platform | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Dedicated implementation & support team | ✓ Yes | ⚬ Varies |
Common Questions
We already use Ellucian Banner (or Colleague) — does Awarded still work for us?
Yes. Awarded integrates with Ellucian Banner, Colleague, and other ERPs via standard APIs and file-based data exchange. Being an Ellucian shop doesn't require using ScholarshipUniverse — many Banner and Colleague institutions use Awarded instead.
Can Awarded replace ScholarshipUniverse entirely, or is it complementary?
Awarded is a full replacement. It covers the application and matching features ScholarshipUniverse provides, plus the full awarding, compliance, stewardship, and reporting lifecycle that ScholarshipUniverse doesn't touch. Most institutions choose Awarded as a complete solution rather than running both systems. However, Awarded's donor reporting and other products can be added on top of any ScholarshipUniverse instance you may currently have.
Does Awarded have tools for our advancement office, not just financial aid?
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.
What does implementation look like if we're moving from ScholarshipUniverse?
Awarded's implementation team handles fund data migration, ERP integration setup, and staff training. We'll map your existing ScholarshipUniverse fund criteria into Awarded's rules engine so nothing is lost in transition.
Attract & retain more students and donors starting today.
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