How Clarkson University saved enrollment budget, boosted fund utilization and optimized the donor experience all in less than 12 months

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The Challenge

For years, Clarkson University’s stewardship and awarding processes were slow, manual, and fragmented.

Erin Londraville, Assistant Vice President of Engagement and Operations, described the process as “extremely manual, extremely spreadsheet-heavy, and extremely time-consuming.” “We were relying on old spreadsheets and manually entering data. Needless to say, it was not very efficient,” added Jonathan Moser, Assistant Director of Financial Aid.

A process centered around spreadsheets had serious repercussions on key deliverables each year. Scholarships were sitting around unspent. Making sure students matched donor intent required hours of excel manipulation, cross referencing systems, and relying on out of date data. And sending out 400+ donor reports per year was a process that required long back-and-forth email threads with financial aid for award data and eligibility verification, emails and calls to students to maximize responses, team support to manually review, edit and approve student responses and photos, and all-nighters to merge and finalize donor reports before the end of the calendar year. Not to mention the problems posed by non-scholarship fund reporting, or accuracy of financials received, and several other challenges that the team would have to contend with in any given year.

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How Awarded Helped Clarkson Solve Their Challenges

Clarkson turned to Awarded to unify donor reporting and financial aid awarding in one streamlined, cutting-edge system.

“It’s been transformative to have the financial aid and the donor relations teams work in the same system,” Erin explained. “And instead of the endless back and forth emails, we are instantly able to see what’s been awarded and track fund utilization in real time.”

With Awarded, Clarkson could also deliver the first-class quality of reporting its donors expect. “We’ve always taken pride in producing donor reports that are thoughtful and beautifully designed. What I appreciate about Awarded is that it allows us to maintain that same quality and consistency, but with a fraction of the time and effort,” Erin said. “No more manual merges or design headaches. The system does the heavy lifting so we can focus on the donor experience.”

Jonathan highlighted the same transformation in financial aid. “Awarded is an incredible tool that has allowed us to streamline our scholarship awarding and endowment matching processes,” he said.

Even without a technical background, Jonathan found the system easy to adopt. “With the user-friendly and intuitive software platform that Awarded has created, we are able to navigate the portal and utilize all key features with extreme ease,” he said.

Just as important as the technology was the support behind it. Erin described the Awarded team as “phenomenal to work with. They set us up for success, and their ongoing support has been second to none. Their responsiveness is remarkable. You’re never waiting days or weeks for an answer. They truly feel like partners in our work.” Jonathan agreed: “The Awarded team has been with us every step of the way and has been a pleasure to work with. We’re always impressed with their ability to adapt to our needs, regardless of how big or small some of the requests might be. They’re always there to help.”

The Results

Within the first year of using Awarded, Clarkson saw measurable improvements across both donor reporting and student awarding.

Jonathan explained, “Although we’re in year one of implementation, we are now able to progress through the awarding cycle at a much quicker pace than previous years. We’ve already increased the pace by almost $1,000,000 in a year-over-year comparison in terms of awarding. And because of how we are able to now organize and track our data, we’re able to reallocate over $300,000 for incoming freshman funding. In many cases this type of influx in funding can be extremely beneficial in maintaining and reducing tuition discount rates.”

Jonathan highlights two critical metrics that are often overlooked. Not only were they able to increase their fund utilization by 15% year over year, but they were also able to take one in three of those additional dollars and offset tuition discounts, thereby unlocking a massive pool of operating funds for the enrollment team.

For donor relations, what once required hours of manual work now takes a fraction of the time, freeing staff to focus on meaningful donor engagement. Awarded’s stewardship suite allowed Erin’s team to automatically customize reports, prepare exports, and seamlessly deliver them by syncing to their existing donor database.

The system also improved internal collaboration. “The Awarded platform has afforded us a space to share and collaborate with our partners over in the alumni development office,” Jonathan said. “In the past, we would spend many hours emailing back and forth questions and answers and documentation. Now we’re able to share an environment that allows each department to efficiently interact, monitor workflows, communicate, and track projects. Needless to say, our on-campus partnership with them has been strengthened by utilizing and sharing the same platform.”

Looking Ahead

Clarkson’s teams see Awarded not just as software but as a partner in their work. “It’s clear that Awarded has a high regard for customer service and satisfaction and truly cares about the goals of each of their clients,” Jonathan said. “We look forward to continuing our work with Awarded and their team and are excited to hear some of the new features they’re coming up with next.”