Is your association’s awards program stuck back in 1995? Are you losing countless hours chasing incomplete applications, manually distributing submissions to judges, and building custom reports in Excel? Reclaim your time and sanity with awards management software that handles these tasks automatically.
Awards management software is a comprehensive platform that automates application collection, judging coordination, and winner selection for professional and trade associations.
It’s not a luxury reserved for larger associations. It’s an essential tool that transforms how you run your program. We asked experienced awards program managers about the features they value in awards management software and tips for using them.
Managing an awards program starts with providing a smooth application experience. These features increase award submissions while reducing the administrative burden.
Before building a form, map out the application on paper first, identifying the questions that depend on previous answers. Test conditional logic by intentionally choosing different pathways to discover broken logic chains.
Tell applicants about the save-and-return feature so they rush to get everything done in one sitting. Schedule automated reminder emails for applicants with saved-but-incomplete applications.
Give your reviewers the right tools while maintaining the integrity and fairness of your judging process.
Use scorecard judging to justify decisions quantitatively or when judges need evaluation criteria to ensure fairness. Choose ranking/ballot mode for “best of” awards where comparison matters more than absolute scores.
Establish clear conflict of interest definitions in your policies. To avoid reassigning work, build conflict engine rules before sending invitations to judges. Use the engine’s reporting to identify potential issues before judging begins.
Email automation ensures consistent, timely communication while freeing you from the endless cycle of manual reminders and updates.
Build your email campaign calendar and templates before launch: confirmations, deadline reminders, judge assignment notifications, and winner announcements. Set them as templates with inserted variables that personalize emails by referencing the applicant name, award category, submission title, and deadline.
To prevent bottlenecks from having one person review everything, build an “eligibility verification” workflow that routes submissions to the appropriate staff based on review criteria: student awards to the education team, corporate awards to membership.
Get concrete metrics, trend analysis, and measurable ROI from your software so you can spot problems early, demonstrate program growth, or make data-informed improvements for next year’s cycle.
Set up your dashboard to show leading indicators (applications started but not completed, judges who haven’t begun reviewing) so you can intervene promptly.
Share filtered dashboard views with stakeholders: committee members get high-level metrics, co-workers get operational details, and finance gets revenue tracking. Build leadership reports as saved templates so year-over-year comparison requires just a few clicks.
Shape member and industry perceptions and increase participation with your awards website and engagement tools.
Use customized terminology to match your association’s jargon, for example, replace “awards” with “honors.” Set up a custom domain (awards.yourassociation.org) instead of using the default platform URL to increase search discoverability, applicant trust, and completion rates.
Set clear vote limits per user (typically one vote per submission per person) and use both login requirements and cookie tracking for vote integrity. This combination prevents both casual ballot stuffing and more determined attempts to skew results. A two- to three-week public voting period creates urgency.
Behind-the-scenes administrative features determine whether managing your awards program feels effortless or exhausting.
Set tiered permissions appropriately: give program managers full access to their specific programs, give others read-only access, and give finance staff payment/invoice access only. Document your admin processes so multiple people can manage the platform during staff vacations or turnover.
After your first awards cycle, save the entire program as a template before making next year’s changes so you have a rollback option. Clone templates for similar awards programs rather than building from scratch. Archive previous years’ programs instead of deleting them so you can reference last year’s exact setup in case you can’t remember specific configuration decisions.
Integrations eliminate duplicate data entry and ensure your awards platform works harmoniously with your existing association technology stack.
Determine which data should be the “source of truth” before setting up bi-directional sync. Typically, membership data lives in the AMS while awards data lives in the awards platform. Use information lookups to pull member data (eligibility, dues status) into application forms so applicants don’t have to re-enter information they’ve already provided.
Consolidate merchant accounts and simplify accounting reconciliation by choosing a payment processor already used by your association. Your accounting team will thank you for not adding another vendor relationship and reporting system to manage.
For most associations, awards management software delivers ROI within a single cycle—not only in time saved, but in reduced errors, enhanced applicant and judge experiences, and data-driven program improvements. See how OpenWater can help you reclaim hours of time by signing up for a personalized demo.