For associations, higher education institutions, and other organizations, award programs support innovation, drive academic success, and foster community impact. However, managing these awards can quickly become complex and time-consuming.
Awards management has many moving parts, including promoting opportunities, tracking applications, reviewing submissions, and more. It can be stressful to balance everything, especially when you’re new to the process.
To help you get started, we’ll explore the basics, best practices, and tools that can help modernize your awards management processes. Here is what we’ll cover:
Whether you’re handling some scholarships or overseeing a large portfolio of grants, you’ll learn how to reduce administrative burden, enhance the applicant experience, and ensure that your awards make an impact.
We know that managing grants and scholarships can get complex, and naturally, questions come up. Below, we’ve answered some of the most common questions about awards management.
Awards management refers to the process of administering and overseeing various types of awards for association and higher education community members. These awards often include recognition for outstanding achievers and occasionally monetary scholarships or grants that honor excellence in academic, professional, and community contributions.
It involves various stages, from application intake and review to disbursement and reporting. The goal is to recognize the right people efficiently and track funding properly if a monetary award is attached.
Effective awards management helps your organization maximize impact, create a positive applicant experience, and maintain transparency.
By streamlining key processes, your team can focus more on outcomes and less on administration. Here is a rundown of the benefits of effectively managing awards:
When your awards process runs smoothly, everyone wins: your team, applicants, sponsors, and entire community. It’s all about making it easier to make a greater impact.
Awards management is a collaborative effort that involves several essential roles, each playing an important part in ensuring the process runs smoothly and effectively. When designing your awards program, you might assign or encounter these key groups:
You’ll need to assign or recruit judges and program administrators based on expertise. Meanwhile, other roles, such as nominators and sponsors, will come from within your community or be selected based on specific needs. Regardless of how they’re filled, all roles work together to ensure the process is fair, transparent, and impactful.
To effectively manage your awards program, you need to understand the core components of the process. Let’s take a closer look at the key components that contribute to a smooth and impactful awards experience.
The first step in any successful awards program is clearly defining objectives and logistics. Your objectives set the tone for the program—are you recognizing outstanding achievement, fostering innovation, or supporting research efforts?
Once you’ve established your goals, organize program logistics by doing the following:
Thoughtfully planning these components creates a strong foundation for your awards program. With these elements in place, you can create an organized experience for applicants and your awards management team.
Effective promotion gets your program in front of the right candidates. You’ll want to take a multi-channel marketing approach, focusing on email campaigns, social media, and direct outreach to target groups. You should also create a landing page or microsite for your awards program to centralize important information, then link to this resource in other communications.
Wherever you promote your awards program, include key information such as:
Clear communication is key to attracting high-quality applicants. Marketing the essential details through the right channels will motivate them to apply.
When designing your application or nomination forms, it’s important to include key details that will help applicants submit complete, mistake-free entries. Be sure to specify the eligibility criteria for each category and outline any submission rules, such as document formatting or word count limits. Additionally, clearly state what information is required, including personal details, achievements, and any supporting materials like letters of recommendation or portfolios.
By keeping your forms clear and comprehensive, you’ll create a smoother application and review process.
As you might expect, during the review process, judges assess applications or nominations to select the most deserving recipients. Judges typically evaluate submissions based on predefined criteria, such as achievements, qualifications, impact, or innovation, depending on the goals of the award.
It’s important to provide judges with clear guidelines on how to score or rank applicants to ensure consistency and fairness. You might have your program administrator or governing body develop a rubric for judges to follow.
Beyond exercising fairness, evaluation criteria make comparing candidates across different categories easier. For example, let’s say your awards program has different categories like academic excellence, community service, or research innovation. Clear criteria help judges evaluate each applicant based on what’s most important for that specific category, rather than just making broad comparisons.
Post-award, you’ll want to recognize winners to celebrate their achievements and reinforce the value of your program. You can show appreciation in several ways depending on the nature of the award and your organization’s resources.
Here are a few recognition ideas to spark your inspiration:
How you recognize your award winners can make a big difference in celebrating their achievements and inspiring others to get involved. Choosing a memorable way to honor them helps create a culture of success within your community.
Reporting and analysis are essential for understanding the effectiveness of your awards program and ensuring any awarded funds are used properly. By tracking key data points, you can assess how well your program meets its goals, spot trends, and identify areas for improvement for future award cycles.
For awards that provide grant-type funding, accurate tracking is even more crucial. Monitoring funding allocations, expenditures, and outcomes helps demonstrate the tangible impact of the awards, ensuring that funds are spent efficiently and aligned with research objectives. Moreover, thorough reporting ensures compliance and fosters transparency, which builds trust with stakeholders and highlights the program’s overall effectiveness.
As your organization grows, so will its awards programs. More applicants, more reviewers, more criteria, different categories—it will become a web of spreadsheets and emails if you don’t have the right tools.
OpenWater resolves the chaos of disparate spreadsheets, manual processes, and disjointed communication by providing a unified platform that streamlines every aspect of awards management. Backed by our all-in-one awards management software, you can streamline workflows and create an enjoyable applicant experience with features such as:
To learn more about these capabilities, check out this overview video that explains how our solution streamlines the awards management process:
With OpenWater, entrants, judges, administrators, and anyone else who encounters your awards program will experience an organized, branded process.
If you still aren’t convinced, here is a real-world example of our software in action: Since 2016, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) has used OpenWater to manage awards, fellowships, and grants. Our solution has helped them tackle issues like configuring complex judging rules and reducing tedious administrative workflows.
Managing awards is an opportunity to recognize achievement, support innovation, and drive positive outcomes in your community. With the right systems and processes, you can streamline workflows, ensure fairness, and make a lasting impact.
As your organization’s awards programs grow, leveraging the right tools will empower you to handle increasing complexity. Embrace technology like OpenWater to transform your awards process from a disjointed series of manual steps into an efficient experience that benefits everyone involved.
To learn more about effective awards management, check out these resources: