At many institutions, managing scholarships is a manual, time-consuming process. Inefficient and prone to error, many processes fail to provide scholarship managers with the information they need to make every award dollar count.
But as the pressure to meet enrollment goals builds, so too does the need for better ways to manage institutional scholarships. The good news? There are best practices you can implement today to improve your processes. Let’s take a look.
Increase transparency into eligibility criteria
Each institutional scholarship often has its own unique, sometimes complex, eligibility criteria. And many times, the requirements are unclear and poorly-communicated, making it difficult for students to assess if they qualify for an award or not.
By increasing transparency into your eligibility criteria, you can help students identify which scholarships they qualify for. Ensure the wording is clear, transparent, and well-documented so that it’s easy for students to tell if they are eligible for an award.
Another way to increase transparency is by integrating scholarship management tools with key campus systems such as your SIS. That way, scholarship managers can pull together disparate data sets, identify students who qualify for an award, and proactively reach out to them, encouraging them to apply.
Use technology to prioritize applicants
Determining which students receive awards from the defined dollar amounts in your scholarship budgets is difficult, often requiring the management of complex eligibility criteria and specific enrollment goals.
Scholarship management technology can help simplify this process. Powerful sorting and weighting capabilities enable scholarship managers to match and prioritize applicants so they can make informed, intelligent decisions about scholarship awards. This approach enables scholarship managers to maximize their awards effectively so they can make the best use of their funds.
Automate the awarding process
Scholarship funds are fluid, with dollars moving around as awards are adjusted, canceled, or unaccepted. Keeping track of these changes is often a manual effort, leaving many scholarship dollars unawarded - and many students missing out.
Scholarship management tools that integrate fund data with award amount updates and status show scholarship managers where available dollars exist - without the need for manual tracking. That way, they can quickly, easily, and automatically attribute unused, canceled, or unaccepted scholarship awards to other students. As a result, scholarship managers can build a stronger partnership with enrollment managers and financial aid staff by ensuring they are maximizing awards - and enrollment.
Right Processes, Right Technology
Having the right scholarship management solution makes maximizing every dollar easier. But not all tools are created equal!
Discover which capabilities are on the must-have list. Download our e-book, Institutional Scholarships: 6 Best Practices for Managing and Maximizing Awards. In it, you’ll find a key capability checklist that will help you select the right scholarship management solution as well as three additional best practices to improve your scholarship management processes.
Download your copy now.
