Bettering Pupil Communications in Your Scholarship Course of

Speaking with college students is a key a part of the scholarship course of. Whereas it may be time-consuming and sometimes overwhelming, it is usually extremely rewarding to congratulate them on their scholarship awards, acquire post-acceptance data and thank-you messages, and share these messages with donors. That’s the coronary heart of each scholarship program—empowering pupil success. 

But in a Blackbaud survey, solely 50% of establishments felt like their communications to college students have been streamlined effectively. At a time when everybody appears to be doing extra with much less, how do you cut back administrative burdens and nonetheless nurture the sort of relationships that your college students deserve?

Beneath are just a few tips about easy methods to streamline communication with college students for effectivity and engagement.

Consolidate and modernize choice notifications. 

Many establishments nonetheless depend on e-mail to speak with college students, and in some circumstances ship a number of emails based mostly on the variety of awards they obtain. For instance, if a pupil is awarded 10 completely different scholarships, they get 10 completely different emails they have to open, learn, and click on to just accept their awards. 

Gone are the times after we might rely strictly on e-mail to speak with at this time’s college students. We should meet them the place they’re, which is on their telephone. Texts and push notifications get their consideration extra shortly and they are going to be extra responsive if the textual content connects them with a portal the place they’ll settle for all their awards, full thank-you notes for donors, and different actionable objects.

Admins can save time by consolidating messaging to incorporate all of the scholarships and awards every pupil is receiving—moderately than one-by-one notifications—and the coed has one reference level to view all the things relating to their awards.

Trendy award administration software program consolidates all awards in a single system and facilitates communication by enabling each textual content and e-mail.

Use a web based platform to gather post-acceptance particulars.

Do you at present acquire post-acceptance data out of your award recipients? This might embody thank-you letters to scholarship donors, solutions to a collection of questions on their expertise at your establishment, or essays in regards to the impression of the scholarships on their lives. All these items are useful in terms of stewarding your donors, however making an attempt to wrangle college students to put in writing letters and supply different data in a well timed method could be tough. 

Utilizing a web based platform to gather data not solely makes the method simpler for you, nevertheless it additionally encourages your college students to finish the duties on time. College students not must stroll throughout campus to ship a hastily-written handwritten thank-you notice or questionnaire. Over 60% of establishments are asking college students to submit these items on-line, permitting the scholarship and development directors the flexibility to proofread, edit, and retailer the collected data digitally.* In flip, this makes it simpler to share pupil data along with your donors and deepen their connection to your program.

(*Let’s face it. College students are doing all of it on their telephones, so you will have to proofread and edit all the things. The fitting software program will help.)

Leverage automation in your scholarship administration platform.

Maybe probably the most vital advantages of a top-tier award administration platform are scholarship centralization and the flexibility to automate communication. When all out there awards are centralized, the system can auto-match college students to scholarships and alert them of awards for which they could be eligible. College students can apply for all awards with one login and one widespread utility.

After committee evaluations—which the system facilitates—the scholarship administrator can activate e-mail and textual content messaging to let every pupil know what awards they acquired and what their subsequent steps are. They’ll additionally automate reminders and different notifications, then college students use the identical login they used for functions to just accept awards and submit vital data.

Streamline communications for effectivity and engagement.

Consolidating communications, updating the means with which you talk, and strategically automating notifications can take a serious quantity of labor off scholarship directors, liberating up your time for different necessary duties as you progress by the season. 

Involved in different methods to streamline your scholarship administration course of? Try extra posts on our increased training weblog and our useful resource heart.