Speaking with college students is a key a part of the scholarship course of. Whereas it may be time-consuming and sometimes overwhelming, it’s also extremely rewarding to congratulate them on their scholarship awards, accumulate 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 scale back administrative burdens and nonetheless nurture the type of relationships that your college students deserve?
Beneath are a number of recommendations on find out how to streamline communication with college students for effectivity and engagement.
Consolidate and modernize resolution notifications.
Many establishments nonetheless depend on e-mail to speak with college students, and in some instances ship a number of emails primarily based 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 need 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 present’s college students. We should meet them the place they’re, which is on their cellphone. Texts and push notifications get their consideration extra rapidly and they are going to be extra responsive if the textual content connects them with a portal the place they will 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—fairly than one-by-one notifications—and the coed has one reference level to view every thing concerning 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 the moment accumulate post-acceptance data out of your award recipients? This might embody thank-you letters to scholarship donors, solutions to a sequence of questions on their expertise at your establishment, or essays in regards to the affect of the scholarships on their lives. All these items are useful with regards to stewarding your donors, however making an attempt to wrangle college students to write down 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, however 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 together 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 want to proofread and edit every thing. The fitting software program may also help.)
Leverage automation in your scholarship administration platform.
Maybe essentially the most important advantages of a top-tier award administration platform are scholarship centralization and the flexibility to automate communication. When all accessible awards are centralized, the system can auto-match college students to scholarships and alert them of awards for which they might 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 purposes to just accept awards and submit crucial data.
Streamline communications for effectivity and engagement.
Consolidating communications, updating the means with which you talk, and strategically automating notifications can take a significant quantity of labor off scholarship directors, liberating up your time for different essential duties as you progress by means of the season.
Concerned about different methods to streamline your scholarship administration course of? Take a look at extra posts on our larger training weblog and our useful resource heart.
