Testimonial: Aiken Technical College

Customer Testimonial



Aiken Technical College
50 Scholarships
500 Applicants
Customer Since 2007

When I came to Aiken Technical College in 1999, we only offered about 15 scholarships, so it was pretty easy to manage. In my more than 19 years here, we've really grown the scholarship program. Now we award more than 140 scholarships!


Due to personnel changes, I ended up managing a paper process for all of our scholarships, and I just couldn't handle the volume. Our review committee was also bogged down with hundreds of paper applications to review. Managing these scholarships limited the time I had available to cast a wide net for student applications, so most of our applicants were Aiken students. That's when I decided to consider a scholarship management solution. I looked at several, and AwardSpring seemed to me like it had everything I needed to do the job and it was a fairly easy and intuitive application to learn; plus, the pricing was fair.


AwardSpring implementation was a great experience.  The implementation manager explained everything to me, got the system up and running, and worked hand in hand with me to develop the application. I was so pleased and have been pleased ever since. After our first year, when I needed a refresher on how to set up a scholarship review process, AwardSpring's support team was happy to schedule another training session right away. Someone is always right there to help or give an answer; it's been wonderful.


I like to tell our donors how our scholarship process works. They're very impressed that we have such an efficient online system that handles everything from applications to reviewing to awarding.

With AwardSpring, our donors have confidence that their scholarship investment is really going to the most qualified student.


Students find it very easy to apply now. Reviewers love AwardSpring, too. It's so much easier than our old process. Everything is online, so applications can be reviewed at work or at home. Reviewers can even work on their tablets if they want. Some faculty members have actually asked to stay on the review committee, which has never happened before!


Thanks to AwardSpring, I have much more time than I used to. Now I can actually get out to the seven high schools in our service area and work with students to help them apply for scholarships.  As soon as these students submit their applications, I can instantly tell them the scholarships for which they've qualified, which always gets them excited.  With a paper process, we would receive about 100 applications per award cycle. Now, we get 500!


AwardSpring also makes it so easy for us to follow up with students about their post-award tasks. For example, it's easy for me to remind students to write their thank you letters to donors now - it all happens within the system. There's no chance of an error, either. I'll never send a follow-up to the wrong student.


AwardSpring is easy to implement, easy to use, and more efficient for everybody.  My job is less stressful now than it was five years ago. With AwardSpring, it feels like everything magically happens


___


Mary Commons

Director

Share by: