Support in a Crisis: How AwardSpring Helps Institutions Overcome COVID-19 Challenges

In March of 2020, the swift and extensive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic took our whole nation by surprise. Here at AwardSpring, we realized right away that students and higher education institutions would soon face a multi-faceted crisis unlike any they’d ever seen before. Students from out of state - or country - had to make fast, difficult decisions about whether to stay on campus or go home. Many schools had to retool their curricula to support distanced learning. And there was a real danger that the most vulnerable students, the ones who were pursuing an education as a path out of poverty, would have the most trouble staying in school if and when unemployment impacted their own households. Eventually, the CARES Act earmarked $4.5B for higher education student need, and schools also stepped up to provide their own emergency funding. But we recognized that the management of those funds would be another burden on administrators who were already pivoting in so many ways to cope with this crisis. 



At AwardSpring, we saw it as both a responsibility and a privilege to find a way to alleviate the anxiety and stress of our customers and the students they serve during this exceptionally difficult time. As a team, we decided that the biggest, most difficult problem we could solve was the administration of emergency funds. Our platform makes it easy for administrators to collaborate remotely and for students to access or apply for funds from wherever they end up quarantining. So we quickly built a workflow that would allow us to create a second AwardSpring site for our customers at a much faster pace than usual, designed to manage distributions both efficiently and easily, with the least amount of effort on the administrators’ part. By offering this second site for free for 90 days, we eliminated the most common barrier to adoption for most institutions. About 10% of our customers took advantage of this free second site; half of those decided to keep it long-term. We even extended the free second site option to all schools, even those that are not our customers, in the spirit of helping as many people as possible.



“We are now working from home and about the only thing happening as planned is our scholarship award cycle. That is important for our students as they can see some type of light at the end of this crazy tunnel.”

– Current Technical College User



At a difficult time, the AwardSpring team rallied together to make a difference in the lives of administrators and students, and I couldn’t be more proud of their diligence, hard work, and empathy. Of course, the pandemic is far from over; many schools are still deciding how to keep students engaged and progressing toward their goals this fall. And so we are still supporting all schools, whether they’re customers or not, by offering a free emergency fund distribution site for 90 days. If you are interested in this, please get in touch. And if you have any other suggestions on how we can support you this school year, let us know!