Digitize Your Scholarship and Grant Workflow (Without the Headaches!)

Offering scholarships and grants is a great way to foster goodwill and make the world a better place. Whether you want to provide college scholarships or share grant funds with a deserving non-profit, the scholarship and grant process can get overwhelming. Without careful management, the entire process can quickly become a tangled mess of paperwork and burnout.

There’s no need to spend so much time and energy worrying about the scholarship and grant process. With the right tools, you can put most of the process on autopilot, saving time for both your team and applicants. In this guide, we’ll explain why an online scholarship solution is the way to go and how platforms like Survey & Ballot Systems make it a cinch to get started.

Why Use an Online Management Tool for Online Scholarships and Small Business Grants?

Whether you work at a non-profit, association, co-op, or other member organization, your day-to-day work is already busy and stressful – and that’s with normal operations. Throw in the additional responsibilities of overseeing a scholarship or grant application, and it can feel overwhelming. If you offer multiple scholarships, things get even more complicated with differing questions, deadlines, and stakeholders.

The traditional scholarship and grant application process is paper-heavy and personnel-intensive. Organizations are tasked with doing more with less every year, and you can’t afford to stretch your resources like this. Plus, we guarantee that scholarship and grant applicants find these outdated processes confusing, which only reduces their motivation to participate.

Inject some sanity into your workflow by switching to an online scholarship and grant management system. It might sound like extra effort to go digital, but all-in-one solutions like ours make digitizing a piece of cake.

Streamline Online Scholarships and Grants With Survey & Ballot Systems

If you want to offer multiple scholarships or grants but dread the paperwork, it’s time to digitize everything. Not only does our solution manage your organization’s elections, but it’s also robust enough to manage scholarship and grant applications. There’s no need to manage multiple solutions – everything you need is in the SBS platform.

While our tool is great for managing candidate applications and petitions, it’s a huge time-saver for scholarships and grants.

Create a Customized Submission Portal

You don’t have time to manage reams of application paperwork, and neither do your applicants. Survey & Ballot Systems gives you the freedom to create a customized portal for each scholarship and grant.

Contact your SBS team to set submission parameters, generate a unique link for applicants, and build a dedicated website for gathering submissions. We even help you customize the data by personalizing questions, fields, and word count requirements. The system allows applicants to save their progress if they want to proceed with the application later or skip around and only submit answers to required questions.

The scholarship portal allows students to submit their applications and upload important files, like letters of recommendation, photos, transcripts, and more. When you export these applications for review, SBS bundles everything by candidate so you can see all materials in a single view.

Standardize Data Collection

Do you allow students to submit scholarship applications via your website, Google Forms, PDF, or paper application? Multiple formats are a headache if you’re processing information manually. Fortunately, our platform standardizes data collection, eliminating the back-and-forth while ensuring you don’t miss any important details.

Streamline Communication

There’s no need to manually email scholarship or grant applicants yourself. Our professional team handles the entire process for you – you just need to share your content, desired audience, and sending time. Send personalized one-to-one outreach, messages to a specific group, or general emails to the entire applicant pool.

You don’t have to manually send reminder emails, either. Our support team makes it easy to schedule messages throughout the process so applicants remember to submit information on time. If you need to send a one-off message to a group of applicants, your SBS rep can also send the message immediately.

Get Real-Time Visibility Into the Process

How many applicants do you have so far? Is anyone’s application incomplete? It takes ages to answer these questions with paper submissions. But with our platform, it’s as easy as logging in and viewing your real-time dashboard. You can track progress on all submissions from a single view, saving your team hours of hassle.

Protect Sensitive Data

Malicious actors want access to your applicants’ data. Fortunately, SBS keeps all organizational and candidate data under lock and key. Not only is our platform regularly audited according to the highest standards, but we’re also SOC 2 compliant. Your applicants can safely access the scholarship or grant process from any device with our safe, mobile-friendly platform that keeps data where it belongs – in your organization.

Quick Learning Curve

Learning new software may seem like “just one more thing” on your to-do list, but we pride ourselves on our quick learning curve. Our team of experts is here to provide individualized support at every step. Contact us via email or phone to get the white-glove service you deserve.

Scenarios for Utilizing Our Digital Application Management Software

Every scholarship and grant process is unique. Still, digital platforms like SBS can handle the nuances of very different processes. Check out these examples of how our technology and team can handle everything from RFPs to digital signatures and everything in between.

Meeting Q&A Submission

Our platform is great at managing secure candidate applications and petition collection, but did you know it can also manage Q&As during meetings? Host a zero-hassle online annual meeting that enables discussion with members in a secure, structured environment.

Digital Signatures

Petitions are a mainstay of any democracy, but how do you collect signatures digitally? Don’t fuss with collecting piecemeal PDFs – SBS offers online petition software that streamlines the digital signature process. Candidates can invite members to participate by sharing a unique petition link via email, social media, or website banner. Our signature management solution makes the process seamless and easier to manage, both for members and your leadership team. 

RSVPs and Meeting Registrations

Hosting a hybrid organizational meeting allows you to meet members where they are, but the logistics are complex. Organizations rely on our platform to manage RSVPs and registrations for in-person, online, and hybrid meetings to simplify the entire process. Ensure all members receive consistent information about the meeting and prevent the headaches of registration and data retrieval with our smart registration solution.

RFPs

Many organizations rely on third-party vendors. However, your bylaws likely require sending out requests for proposals (RFPs), which can be unwieldy for both organizations and vendors. That’s why membership organizations can rely on SBS to manage the RFP process. Your SBS team will create a personalized web link for the RFP process – not unlike the scholarship application process – to manage all vendor submissions in a single dashboard.

Candidate Bios

Voting members shouldn’t have to dig for candidate information. Not only does SBS simplify the process of gathering candidate nominations, but our platform also makes candidate bios readily available for members as they cast their votes.

From Overwhelmed to Organized: Let SBS Lead the Way

Managing online scholarships and grants doesn’t have to be stressful for your organization. By digitizing your workflow, you’ll not only save time and resources but also provide a seamless experience for applicants. Transitioning to a digital platform empowers you to be more efficient and offer more opportunities in your community.

The right tools make the difference. Survey & Ballot Systems’ secure platform and expert team are here to simplify every step of the process. Ready to simplify your scholarships and grants? Let us handle the heavy lifting so you can focus on what really matters – making a difference. Contact us today.