Awards Management Software: Ultimate Guide + Top Picks

Your association or higher education institution likely launched its awards program with the goal of recognizing individuals or groups in your community who have gone above and beyond in various ways. However, if you’re still managing awards using spreadsheets or multiple disjointed platforms, your team probably spends more time on administrative tasks than engaging awards program participants.

Fortunately, there is a better solution: end-to-end awards management software. In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about this technology, including:

• Awards Management Software FAQ
• Key Features of Awards Management Software
• The Best Awards Management Platforms

Let’s get started by discussing what awards management software is and why it’s useful for programs like yours.

Awards Management Software: Frequently Asked Questions

What is awards management software?

Awards management software is technology that centralizes and streamlines the process of recognizing standout community members at associations and higher ed institutions. The best awards management platforms assist with every step of program administration, from promoting award opportunities and collecting applications to tracking and visualizing data.

Some awards management systems also allow your organization to manage other application-and-review-based processes, such as abstracts, grants, scholarships, or fellowships. In any case, these solutions should help your team save time and resources while driving better program results.

What benefits do awards management platforms offer?

The right awards management solution can provide multiple advantages to your organization, including:

• Streamlined administration, which reduces time spent and errors introduced through manual data entry.
• Improved decision-making, both in regard to choosing award winners and monitoring overall program performance.
• Increased engagement among program participants, who will have a better experience when application is easy, judging is fair, and communication is prompt.
• Elevated prestige as your awards program’s reputation improves among your community and the broader public.

Multi-function application management platforms also offer the benefit of consolidating several overlapping workflows into a single solution for easier access to information. However, all of these advantages are contingent upon your organization choosing the right software for its unique needs and having a strong awards management process in place that your tools can support.

How much does awards management software cost?

Pricing for awards management software depends on your organization’s feature needs and individual providers’ cost structures. Some platforms offer defined pricing tiers, while others (including OpenWater) provide custom quotes for each customer.

Before you start shopping for a platform, establish a budget so you can ensure each solution you seriously consider fits within it. Remember to account for startup costs and other fees as well as basic subscriptions, and keep in mind that you sometimes get what you pay for with free or ultra-low-cost tools.

Key Features of Awards Management Software

In addition to aligning with your budget, your awards management software needs to be user-friendly and secure, provide sufficient customer support, and match your intended implementation timeline. But most importantly, it has to include all of the necessary features for your specific program structure to operate efficiently.

Although different organizations’ needs will vary, there are a few awards software features that tend to benefit associations and higher ed institutions across the board. Read on to learn more about each one, and use the checklist below as you evaluate different options.

Submission Form Builder

Effectively managing an awards program starts with providing a smooth application experience on both sides. Make sure your software’s submission form builder includes:

• Drag-and-drop functionality to make it easy to add the exact fields you need for each award opportunity to individual submission forms.
• Conditional logic that prevents incomplete or ineligible submissions and further customizes each award’s application experience.
• Custom branding so you can incorporate your organization’s logo, fonts, and color palette into your forms to boost their credibility.
• Multi-format file uploading for supporting documents and multimedia content, which reduces friction for applicants.
• Support for multiple types of competitions, including individual vs. group applications as well as self-submission vs. nomination-driven contests.

Some solutions even allow you to build a microsite or landing page for your awards program and embed the submission forms you’ve created all in one place. If your software doesn’t have a website builder feature, make sure you can easily add your forms to your main website and create a page there that explains eligibility requirements and submission instructions.

Multi-Round Review

Multi-round judging processes are among the easiest ways to promote integrity and fairness within your awards program. Choose a solution that automatically routes each submission to multiple reviewers, who can then log into your system and immediately see and score all of their assigned applications.

Your software should also allow you to remove applicant, nominee, and nominator names from submissions and develop standardized review rubrics to further minimize bias. These features don’t replace the offline processes of carefully vetting reviewers and assigning them to judge opportunities that align with their expertise without causing conflicts of interest, but they’re a strong step toward impartiality.

Built-in Communication Tools

Awards program participants expect timely communication from your team about recognition opportunities, instructions, decisions, and next steps. Keeping lines of communication open, both internally and with your reviewers, is also important for smooth administration. Awards management software with a built-in email tool helps you achieve these purposes by:

• Creating templates for common messages using the same drag-and-drop functionality and branding as your submission forms.
• Auto-scheduling reminders to help your team, applicants, and reviewers stick to the deadlines you’ve set.
• Segmenting email lists so that every message reaches its entire intended audience and only that group.

Check that your email templates (and all public-facing aspects of your awards software, for that matter) are also mobile-friendly. Given that the average American spends more than five hours per day on their smartphone, it’s likely that many potential applicants will access your communications and materials from mobile devices, and their user experience should be just as good as if they viewed your messages on a computer.

Winner Recognition

Beyond communicating decisions, your awards platform should help you execute the most exciting aspect of your program: honoring winners! A solution that allows you to create online galleries showcasing winners’ projects or other achievements is especially useful, since you can transfer essential details directly from your saved submissions into your gallery.

If your solution includes a more comprehensive website builder, you might use that feature to announce other recognition methods, such as sharing details about award events or linking to social media posts you’ve made about individual winners. Just remember to always get recipients’ consent before sharing their names or photos online in any format.

Reporting & Analytics

Real-time data collection, visualization, and interpretation are essential for understanding what your awards program is doing well and how you can improve going forward. Your software should be able to track information like:

• Number of total submissions and submissions by award opportunity.
• Conversion rates from different marketing channels and messages.
• Submission form abandonment rates (i.e., how many individuals started an application but didn’t finish).
• Historic scoring trends, winners, and common reasons for application rejection.
• Incoming and outgoing revenue if your program charges entry fees or gives out awards with a monetary component.

Dashboard creation and report downloading are useful for making sense of this information and demonstrating program success. This area is also where security is especially important—some of the data you store in your awards software may be sensitive, so measures like limited user permissions, two-factor authentication, and encryption are essential to protect these details.

Integrations

Integrations ensure your awards platform works harmoniously with your association or higher ed institution’s existing tech stack by allowing data to transfer seamlessly between solutions. Look for integration capabilities with the following solution types:

• Association management software (AMS) or constituent relationship management (CRM) system, whichever your organization uses as its primary database.
• Payment gateway or processor for easier transaction tracking within your program.
• Directory if your organization uses a centralized authentication platform.
• Member engagement platform or app to make program participation easier and unify membership data.

It’ll be easier to set up these connections if your awards software has a dedicated integrations hub, which allows for additional control and usually doesn’t require coding knowledge.

The Best Awards Management Platforms

Now that you know what goes into a high-quality awards management system, you’re probably starting to consider your options. Let’s look more closely at a few of the top solutions on the market today.

OpenWater: Our Favorite Awards Management Software

OpenWater is a comprehensive application and review management system designed for associations, higher education institutions, and foundations to manage awards, abstracts, grants, scholarships, and fellowships. More than 750 organizations trust OpenWater to streamline every aspect of these processes and help them navigate their unique needs.

OpenWater has all of the features listed above and more to support your specific workflows. Highlights include:

• Website and online gallery builders to showcase everything your program has to offer and your winners’ achievements.
• Consistent, custom branding so applicants perceive all of your materials as professional, trustworthy, and memorable.
• Automated workflows and opt-in AI-powered review support for increased efficiency.
• Full administrative visibility into review processes, data analytics, user permissions, and other essential management characteristics.
• Over 65 integrations with popular association and higher ed software, including iMIS, Salesforce, and Higher Logic.

To learn more about how real organizations like yours have leveraged OpenWater to improve their awards management processes, check out our case studies!

Other Top Awards Management Solutions

In addition to OpenWater, some other platforms you may investigate during your awards software purchasing process include:

• Award Force: A highly flexible platform with intuitive applications and a unique scoring audit matrix.
• Evalato: A solution that maximizes mobile-friendliness and provides multiple voting system options.
• Submittable: A system that’s especially useful for managing corporate awards programs with its CSR tie-ins.
• Reviewr: An applicant engagement-focused platform that creates individual profiles for each program participant in its system.
• SurveyMonkey Apply (formerly FluidReview): An efficiency-driven solution featuring drag-and-drop reporting and application pre-screening capabilities.
• Judgify: A platform focused on integrated awards marketing, with extensive website analytics and social sharing capabilities.

Browse various providers’ websites, read reviews on third-party sites like G2 and Capterra, and ask for recommendations from other organizations in your network as you conduct research on these systems. Once you narrow your list down to your top three to five solutions, schedule demos of each one so a platform expert can show you how it works firsthand and answer your questions before you make your final decision.

Wrapping Up: Additional Resources on Awards Software

For many associations and higher ed institutions, awards management software delivers quick returns—not only in time saved, but also in reduced errors, enhanced applicant and judge experiences, and data-driven program improvements. Use the feature explanations and tips above to start your search, and make sure to add OpenWater to your list of platforms to investigate for all of your application and review processes.

For more information on awards software, check out these resources:

• Abstract Management Software: 10 Conference Planning Picks. Many top abstract management solutions also work for awards and vice versa—explore more options here!
• The Ultimate Guide to Streamlined Conference Management. Discover how awards management fits into the conference planning process and how software can help.
• All-in-One Awards Management Software to Grow Your Program. Dive deeper into the key features and advantages of OpenWater’s awards management system.