# Blackbaud Award Management Reviews **Vendor:** Blackbaud **Category:** [Scholarship Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/scholarship-management) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 17 ## About Blackbaud Award Management Transform your institution's student awards program and revolutionize its donor stewardship practices with Blackbaud Award Management. Built for higher education institutions of all types and sizes, this cloud-based solution serves as the catalyst to improve student access to awards and scholarship funds, create impactful stewardship practices, and enhance cross-functional visibility throughout the scholarship process. ## Blackbaud Award Management Reviews ### 1. User-Friendly Platform, but Customer Service Is Greatly Lacking **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2026 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** User friendly for our students. Once implemented easier to maintain and work with. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** Customer Service. They have been checking into what we would think is a simple question for OVER a month now. We get no response; have to ask again; are told they are looking into it; and still don't have an answer. Customer Service is GREATLY lacking. It used to be amazing before it was bought out by Blackbaud **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our contract is coming up and we are inquiring about the different packages to see if we would still have the features we need with a lower price **Official Response from Annie Baierl:** > We're sorry to hear about your frustrations with your recent customer support case--that's definitely not the experience we want you to have. Please email your customer success manager or customersuccess@blackbaud.com with your case number so we can help look into this and consult with our Product team to quickly identify a solution. ### 2. Identify eligible scholarship recipients with ease **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leslie W. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 06, 2025 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** I appreciate that BAM can provide all the data I need to make an informed scholarship / award decision. I also like that the financial information is easily available for reporting purposes. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** I find it challenging to identify a feature in BAM that is least helpful. The main difficulties I encounter are usually due to my lack of awareness about certain features or not having received training on how to use them effectively. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** BAM is helping us easily find appropriate students to award based on the intent of our donors. The process from application to award is more streamlined and all in one place. Rather than using multiple systems to give a scholarship, BAM is providing one system to achieve the same goal. ### 3. Award Management is THE BEST! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Emily W. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 06, 2025 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** Award Management has made administering and managing hundreds of funds a painless process. I'm a daily user and it makes my life operating our university's scholarship office much easier. Blackbaud's support and knowledgebase are top tier, and learning new aspects of the system is a joyful experience. It also integrates beautifully and easily with Banner, so if that's your SIS, highly recommend! **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** I'd love to see more robust, accessible reporting tools made available in Award Management. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to manage and administer more than 1000 opportunities for hundreds of funds. ### 4. Excellence Option for Fund Management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2024 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** Blackbaud Award Mangement allows our school with an enrollment of approx 10k to hold all of our scholarships in one location. Instead of having students apply to each opportunity separately, they can complete one application to match them to nearly 400 funding opportunities. Instead of spending months reviewing application, we now have our reviews completed within a week. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** The implementation took a while, however, the Blackbaud customer service staff was hands-on and accessible throughout the process. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** We had too many applications hosted on 97 different websites and students were lost; now they have ONE general application on blackbaud to be considered for ALL opportunities. ### 5. Award Management Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rod J. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 25, 2024 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** The ability to find the right student for the right scholarship **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** I am pretty happy with the Blackbaud Award Managment system. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** Matching students to the specific criteria. ### 6. Tool was not useful for us **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gretchen C. | Assistant Director, Gift Processing and Data Management, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2023 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** My organization liked that is was an already functioning part of the Blackbaud family (we use Blackbaud CRM). And, IF we had the time/talent, we could modify the system to meet our needs. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** Our award management process is much too complex for what was offered by BB award management out of the box and we did not have the developer time to modify the system in the way we needed it to work. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** We bailed on the use of Blackbaud Award Management because the product was not complex enough to handle our scholarship process. We used outside consulting and created our own way of utilizing BBCRM for our scholarship awarding needs. ### 7. Makes the scholarship process easy!!! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2023 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** This program automates the scholarship process! You can track students' applications from the start. Once reviewed, follow-up processes are available to make sure students remain eligible. They also provide an easy way to track the check disbursement! **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** The price can be high, especially for small school districts or non-profits. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** This program allows us to send multiple emails with customized templates. It saves time by not tracking the scholarship process instead of using google sheets or paper files. Analytics are also provided which are not available on paper either! ### 8. BBAM continues to lead for scholarship management systems. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 06, 2022 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** BBAM excels at creating and supporting a solid framework for scholarship processes. Since the system matches the natural scholarship process, the natural rhythm of our practice isn't displaced and we are able to quickly onboard new users and adapt our approach. Also, the technical support team provides fantastic service and troubleshooting assistance. Whether it be a logistical issue, or I just want to bounce an idea off of them, they are always willing and capable of assisting. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** BBAM's greatest downfall is its inability to lead the conversation regarding scholarship practices and keep users up-to-date. This will most likely be a fatal flaw. Many universities are looking at creating their own scholarship management systems and we are no different. BBAM lacks the ability to adjust aesthetic functions which mainly impacts the student experience. We take great pride in creating a fully encompassing student experience, and it's a clear difference when you leave our web domain and entered BBAM. Another issue is the lack of record keeping and security - no records of emails sent to students for easy access, no way to log admin access to the system and verify use, and no ability to log what reports or scholarships are being used. The largest downfall of this system is the lack of user updates and communication. BBAM provides a space for users to request system updates and there is a decently active group of users. The issue is that there is no communication on the status of these requests and usually it takes years to be implemented. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** Due to the before-mentioned issue with communication regarding updates, I have no idea what problems BBAM is solving or how those updates will assist me. BBAM has a solid framework for facilitating our scholarship practice but lacks in the problem solving arena. ### 9. Blackbaud Award Management saves us 800+ hours of staff time each year **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Russel H. | Executive Director of Special Projects, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** Blackbaud Award Management increases our efficiency and accuracy in awarding scholarships. It brings our decentralized colleges under one system to vastly simplify the work of both Advancement and Financial Aid. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** Grid views look like an Excel spreadsheet, but they do not have anywhere close to the functionality of an Excel spreadsheet. For example, you can only sort one column at a time. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** Prior to using Award Management, we lacked consistency in terms of a scholarship's name (e.g., "Smith Scholarship" vs "Dr. Smith Scholarship" vs "Dr. Charles Smith Scholarship") and fund number (some years an award was disbursed from a college's general scholarship fund and in other years it was disbursed from a discretionary fund). Now with Award Management, we have consistency, which makes everything easier to track and steward our donors. ### 10. Our University uses Blackbaud Award Management to award scholarships **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ashley M. | Senior Business Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2020 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** This system allows us to keep all scholarship data in a single place. Previously, we were keeping our data internally in an excel file, which is always open to human error. With this system, we can run reports, look at data in real time, and keep solid details about what we've done. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** This system is extremely difficult to learn and use. While it does a lot, it is difficult to understand all of its parts and to find the best way to utilize it for your program. Our program is very unique, and we've had a difficult time manipulating it for our uses. While it does some great things, we cannot fully utilize all of them because the way the system locks you into one way of use. **Recommendations to others considering Blackbaud Award Management:** This system is great to use, and can provide a great platform for managing awards. However, it is incredibly hard to learn and continue to use on an annual basis. I would strongly encourage you to look at the whole system and make sure it does everything you want it to, and that you have the staff to manage it. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were previously accused of not sharing our scholarship data in a public place for all students to see. This system allows donors and students to search for any scholarship at our university. It also allows us to back up our data so it is not on a personal computer anywhere, where it has the opportunity to be lost. ### 11. Review of Blackbaud scholarship management software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 30, 2021 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** After reviewing different tutorials on the use of the software I can say this is great software with different features that make control and handling of scholarship as well as funders' data easy and stress-free. All the information of all awardees can be managed with detail in the same software system. The layout of the software is excellent with the ability to easily monitor different accounts for different funders of specific scholarships. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** There is really nothing to dislike about blackbaud management system. this is a well thought out system with all management functionalities you can possibly think of. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** management of Scholarship information and data. ### 12. Academicworks Works **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aaron B. | Chief Operating Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 13, 2018 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** Streamlined, Cloud-based, great customer service and support. Academicworks has simplified the way we do business and put students in the express lane when applying for scholarships. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** The level of customization from the standpoint of functionality is superb but I could wish for the same in terms of aesthetics. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have been able to decrease staff overhead and minimize our budget while maximizing our footprint throughout the community. This is our solution for simplification and future growth. ### 13. Academicworks for Scholarship Management! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yma-Richel N. | Assistant Director Of Financial Aid, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2017 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** Academicworks, does most of the work for you when it comes to your scholarship cycle. Applicants are automatically matched to appropriate scholarships. Reviewing scholarships is also easy with the side by side view. Awarding and inputting encumbered funds is also easy to do! They have a support time that extremely helpful! **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** The way our application is set up right now it looks basic and some students get confused sometimes with the uploading documents and the file name requirement for the document. I would like to see the application to be more modern and interactive for applicants. **Recommendations to others considering Blackbaud Award Management:** A lot of the big schools with large student populations would benefit from Academicworks to use as their scholarship management/awarding system. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scholarship management/awarding. ### 14. Academicworks Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** Academicworks makes every step of scholarship review truly amazing! The support help has been friendly and very supportive in everyway possible. Our set up stage was completely successful due to the fact that their staff has taken the time to answer all of our questions, provided references, and made follow up phone calls every week to make sure we were on track. I cannot express how wonderful this product and team has been. Within one year we were from reviewing 200 scholarship applications to over 900 for one semester! Students have raved about how easy this program is to us. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** The set up of each scholarship qualifications does take a lot of time, esp. if you have more than 100 scholarships to enter. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** This program has cut down the time of reviewing and filtering scholarship applications by half! ### 15. Great software for selecting and awarding scholarship to students in the most effective manner! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2018 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** What I like best is that this software allows the user to upload the scholarship donor's background information so that a student may learn more about the person(s) who have generously donated. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** There is really nothing I dislike about this software. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** This software has eliminated the "middle man" so that students can find what scholarships they are eligible for from simply visiting the scholarship portal website. ### 16. Best Scholarship Matching Tool to use for Students! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2017 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** It matches students to scholarships as opposed to endlessly browsing. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** Certain features made it difficult to sort through the all the imported data. **Recommendations to others considering Blackbaud Award Management:** It is worth a try and once you try it you won't find anything like it. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** Working with a large number of high school students it was challenging at times to find and help them secure scholarships. Academicworks makes the entire process easier from finding scholarships to accepting awards. ### 17. Very Helpful **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Blackbaud Award Management?** The ability for our office to mold academicworks into what we need it to accomplish. The ease students have in navigating the system. **What do you dislike about Blackbaud Award Management?** Doesn't seem to be a way to import student numbers so we are left having to use first name last name. **Recommendations to others considering Blackbaud Award Management:** Very useful but make sure you learn all of the capabilities of the program. For example it can be highly modified to be extremely useful when determining complex variables. **What problems is Blackbaud Award Management solving and how is that benefiting you?** This website allows us to help match students with potential aid. ## Blackbaud Award Management Discussions - [What is Blackbaud Award Management used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-blackbaud-award-management-used-for) - [View Blackbaud Award Management pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/blackbaud-award-management/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-01+00%3A02%3A36+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=0d08f7d7-5702-4ec9-842e-82edbbdf19b1&secure%5Btoken%5D=c88aac3b150c5700584dc9950413527fe99de20fda6281937086b7a30df5e198&format=llm_user) ## Blackbaud Award Management Features **Application Collection** - Custom Application Forms - Attachments - Scholarship Matching - Application Tracking **Application Review** - Automated Review Assignments - Scoring Tools - Review Portal - Review Comments - Messaging **Administration and Integrations** - Administrative Dashboard - Reports - Integrations ## Top Blackbaud Award Management Alternatives - [AwardSpring](https://www.g2.com/products/awardspring/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (110 reviews) - [Submittable](https://www.g2.com/products/submittable/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (167 reviews) - [OpenWater Application and Review Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/openwater-application-and-review-cloud/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (145 reviews)