With the rising costs of attending a four-year college or university, students are looking to gift aid to make their education more affordable. As the applications for this aid come rolling in, managing the scholarship process can be difficult. Scholarship management professionals want to be able to help everyone, but they have to abide by the criteria set aside for the funds. This means all student applications have to go through a relatively rigorous review process. As the applications come in, review boards have to sort through them to find the best match. This can be a daunting task. Various process improvements can help you better meet the needs of the student population.

Automate scholarship management review process

According to Scholarship Experts, it’s always a good idea to allow students to apply online since they spend so much of their time on the computer. Doing so also helps organizations automate the application process more effectively. CommunityForce’s scholarship management platform makes it easier for boards to review candidates based on selection criteria, and it provides an intelligent form creator that can make application design more effective. Rather than forcing an applicant to go through a long series of irrelevant questions, a well-designed form can provide a relevant set of questions based on answers previously given. So, if a set of questions relies on a student being the child of a war veteran, only certain applicants will need to answer these questions.

If the goal is to gain as many applicants as possible, it makes sense to find ways to make the process easier for students. However, if you’re going to increase the volume of applications, you also need an effective way to administrate this process. CommunityForce can help organizations do both. While most colleges and universities have likely taken steps to automate scholarship review and created online application forms, technology is growing increasingly sophisticated, which means these organizations may have even more efficient options at their disposal.

Create new scholarships

Finally, scholarship management platforms also make it far easier to handle multiple scholarships, and students can always use more opportunities to get extra funding. Only about 5.5 percent of students receive scholarships from the private sector, and the average award amount is just $2,500, FinAid said. With an automated platform, it’s easy to set up a new scholarship fund, create an application form and get started.

In this day and age, students need all the financial assistance they can get. Why not invest in solutions that help you help them?