The last year has been a wild ride for us at ScholarshipApp. Not only has the coronavirus pandemic changed the world and the business landscape, but we have also made a lot of progress within the app that makes it a completely different beast compared to September 2019.
To help out students in these trying times as well as help businesses launch scholarships with more ease, we launched a number of features in these 12 months. Here are the most important ones that you will appreciate.
Multiple roles
It takes more than one person to launch a scholarship. Instead of leading the entire operation by yourself, you can add more roles to your organization, each with its own access level.
We added two roles to the ScholarshipApp dashboard. The owner has access to all features and options and they have no limitations on what they can do. The reviewer can only see and review applications and they cannot make any other actions within the dashboard.
With these two roles, managing and reviewing scholarships becomes much easier.
Multiple reviewers
With the added reviewer role, we also opened up the option of having more than one reviewer and they can all review the same application.
Within your ScholarshipApp dashboard, you can now set up criteria based on which the applications will be reviewed, as well as assign specific reviewers to a specific scholarship. Moreover, reviewers must now give a score for each criterion, ranging from 0 to 5. Once all the reviewers are done with an application, it will get a total score which is the sum of all the points from all the reviewers.
Tax-exempt scholarships
As we’ve written fairly recently, ScholarshipApp now lets you make your scholarship 100% tax-deductible through our Fund Manager. Once you choose your payment type, your award will be handled by a 501(c)(3) organization that powers our Fund Manager. Finally, you will be able to use our 501(c)(3) Public Charity Status and have your scholarship 100% tax-deductible.
Potential audience
Thanks to our algorithm, we can now show you how big your audience is when you set up your scholarship. In other words, we’ll use your criteria to determine how many people will find your scholarship and apply for it. Of course, this is an estimate only, but it helps with seeing the potential reach of your scholarship.
New legal template
The legal side of scholarships is a major concern for many businesses and business owners. Our improved legal template helps you stay protected and up to date with the latest laws, such as the CCPA.
CCPA compliance
Speaking of which, the California Consumer Privacy Act may be a major concern for you, which is why we made sure that our scholarships are compliant fully.
Applicants now have the right to be forgotten (and their application data deleted). Moreover, they are guaranteed that their personal information will not be sold and they have the right to know which details you have about them. In other words, they can download all of their data along with the source of entry.
COMING SOON
These features are not finished yet but they are in the works and you should be able to see them in action very soon.
Advanced winner details page – November 2020
When a scholarship winner is chosen, you can require different types of data, depending on where the award is going:
– To the student (so you can collect bank account or PayPal details)
– To the school (so you can collect details from the admission office)
When you choose the award recipient, you will also be able to choose the details you need from the winner, such as the video testimonials, particular contact details, etc.
Disabling automatic winner selection – October 2020
Up until recently, if a scholarship did not have any requirements (such as essays), our system would automatically pick a winner. Since all applicants have gone through the system and supplied data that makes them eligible, ScholarshipApp automatically chooses someone as a winner so that everyone has an equal chance of winning.
You can now disable this feature so that you can manually select the scholarship winner.
Multiple award amounts
You will be able to choose different award amounts for different scholarship winners. For example, the first winner can get $1,000, the second winner can get $500, and so on.
