What's New in AwardSpring
Divide work across your team, get a clearer view of your cycle, and report on more of your data. This release brings real ownership and visibility to Task Board, a refreshed admin dashboard you can opt into, four new ways to use Smart Reports, and a clearer disbursement picture for renewable scholarships.
#1: Task Board: Owners, Visibility, and My Tasks
Task Board now works for the whole team, not just one admin at a time. We've added two new task properties, Owner and Visibility, and a new My Tasks tab that lands you on your own work first.
Decide who owns each task
Open any task in the Create or Edit modal. Owner is a dropdown grouped under Admins and Departments.
Admins > assign to a specific admin or to All Admins.
Departments > assign to a Department, and every admin in that Department becomes a co-owner.
The creator and every owner always see the task they own. We won't let you assign someone a task they can't see.
Decide who can see each task
Visibility is its own field, separate from Owner. A task creator and every owner always retain visibility, even if Visibility is set to a narrower group.
Land on your own work in My Tasks
A new My Tasks tab is the default leftmost view of Task Board. It shows every task where you are the Owner, whether assigned to you directly, to a Department you belong to, or to All Admins.
Narrow your view with the filter panel
The filter panel now includes:
Owner > multi-select with search across admins and departments.
Visibility > multi-select with search.
Priority > multi-select for Low, Medium, or High.
Scholarship Tasks tab now opens to what's actionable
The Scholarship Tasks tab now defaults to status In Progress + Pending, sorted In Progress first. Tasks with no due date appear at the end of their status group. You can override the default any time; your override stays for the session.
Completion date on the follow-up queue
The follow-up queue now shows the completion date for items in Take Action status, so you can tell recent completions from older ones at a glance.
#2: Modern Admin Dashboard (Opt-In)
Try a refreshed admin dashboard, on your schedule. The new dashboard gives you a year-over-year and cycle-over-cycle picture of your scholarship management work, and previews the three-pillar future of AwardSpring with a Scholarships / Donors / Funds toggle in the header.
How to opt in
On your current admin dashboard, you'll see a new switch labeled Try the new dashboard in the page header. Flip it on. Your preference is saved for you, so the next time you sign in (on any device), you'll land on the modern dashboard automatically. To switch back at any time, flip the Switch back to the old dashboard switch on the modern dashboard's header.
What you'll see (Scholarship Management view)
Four top stat cards with year-over-year and cycle-over-cycle context: Applicants Completed, Applicants in Progress, Awards Distributed, Dollars Distributed.
Review Progress and Funds Distributed progress cards.
Application Timeline chart with a "Through:" selector (Today or Cycle End) and deadline reference lines.
Recent Activity card with a time-window filter.
To-do List card pulling from your Task Board.
The three-pillar toggle
The header carries a toggle for Scholarships / Donors / Funds that previews where the dashboard is headed. Today, only the Scholarships view is live. Donor Management and Fund Management toggle states show a "Coming soon" panel; those views land in future releases.
Tips for best results
The two dashboards coexist intentionally. Take your time; switch back any time without losing your work.
The new stat cards lead with people (Applicants Completed, Applicants in Progress) rather than raw application counts. That matches how most admins think about pipeline progress.
The modern dashboard is available to admins with platform-wide access in this release.
#3: Smart Reports Expansion
Four new ways to get more out of Smart Reports. We've added a brand-new report, brought your Past Downloads into Smart Reports, and made every donor data enrichment field reportable.
Scholarship Details: a brand-new report
Scholarship Details is now the first report in your Smart Reports list, with a configurable column picker covering scholarship configurations, funding, application requirements, and custom fields.
Required filter: Award Cycle (defaults to the current cycle).
Additional filters: Department, Status, and others.
Past Downloads Library: now in Smart Reports
Downloads is now a tab in Smart Reports, replacing the old Past Downloads table in Stock Reports. The new tab is titled Past Downloads Library and lists every report you've generated, with Status, Date Created, and a download action. The old location stays in place with a migration notice, so existing bookmarks and email links still find their way over.
Donor data enrichment: now reportable end-to-end
Every donor data enrichment datapoint is now selectable as a column and as a filter in both the Donor Details and Giving History Smart Reports.
Column labels match the canonical enrichment mapping you're used to.
Filter UI matches each datapoint's data type (text, numeric, date, and so on).
Donor Profile Notes: now in your reports
The Donor Profile Notes field is now a selectable column in the Donor Details and Giving Records Smart Reports. Empty notes render as empty cells; full text is preserved in CSV and other exports.
#4: Distribution Tab: Disbursement Status for Renewable Scholarships
Manage multi-term renewable disbursements with a clearer picture of what's done and what's coming. Every scholarship's Distribution tab gets a refreshed financial mini-dashboard, and renewable scholarships with two or more distributions gain a new Disbursement Status view.
A clearer financial picture on every Distribution tab
The mini-dashboard now shows Distributed, Available, and Total values for the scholarship. Distributed is shown as a percentage of Total alongside the numeric value. If Total Funds isn't set, the dashboard displays N/A rather than zero or an error.
Disbursement Status matrix (multi-distribution scholarships)
Scholarships with two or more distributions now show a Disbursement Status entry point. Clicking it opens a modal with two views:
Read view > the full applicants and disbursement terms grid, showing each cell's status.
Edit view > adjust tentative future disbursements without touching past, eligibility-verified ones.
Past disbursements with eligibility verification are intentionally read-only in the matrix. This protects financial integrity and lets you move confidently on future terms.
What to expect next
This is the first version of the Disbursement Status matrix. We plan to deepen the experience in future releases as we hear from teams managing real renewable programs.
Smaller improvements
General Application submission filter on the Users page: Filter the Users grid to show only students whose General Application is Submitted, In Progress, or Not Started.
Scholarship count column on the Users grid: Add a column showing how many scholarships each student has applied to. A General App Submission Date column is also available via column config.
Reviewers tab auto-populates: The Reviewers tab on the Users page now shows every user with a reviewer role, regardless of how they were assigned to it. Users who are primarily Admins or Donors and get added to a Review Group inherit the role as secondary and appear here.
Role tabs replace the Users sub-nav: The Users sub-nav fan-out (Students / Admins / Reviewers) collapses into a single Users entry, with role scope now in tabs on the page itself.
Donor Stages: sort and drag-to-reorder: Reorder your custom Donor Stages list by dragging, or sort it via the column header.
Award & Deny: "contains" text filter on open-ended responses: Narrow open-ended responses with a new contains-style text filter on the Award & Deny page.
Award & Deny: reviewers-scored count restored on hover: Hover over the score column to see how many reviewers have scored each applicant.
Student ID column on the Applied Not Awarded report: Cross-reference student IDs in the stock report without a separate lookup.
Notable fixes
Fixed: right-click paste now works in rich text editors (Description, Reviewer Instructions, AI Prompts, and other places that use the rich text editor).
Fixed: bulk-copying scholarships between cycles no longer times out for larger customers.
Fixed: Word document attachments now load faster for reviewers.
Fixed: scores no longer appear on scholarships a student doesn't qualify for, even when the scholarships share a Review Group.
Fixed: you can now record In-Kind gifts with a $0.00 amount.
Fixed: you can now delete a Special Funds Application scholarship.
Fixed: Donor Activity page now loads faster.
Fixed: Review Group renames now save reliably.
Fixed: post-award follow-up status no longer reverts from Accepted back to Pending.
Fixed: questions previously used for qualification can now be reused even if one of their options was deleted in a past cycle.
Fixed: saved Smart Report filters now display correctly under Manage Filters.