Highlights
Non-Monetary Awards — award and publish scholarships that aren't dollars (equipment, tuition waivers, housing, services), end to end.
Global Search — a persistent search bar in the admin top bar finds Students, Scholarships, and Donors from any page.
Notifications — a notification bell tells admins what needs their attention: assigned tasks, pending approvals, new submissions, overdue work, and company announcements.
Webhooks — institutions and partners can subscribe to AwardSpring events and receive signed, logged, replayable deliveries, managed under Settings → Spring API.
Scholarship Qualifications, modernized — the Qualifications tab moves to the modern app, and the Qualification Group limit rises from 4 to 10.
Global Search
Search from anywhere in the admin app. A search pill sits in the top bar on every page; typing three or more characters returns results grouped by category — Students, Scholarships, and Donors — in a dropdown you can navigate with the keyboard.
Results are categorized, with your search term highlighted in each match.
An empty search box shows your recent searches.
Scholarship results are limited to the last three award cycles, so current work surfaces first.
Department admins see only records within their department's scope.
The Users category appears only for admins with permission to see it.
Notifications
A notification bell with an unread-count badge now lives in the admin top bar. It separates day-to-day workflow alerts from company-wide announcements, so nothing gets buried.
Workflow notifications
A task is assigned or reassigned to you.
An item is waiting on your approval.
New submissions or activity arrive for you to review.
A Task Board task is due or overdue (scheduled daily scan).
Webhooks (Spring API)
Webhooks let your systems react to what happens in AwardSpring in real time, without polling. Manage them under Settings → Spring API → Webhooks.
Register endpoints and subscribe each one to the events you care about.
Signed delivery so your receiver can verify every payload came from AwardSpring.
Send a test event from the dashboard to confirm an endpoint works before you rely on it.
Per-endpoint delivery log with full history and one-click replay of any delivery.
Rotate your signing secret either immediately or with a 24-hour grace window, so you can roll keys without dropping deliveries.
Dead-letter alerts: if an endpoint starts failing repeatedly, AwardSpring emails you.
A dedicated Webhook Management permission controls who can create and manage endpoints.
Up to 10 endpoints per institution.
Events covered include application submission and the other major lifecycle transitions across scholarships, awards, and donors.
Non-Monetary Awards
Not every award is a check. Non-monetary awards now work end to end:
Designate a scholarship as non-monetary when you create it.
Optionally record an estimated ("notional") value for reporting and recognition.
Award and publish non-monetary scholarships from the Student Distribution tab.
Students see the award correctly on their dashboard and in their award notification.
A non-monetary value variable is available in award-letter and notification templates.
The public opportunity listing displays the award appropriately.
Reports and exports handle non-monetary awards without treating them as $0.
Scholarship Qualifications, modernized
The Qualifications tab has been rebuilt in the modern AwardSpring app at full functional parity with the legacy screen — every data type you use today (single/multi-select, number, number range, GPA, Budget Calculator, and Major / Degree / Grade questions) works the same way, and rules evaluate identically for students, auto-apply, Award & Deny, matching, and reporting.
Qualification Groups now go up to 10 (previously 4). Groups remain an AwardSpring Pro feature.
Related: the Settings → Academics page has been retired. Academic questions are now managed directly in the general application, in one place instead of two.
Improvements
Scholarships
A warning now appears before you hide a scholarship that still has open follow-up tasks.
Applicants who were awarded but are no longer qualified are flagged with the red-dot indicator on the Scholarships list.
Created Date and Last Updated are available in the Scholarships column picker.
Award amounts on the Distribution tab are click-to-type — the 0.00 placeholder clears on focus.
Defunct cost-of-attendance keying questions are flagged on historical award cycles.
Task Board
Bulk actions are available for general (non-scholarship) tasks.
The task status edit control is always visible instead of appearing on hover.
Email templates
New Public Description merge tag for scholarships.
Donor merge tags are now available in Student email templates.
Donor Management
The state dropdown on donor profiles is now searchable.
Signals & Journeys and Events access moved to per-user Admin permissions.
The Integrations Hub is now limited to Super Admins and AwardSpring staff.
Performance & stability
The Funds page loads fund amounts much faster for institutions with large gift histories.
The Qualified Students static report is significantly faster.
A broad production error cleanup resolved a long list of crash-level defects across login, SSO, auto-apply, award cycles, reports, and application pages.
Fixes
Award & Deny
Numerous fixes to the applicant slide-out: Esc now closes it, the decided date appears without a refresh, applications can be popped out without opening the slide-out first, pinned questions are remembered per opportunity, lazy loading and layout/typography issues resolved.
Filtering by "$ Awarded This Cycle = $0" now returns the students it should.
The awarding screen no longer shows success when the award actually failed.
The "Apply In Bulk" menu is no longer cut off on short applicant lists.
Scholarship notes are no longer covered by the left navigation.
The "no longer qualified" tooltips on the Scholarships list and Award & Deny sub-tab are no longer clipped.
Scholarships & Qualifications
A number "is between" eligibility rule no longer qualifies the wrong applicants.
The same application question can no longer be added twice to a review group or used twice as an Award & Deny column.
Hiding a scholarship no longer closes an open follow-up and mis-marks it as Awarded; hiding is now blocked when a future renewable payment is scheduled.
Numeric and default academic qualification options display correctly.
Students who completed the general application before a scholarship existed can no longer apply after it's deactivated.
Conditional-section questions can now be promoted to top-level correctly.
Emails
Editing a scheduled email no longer loses the email ID through the hub redirect.
The Compose tab URL and the visible tab stay in sync.
The Compose recipient count now de-duplicates individuals against distribution-list members.
The Recipients popup and chat widget no longer overlap Compose content.
Directly embedded images no longer silently block an email from sending.
Merge Fields moved from the left panel into the right rail.
Fixed: email templates could not be published or saved as drafts on new institutions.
Stewardship reports
Download ZIP now bundles files into a single archive instead of downloading them one by one.
Generate Reports success screen, button layout, and header colors match the design.
The CSV mapping popup lists only the merge fields the template actually uses, and the downloadable template CSV includes the missing scholarship_fund_id column.
Reports
Smart Report downloads no longer fail for Students & Scholarships.
"Scholarships with Students" now pulls Application Status and question answers for Special Funds.
Special Funds question answers populate in Smart Report files.
The Qualified Students report no longer shows blank or incorrect Score 1 / Score 2 values.
Fixed static-report access for scholarship-management admins in History.
Donors & Funds
Gifts can be saved from the Giving Records side panel.
The Relationships accordion is visible for Super Admins, Administrators, and organization donors.
Individual donors with only a public company name now appear on public donor pages.
Scholarship Fund Amount bulk upload works again.
Deleting a linked Stripe account no longer errors on Settings → Payments.
Award Cycle payment dates can be deleted.
Permissions & access
Legacy Department Admin accounts can reach the same surfaces as department-scoped Administrators.
Changing a user's admin role now provisions their default permissions, so pages no longer silently disappear.
Department admins can search for student users outside their department's scholarships.
Task counters appear in the left nav for Super Admins and Department Admins.
Other
Fixed duplicate answers when alt-tabbing between opportunity custom fields.
Super admins can resend an external request form and move a completed request back to pending.
Follow-up tasks with a pending external request no longer stick on the student dashboard when a response isn't required.
Left-nav group headings (Settings, Automations) expand instead of navigating when clicked from a legacy page.
Retired "Scholarship CRM" / "Donor CRM" labels removed from the user details slider.
Dromo option imports no longer hang in a "Processing…" state.