Scholarship Management Guide
Everything you need to run a clear, fair, and compliant scholarship program: ready-to-use documents, a short course, and AI that drafts the writing for you.
About this app
Improve a document you already have: As well as generating documents, you can upload one you already wrote and have AI improve it. Open the AI Automations page and use the "Improve an existing document with AI" card: pick a file (Word, text, or a text-based PDF), and AI returns a cleaner version plus a summary of what changed, with your original kept.
Scholarship Management helps a nonprofit award scholarships the right way. It gives you the core documents (the policy, application, rubric, committee charter, letters, and disbursement procedure), a short course on running the program, and AI automations that draft your documents and communications from a few details. Everything you create exports to Word on your own letterhead.
The app covers the whole program end to end: design and document it, track applicants through your pipeline, score them against a rubric with conflict-of-interest handling, and record awards and disbursements, with AI on hand to draft the writing. Everything is saved on your device.
Getting started
- Sign in. Use your All In One Nonprofit account. One sign-in works across every app.
- Set up your organization. Your organization name, branding (letterhead, footer, and signature), language, and connections are all set once on the My Organization page and carry across every app. These flow into every document and Word export automatically.
- Generate your documents. Open Templates, pick a document, fill in a few fields, and click Generate. Edit the result, then Copy, export to Word, Print, or save as Text.
- Learn the process. The Course Modules walk through designing the program, writing objective criteria, running selection, and staying compliant.
- Let AI help. On AI Automations, AI drafts your program plan, criteria, letters, donor updates, and announcements from a few details.
The templates
Each template asks for a few details and produces a complete document. Bracketed items like [this] are placeholders for you to complete.
- Scholarship Program Policy. The governing document: purpose, award structure, eligibility, selection criteria, the selection process, disbursement, and recordkeeping. Includes a public-charity vs private-foundation switch that adjusts the compliance language.
- Scholarship Application Form. A clean application with the standard fields, your essay prompt, required attachments, and an applicant certification.
- Scoring Rubric. A point-based rubric so every reviewer scores the same way, the backbone of an objective, defensible process.
- Selection Committee Charter. Who selects recipients, how they decide, quorum, and the conflict-of-interest rules.
- Award Letter. Congratulates the recipient and states the award, how it is paid, and any conditions.
- Decline Letter. A warm, respectful note for applicants who were not selected.
- Disbursement Policy. How and when funds move, what proof is required, and how each payment is documented.
Applications, scoring & awards
Beyond the documents, the app runs your program operationally. Everything is saved on your device.
Applications
On the Applications page, add each applicant and move them through a status pipeline: New, Under Review, Finalist, Awarded, Declined, or Withdrawn. The summary cards show how many sit at each stage, so you always know where things stand.
Applications that arrive through a form (September 23, 2026)
Nobody has to retype an application. Click Bring in from a form on the Applications page. If you have no application form yet, Create the ready-made grant application form (or scholarship application form, depending on how the app is set up) builds one in the Forms app, open and ready to share, and shows its public link. Put that link on your website or in your announcement.
When responses have come in, choose the form and click Bring in new responses. Each response becomes a New application with its answers already in the right fields: the organization's name, EIN, exempt status, contact, amount requested, the project and the rest. An answer that matches no field is kept in that application's Notes under its own question, so nothing an applicant wrote is lost. A form you built yourself works too; the app matches answers to fields by the wording of each question.
Each response comes in once. Running it again brings in only what is new, and deleting an application that came from a form does not bring it back. Uploaded files stay with the response in the Forms app at https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/forms/, and the application's Notes name each one. A response still waiting on payment is left out until it is paid.
Review & Scoring
On Review & Scoring, set your rubric (the criteria and their point values), then score each application against it. More than one reviewer can score the same applicant; the app averages the non-conflicted reviews into a single score. A reviewer who has a personal or family connection to an applicant checks the conflict box, and that review is excluded from the average, which keeps the process objective and documented.
Awards
On Awards, record each award and disbursement: the amount, the date, whether funds go to the school or the recipient, the proof you collected (such as enrollment verification), and the status (Offered, Accepted, Paid, or Declined). The "Record award" button on an application carries the details straight into the ledger. The summary shows totals offered and paid.
If your organization gives grants rather than scholarships (September 22, 2026)
A grantmaking foundation runs the same program in the same place. The engine here, applications arriving, several reviewers scoring them against a rubric with conflicts of interest declared and excluded, a defensible ranking, then an award, is the same work whether the money goes to a student or to an organization. What differs is the shape of the applicant and the words on the screen, so that is all that changes.
An applicant can be an organization. Each application says whether it is from a person or an organization, and you can switch it in one click on the card. An organization applicant carries a legal name, an EIN, an exempt status, the fiscal sponsor where the status says there is one, a contact person and their title, a website, the amount requested and the project period. The school and program of study fields are replaced by the project the money is for. The list under each name shows what was asked for, where the organization is and its EIN, because that is what a committee reads down the page to compare.
The setting lives on the record, not on the app, so a foundation that also runs a scholarship keeps both, and changing the app's setting later never relabels anything already saved. An application with no type recorded is treated as a person.
An award carries a payment schedule and conditions. A scholarship is usually one check to a school. A grant is a schedule with terms attached. Each installment has a due date, an amount and a status of Scheduled, Paid or Held, and the totals underneath read scheduled, marked paid and awarded. If the schedule and the award do not add up, a line says so and changes neither number, because quietly correcting one to match the other would destroy the evidence that they disagreed. It is a schedule, not a ledger. The money itself is recorded in Financial Management, which holds your books, and the screen says so.
Conditions are plain rows with a box that stamps the date you tick it: a report by a date, a match raised, a board resolution, an insurance certificate. There is no list of suggested conditions, because a foundation's terms are its own. Leaving the list empty reads as an unconditional grant, which is a real thing.
Grantee Reports is a page of its own, and it appears only for an organization making grants. It lists every report your grantees owe you across every grant, worst first, with how many days late each one is. It does not chase anybody, it does not send email, and it does not decide that a late report is a problem: two organizations with the same overdue report are rarely in the same situation, and that judgment is yours.
How it decides which way to set itself up. Your organization profile decides. If it says you are a grantmaking foundation, the app starts in grant language. Settings has a card that names which of the two is in force and why, and lets you change it without waiting on us.
Predictions
The Predictions page sits in the left sidebar directly under the Dashboard (next to AI Automations). It ranks your applicants by the average of their non-conflicted rubric scores and recommends a shortlist for your committee to confirm. It is a way to see, at a glance, who is rising to the top once the scoring is in.
Every score is computed only from your own data, right in your browser. There is no black-box machine learning. The ranking is fully transparent: each applicant's place is driven by the rubric scores your reviewers entered, with any review a reviewer flagged as a conflict of interest left out of the average, exactly as on the Review & Scoring page. Because the page shows the factors behind every ranking, you can always see why an applicant sits where they do.
Scholarship Shortlist Brief (AI)
The Predictions page also has one AI button that turns the ranked, scored data into a short, prescriptive Scholarship Shortlist Brief: a plain-language summary of the recommended shortlist and what the committee should review before confirming. The brief carries the same reminder that selection is a human committee decision on objective, nondiscriminatory criteria, never an automated award. See the AI Automations guide for details.
Your scholarship workflow
A scholarship program follows a lifecycle. Here is where each template and automation fits.
| Stage | Templates | AI automations |
|---|---|---|
| Design the program | Scholarship Program Policy | Scholarship Program Plan |
| Set objective criteria | Scoring Rubric | Eligibility & Criteria Builder |
| Open and promote it | Application Form | Announcement & Applicant FAQ |
| Review and select | Selection Committee Charter, Scoring Rubric | (score on the rubric) |
| Award and notify | Award Letter, Decline Letter | Award Letter, Decline Letter |
| Disburse funds | Disbursement Policy | (follow your policy) |
| Steward your funders | (thank donors) | Scholarship Donor Update |
Compliance essentials
A scholarship program holds up when two habits are built in: objective criteria and good records.
Objective, nondiscriminatory criteria
Award on factors you can point to and score, such as academic record, service, financial need, or essay quality. Never select on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or other protected characteristics. The rubric and the AI Criteria Builder are designed around this.
Document every decision
Keep applications, score sheets, conflict-of-interest recusals, award decisions, and disbursement records together for each cycle. These records are the evidence that your process was objective and followed.
Public charity vs private foundation
Most nonprofits are public charities, which can run scholarship programs with flexibility as long as awards use objective criteria and decisions are documented. Private foundations are different: they generally must obtain advance IRS approval of their grant-making procedures before awarding individual grants, then follow the approved procedures. Know which you are, and if you are a private foundation, confirm your approval is in place.
Recipient taxes
Scholarship payments can have tax consequences for recipients depending on how the funds are used. The app does not provide tax advice; encourage recipients to consult their own advisor, and confirm any reporting obligations with yours.
Document branding
Your organization name, branding (letterhead, footer, and signature), language, and connections are all set once on the My Organization page and carry across every app. You can even customize your organization's language there, renaming platform terms like donation or donor to the words your organization uses. These appear automatically at the top, bottom, and closing of the documents you generate and on your Word exports, so everything goes out looking like it came from your organization. Your settings also include a Stats & Snippets panel for saving reusable text you use often (mission statement, boilerplate, a standard call to action) that you can copy into any document.
In-app course
Open Course Modules inside the app for a short course: Designing Your Program, Objective Criteria, The Selection Process, and Awarding & Compliance. Each module is a few quick lessons and a check. It is the fastest way to get confident before you launch.
Automations
The app includes AI automations that draft your scholarship documents and communications from a few details. You review and edit everything before it is used.
For a full walkthrough of each automation, what to enter and how to use the output, see the AI Automations guide.
Pricing
Scholarship Management is included in your All In One Nonprofit subscription. Every app and every AI automation is included. See the pricing page for current details.
Contact
Questions or feedback? Email [email protected]. We read every message.
Looking for help beyond the platform? See our Helpful Resources page for vetted external resources on legal and tax filing, funder research, governance training, insurance, technology discounts, and more.