With more than 74,000 students attending Wake Tech Community College each year, the Wake Tech Foundation plays a vital role in advancing equitable access to education, with scholarships and financial aid central to that mission. As the student population and donor relationships grew, managing scholarships at scale required technology that could support both operational complexity and financial accountability. By connecting Award Management with Raiser’s Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT, the Foundation gained the clarity and control needed to perfect awarding while maintaining real‑time visibility into fund balances and pledges.

“I’m one person who oversees hundreds of awards and our three Blackbaud products help me do this effectively and efficiently,” said Maya Rosman, director of foundation database operations. “I could not manage that process single-handedly without Award Management working in the background to match students to awards based on qualifications, without access to Financial Edge NXT so that I’m confident that we’re awarding the correct amount per award, and without Raiser’s Edge NXT to steward our scholarship donors. The three systems allow me to focus on the task – getting scholarships to students.”

That automation has significantly reduced day‑to‑day troubleshooting. After moving Award Management to single sign‑on, reviewer login issues dropped by an estimated 75 percent—freeing up valuable time for higher‑priority work. “Because we used Blackbaud’s single sign-on, I didn’t have to troubleshoot login issues at all this past year,” Rosman said.

Automating Scholarship Workflows

With their growing applicant pool and small team, the Foundation relies on Award Management to automate application intake, eligibility matching, and multi‑reviewer evaluations—making it possible to award scholarships at scale without bottlenecks or subjectivity. During peak awarding cycles, the foundation scaled from about 700 applications to more than 1,900, without increasing manual processing or complexity.

The software imports data directly from Wake Tech’s student information system, and its built‑in tools for managing applications and reviewer access save countless hours of administrative work. “With over 1,900 applications submitted during peak awarding periods, I couldn’t imagine manually matching scholarships to individual students,” shared Rosman.

On the back end, the foundation uses Blackbaud partner ImportOmatic to bring scholarship recipient data from Award Management into Raiser’s Edge NXT, creating a constituent record for each student to support long-term tracking and stewardship. Custom fields on each contact highlight the assigned gift officer and how the donor prefers to stay connected. Gift officers generate stewardship reports directly from Raiser’s Edge NXT lists and queries without ever needing to navigate Award Management, which also prevents the need for manual data extractions or excel data mergers.

The connection between systems surfaces awarding history and patterns over time because every scholarship recipient is pulled into Raiser’s Edge NXT as their own constituent record, which makes it easy to see when students receive two or even three awards throughout their academic journey. “Being able to see a scholarship’s full history over the years allows us to show donors the impact of their award,” said Rosman. “This detailed reporting helps strengthen relationships with donors and ensures that funds are used according to their intent.” That connected view also feeds the foundation’s annual impact report, surfacing demographics such as the percentage of recipients who are first-generation college students, data points that help donors see exactly whom their gifts have reached.

Wake Tech Foundation has seen a significant rise in scholarship applications, a testament to both system efficiency and the team’s outreach efforts. Rosman shared how engaging faculty and staff to promote scholarships has contributed to this success. “We’ve had record numbers of applicants in recent years. Faculty and staff are instrumental in directing students to apply,” she explained.

Outreach efforts, such as in-class presentations, are further complemented by the data insights available through Blackbaud systems. By identifying scholarships with fewer applications, Rosman and her team gain visibility into the requirements and preferences on the award that are restricting students from eligibility and can target outreach to specific student populations, ensuring that funds are utilized effectively and equitably.

Strengthening Stewardship and Donor Strategy with Data

The connected data flowing across Award Management, Raiser’s Edge NXT, and Financial Edge NXT doesn’t just support day-to-day operations. It shapes how the foundation guides donor conversations. Each year, Rosman produces a saturation analysis: a one-pager comparing student enrollment in each major against the number of scholarships available for that major. Gift officers and board members use this to steer donors toward underfunded programs or, when a donor is set on a saturated field like automotive technology, to recommend increasing the award amount so their scholarship is awarded first in the queue.

Financial Edge NXT gives Rosman independent access to fund & project balances, so she can confirm how much is available to award without having to wait on someone else. She annotates records to distinguish pledged funds from cash received, essential context when a multi-year pledge might show a certain balance that isn’t yet in hand. The CFO, meanwhile, can cross-reference gift details directly in Raiser’s Edge NXT, creating a collaborative loop where development and finance verify information in each other’s systems without bottlenecks or miscommunication.

These combined insights have also changed how the foundation structures new scholarship asks. When a gift officer submits a proposed scholarship with narrow qualifications, Rosman reviews it against historical match data and asks upfront what the donor is willing to be flexible on, rather than discovering the gap mid-cycle. “As a result of our approach combined with Blackbaud technology, we haven’t needed to make an out-of-system award in three years,” Rosman said.

Wake Tech Foundation scholarships are also closely tied to the workforce needs of the region, helping students pursue high‑demand careers in skilled trades, healthcare, IT, and other fields that fuel the local economy. Many of the Foundation’s funds are created by employers or industry partners who want to build a strong talent pipeline, and the scholarship program ensures that students have the financial support to complete credentials that lead directly to jobs in the community.

“So many of our scholarships are designed with the local workforce in mind,” said Rosman. “With the help of Blackbaud’s tools, we can feel confident that we can identify scholarship applicants working toward a career with our industry partners. This means fewer scholarships that cannot be matched to a student, and this strengthens our relationships with our donors and reinforces why their investment matters.”