What AcademicWorks does

AcademicWorks, founded in 2010 and headquartered in Austin, is a cloud-based administrative software provider focused on scholarship management for higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations. The company was acquired by Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLKB) and the product now operates as Blackbaud Award Management within Blackbaud's broader social-good software portfolio. The platform manages the full scholarship lifecycle, encompassing application intake, automated student-to-scholarship matching using qualification-based recommendation logic, committee review workflows, award disbursement tracking, and donor stewardship communications including editable digital thank-you letters and multi-format donor reports.

Under the hood, the platform is a cloud-based SaaS application layered on top of a nightly data ingestion pipeline that pulls student demographic and academic data from the institution's Student Information System. Core platform components include role-based permission controls, automated renewable award processing, Single Sign-On, and an integration connector (via partner Red Arc) that syncs award activity into Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT to give development officers a 360-degree constituent view. The product is sold through Blackbaud's enterprise field-sales motion with discovery calls, customized demonstrations, guided implementation, and subscription-based pricing that is not publicly disclosed.

The go-to-market targets primarily higher-education institutions — colleges, universities, and community colleges — with documented outcomes including the Nova Scotia Community College deployment reaching 95% fund utilization and the broader user base administering more than $3 billion in scholarship funds annually. Geographic reach spans the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, with peer community forums, events, and the Blackbaud Marketplace supporting customer engagement and ecosystem expansion.

Name

AcademicWorks

Legal name

Blackbaud, Inc.

Website

https://academicworks.com

Company type

Public

Founded year

1989

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

AcademicWorks, now operating as Blackbaud Award Management, provides cloud-based scholarship management software for higher education institutions, automating student-to-scholarship matching, application review, award disbursement, and donor stewardship workflows on a subscription SaaS basis.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Higher Education Software

NAICS

Educational Support Services (611710), Grantmaking and Giving Services (8132)

SIC

Services-Educational Services (8200)

akta.pro primary industry

Scholarships, Grants & Donor-Funded Awards Management (EDALAJAB)

akta.pro secondary industry

Scholarship & Fellowship Foundations and Trusts (EDADAHAC)

Keywords

• Scholarship management software
• Higher education technology
• Award lifecycle management
• Donor stewardship platform
• Student matching software

Headquarters

HQ city

Austin

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. SaaS Subscription - Scholarship Management Platform: Subscription-based access to Blackbaud Award Management platform providing scholarship management, donor stewardship, and student matching capabilities for higher education institutions.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

AcademicWorks provides a cloud-based scholarship management SaaS platform for higher education institutions, marketed as Blackbaud Award Management. The platform handles the full award lifecycle, including automated student-to-scholarship qualification matching, committee review workflows, award disbursement tracking, and donor stewardship capabilities such as editable digital thank-you letters and multi-format donor reports. It integrates natively with student information systems and Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT for a 360-degree view of constituent data.

Product overview

Blackbaud offers a comprehensive suite of products for the social good sector. Blackbaud Award Management™ is a dedicated scholarship management platform for higher education institutions. When connected with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® (the flagship CRM for fundraising and donor management), institutions gain a unified view of constituent data. The portfolio includes additional products for financial management (Financial Edge NXT®), grant management (Grantmaking), K-12 school management (Student Information System, Enrollment Management, Billing Management, Learning Management System), arts and cultural ticketing (Altru), CSR and employee giving (YourCause), and prospect research (ResearchPoint).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Blackbaud Award Management: Scholarship management software for higher education institutions, enabling streamlined award management, expanded student access to scholarships, and improved donor stewardship.
• Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT
• Development Agent
• ResearchPoint
• Luminate Online
• Financial Edge NXT
• Altru
• YourCause from Blackbaud
• Grantmaking
• Blackbaud AI

Products and services

• Blackbaud Award Management Cloud-based scholarship management SaaS platform for colleges and universities that automates student-to-scholarship qualification matching, committee review workflows, award disbursement tracking, and donor stewardship. Features include automatic matching, nightly student information system imports, single sign-on, role-based permissions, automated renewable award processing, editable digital thank-you letters, multi-format donor reports, and online donor profiles.

Quantifiable outcome

• 95% fund utilization achieved at Nova Scotia Community College
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration2 records

Feature9 records

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• ScholarshipUniverse (NuDec): ScholarshipUniverse provides a matching-driven scholarship application platform for colleges and universities, overlapping with AcademicWorks on student-scholarship matching, centralized applications, and institutional reporting.
• AwardSpring: AwardSpring is a scholarship management platform purpose-built for higher education institutions, offering application management, student matching, and committee review — directly competing with AcademicWorks/Blackbaud Award Management in the same customer segment and core workflow.
• Submittable: Submittable provides application management software for scholarships, grants, and awards across education, nonprofit, and government sectors, competing with AcademicWorks on workflow automation and review tooling.
• SurveyMonkey Apply: SurveyMonkey Apply is an application management platform used by universities and foundations to collect, review, and decide on scholarship and grant applications, providing comparable functionality to AcademicWorks.
• Foundant Technologies: Foundant offers scholarship and grant management software widely adopted by community foundations and higher-education institutions, competing head-to-head on application intake, review workflows, and award disbursement.
• Slate by Technolutions: Slate is a widely adopted higher-ed CRM and admissions platform that increasingly handles scholarship and financial-aid workflows, competing for the same institutional budget line and IT consolidation priorities as AcademicWorks.
• WizeHive: WizeHive (now part of Foundry) offers a customizable scholarship and grant management platform with review workflows and reporting, overlapping with AcademicWorks' core functional footprint in higher-ed scholarship administration.

Broad incumbents

• Workday Student: Workday Student is a cloud SIS built into the broader Workday platform, including financial-aid and award management modules. It represents a suite-level incumbent alternative that could subsume AcademicWorks' niche as institutions modernize their student system stacks.
• Ellucian: Ellucian is a leading SIS/ERP provider for higher education, increasingly embedding scholarship and financial-aid workflow capabilities into its suite — a broader incumbent that competes for the same institutional IT consolidation dollars.

Emerging players

• PowerFAIDS (College Board): PowerFAIDS, distributed by the College Board, is a financial aid management system used by higher-ed institutions; while focused on federal aid packaging, it overlaps with AcademicWorks in the broader student-funding administration workflow.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/academicworks
• Facebookfacebook.com/AcademicWorks
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/1071335

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Subsidiaries7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about AcademicWorks