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Overview

Awards Manager gives Chambers, associations, and foundations one place to run awards programs, scholarship rounds, and grant cycles. This page covers the big picture and what to do in your first hour.

The four stages of any program

Every feature in Awards Manager is built around four stages. Knowing the stages helps you find what you need quickly.

Collect. Applicants apply directly, or nominators nominate someone else.
Judge. Reviewers score submissions using a rubric you define.
Decide. You compare finalists and pick winners.
Communicate. Branded emails go out to applicants, finalists, and winners automatically.

Who is on your team

Awards Manager has three roles.

Owner. Full access including deleting the organization. The first person to sign up is the owner.
Admin. Full access except deleting the org. Admins run programs, triage submissions, manage reviewers, and pick winners.
Reviewer. External judges. They sign into a separate portal and only see what you assign to them. They never see other reviewers' scores.

You invite admins from the Team page. You invite reviewers from the Reviewers page. The two are kept separate on purpose.

Your first hour

Six steps will get you from a blank dashboard to an open program accepting applications.

Create your first program from the Programs page.
Add categories if you need them. For example, “Best Marketing”, “Small Business of the Year”.
Build the application form. Use the visual editor, no code needed.
Set up the scoring rubric so reviewers know what to score on.
Invite a reviewer or two so you can test the flow.
Set the program status to Open and share the public application URL.

Your dashboard has a checklist that tracks each step as you complete it. It disappears once everything is done.

Where to look when you need help

The help center has an article for each major concept.

The sidebar on this page lists every article.
Throughout the app, small ? icons next to a feature open a short explanation with a link to the full article.
Hover over any application status badge to see what it means.
Need a person? Click your avatar in the top-right and choose Contact support to send a message to our team — we reply within one business day.