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Guide
Monday, August 17, 2026 OpenWaterThe Ultimate Guide to Awards Management
Learn how to streamline submissions and reviews, reduce administrative work, improve the experience for nominees and judges, and select the right awards management platform.
About OpenWater
OpenWater streamlines program management with its end-to-end solution for accepting and reviewing applications, awards, grants, scholarships, proposals, and abstracts. OpenWater’s secure, all-in-one platform makes navigating the review process easy with its user-friendly features. Empower your program administrators by automating time consuming administrative tasks, collecting high volume submissions, and driving data-proven decisions through custom reporting and analytics.
Simplify Every Stage of Application and Review
OpenWater gives associations one flexible platform to manage awards, grants, scholarships, abstracts, fellowships, and other application and review programs. Automate time-consuming work, improve the experience for applicants and judges, and gain better visibility into every stage of your programs.
Automate Administrative Work
Replace spreadsheets, manual follow-up, and repetitive tasks with automated workflows, communications, reminders, assignments, and approvals.
Create Better Applicant Experiences
Build branded, mobile-friendly application experiences with flexible forms, conditional logic, file uploads, saved progress, and clear submission workflows.
Make Review Easier
Support multi-round review, customizable scoring, blinded judging, reviewer assignments, and collaborative evaluation without relying on spreadsheets or email attachments.
Connect Your Systems and Data
Integrate OpenWater with iMIS and other leading AMS, CRM, payment, and business platforms to reduce duplicate data entry and keep information moving between systems.
Turn Program Data Into Better Decisions
Track submissions, reviews, deadlines, decisions, participation, and other program metrics with real-time dashboards and customizable reporting.
Trusted to Manage Complex Programs
See why associations and other mission-driven organizations use OpenWater to simplify administration, support reviewers, and scale their application and awards programs.
The flexibility and functionality of the platform has led to many improvements and efficiencies in how IET awards are run. The support from the OpenWater team has been excellent.
ASHA uses the OpenWater platform for awards programs, grant and scholarship applications, mentoring enrollment, course registration, volunteer applications and leadership programs.
OpenWater makes it easy for us to collect the information that needs to be reviewed and enforce unique and diverse applicant requirements.