The OpenWater Blog

6 Judge Retention Strategies for Your Association’s Awards Program

You spent months recruiting a stellar group of members to judge award entries. But three days before the deadline, you’re sending desperate follow-up emails. Four judges have gone silent. Two […]

OpenWater End-of-Year Update: UI Progress, AI Support Tool, and What’s Coming in 2026

As we head into the final stretch of 2025, we wanted to share a quick update on where things stand with OpenWater and what you can expect in the coming […]

Awards Management Software Guide for Associations

Is your association’s awards program stuck back in 1995? Are you losing countless hours chasing incomplete applications, manually distributing submissions to judges, and building custom reports in Excel? Reclaim your […]

Best Practices for Engaging Unsuccessful Award Applicants

When award applicants find out they didn’t make the cut, many of them feel disappointed, overlooked, or undervalued by their association and peers. Don’t let unsuccessful award applicants dwell in […]

What’s Next for OpenWater: A First Look at the Future

At our July 2025 webinar, we shared an exciting glimpse into the future of OpenWater. From a long-awaited design refresh to AI-powered workflows and new participant tools, here’s what’s on […]

10 Essential Grant Management Software Features (and Insider Tips to Use Them)

It’s 4:47 PM on a Friday, and you just realized one of your grant reviewers hasn’t even started their assignment—and today’s the deadline. As you search your emails to see […]

How to Take Full Advantage of Your Abstract Management Software

They’re just bad memories now: creating and comparing multiple spreadsheets, tracking submissions, sending updates to authors, and pestering reviewers. With your new abstract management software, everything related to abstract collection, […]

The Ultimate Guide to Scholarship Management Software

Scholarships help associations attract and engage members who can’t afford dues, conferences, credentialing, or leadership training. But managing the application, review, and fund disbursement processes for scholarships is an administrative […]

OpenWater Mid-Year Product Update: New APIs, Reporting Enhancements, and More

We’re halfway through 2025, and we’ve been hard at work delivering updates that improve the flexibility, reliability, and reporting power of the OpenWater platform. Here’s a quick rundown of our […]

The Ultimate Guide to Grants Management Software

Grant management is a hot mess if you’re using a mixed bag of unintegrated tools, like spreadsheets, emails, siloed databases, and paper-based systems. These time-consuming manual processes make errors and […]