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Apr 03, 2023
4 min read

Airtable Wiz #5: Automating Scholarship Application Process

Working with an existing cohort-based project

Cover

Hello there!👋🏼

A little bit different from the usual for this use-case edition. It’ll be based on my work with a member of a community that I am in.

But first, some introductions

Lilian Warutere is a learning designer and facilitator.

She helps professionals and organizations who want to teach online to design the right combination of learning experiences, tools and systems that can help them share their knowledge through online courses and online learning communities.

She is the course manager of the Breakthrough Facilitation course.

Intro to Breakthrough Facilitation

It is a 5-week online course that teaches how to lead instantly engaging online sessions your audiences will love.

Gwyn Wansbrough, the facilitator and course creator, has over 20+ years of experience and her unique framework to help people lead and create online experiences that will lead to breakthroughs.

Before we proceed with the work…

A Disclaimer

I have Lilian’s permission (which is also from Gwyn😉) to share some information with my audience. So, I will only share relevant information to respect her privacy and our professional relationship.

OK, now Let’s Get to It!.💃🏻

The Problem

“I’m working on creating an automation, but I have hit a bit of a problem. The automation is meant to help make a scholarship application process easier.

Here is the current process:

  1. Applicant fills out a scholarship form on Tally.
  2. The application is sent to Notion via integration.
  3. We review the application and tag it accepted/rejected in Notion.
  4. Via automation: Those accepted are tagged Scholarship in Convertkit and receive an email from Convertkit confirming their successful application.
  5. Unsuccessful applicants are tagged and receive a regret letter from Convertkit.

My greatest challenge is that sometimes Tally-Notion integration would break at random times and I would like to make the process shorter.” — Lilian Warutere

The Workflow

Scholarship flowchart

The Tools

  • Tally.so (Application Form)
  • Airtable (To view and process the applications, database)
  • Zapier (To connect and automate between tools or apps)
  • ConvertKit (To send email)

The Setups

Airtable base — ready template

I’ve created an Airtable template based on their Tally form and added a few more fields for automation purposes.

Airtable base template

Tally to Airtable integration

Pretty much straight forward as Tally probably has the nicest integrations out there.

Tally to Airtable

Just to make sure the Map fields are correctly synced with the ones in Airtable.

Tally map fields

Airtable to Convertkit integration via Zapier

It’s probably getting a little harder at this section. Especially if you’re new to Zapier.

Airtable to ConvertKit

ConvertKit Automation

So, basically the idea was to email those who have accepted and rejected with two different sets of email sequences.

  • Tagged “Accepted” → Added into “Accepted” Sequence → Send email
  • Tagged “Rejected” → Added into “Rejected” Sequence → Send email

I won’t get into details on this one as ConvertKit on its own is another whole beast.🐼

The Takeaways

As the title suggests, I can see a trend going on with this type of gesture of giving out scholarships or sponsorship for those who need but do not have the money to pay.

I commend the generous Gwyn for offering this. And I thanked Lilian for the opportunity.💜

This was a good challenge.