Free grant tracking spreadsheet (Excel and Google Sheets)

• Create one grant tracker for everything to have one single source of truth.
• Optimize your grant tracker for sustainability and clarity, always.
• Track everything you’re working on (Funders, Grants, Deliverables), including all upcoming deadlines.
• Use my tracker for fields (columns) preset for the ideal content to track for your grants. Easily import from this spreadsheet if you ever decide to join Grantary.
• Learn when a grants management platform might be best for you.

Whether you’re using a grant management platform like Grantary or using a spreadsheet, the goal of any grant professional should be to create sustainability and clarity in their management of grants.

• Sustainability means that the work you are doing now is known to your organization’s next grant team member 5 years down the line. This can include what you’ve won, what you applied for and lost, what funders you’ve vetted but decided not to pursue, and all the nitty-gritty details that make up any funder relationship.
• Clarity means that the information is tracked uniformly, comprehensively, and in one central place.

If you prefer to design your own grant tracker, or if you want to learn more about how I designed mine, I’ll walk you through how to set up your spreadsheet to facilitate both sustainability and clarity for your organization.

Funders

Create a tab for funders. As the name suggests, funders are all corporations, foundations, individuals, and government entities that can or do fund your organization’s mission. It’s important to have your funders in a separate list as doing so will give you a clear and comprehensive picture of all funders you’ve vetted or interacted with over the years. If you’re only tracking grants you’re applying to, where does the information go pertaining to that one random (perhaps negative) conversation you had with a grant maker at a partner’s holiday party? These small touch points and “let’s not pursue this funder” decisions are vital to track for the sustainability of your grant efforts. Additionally, for funders you are pursuing over the years, one funder can be tied to a number of grants you submitted, secured, and lost.

You won’t spend too much of your time in funders, but it’s important to get it set up just right.

Information to include for funders:

• Funder Name (required), Type (Foundation, Corporation, Individual, Government – local, state or federal), Relationship (Pursuing, Not Pursuing, Defunct, Watching), Relationship Owner.
• Website, portal, phone and address; mission, funding priorities and a description.

Grants

Create a tab for grants. Grants are all funding initiatives that you plan for, apply for, win, or lose over the years. One grant can have multiple deliverables (LOI, application, report, etc.), and it serves as the main component that ties those deliverables together. Therefore, it is important to view grants as a big-picture, macro-level function of your work. Most grant tracking spreadsheets I’ve seen reference grants as the micro-level work, which then makes it harder to understand what you’ve actually applied for, won, and lost.

You’ll spend more time in your grants tab than your funders tab. I list below what I include in the grants tab of my spreadsheet.

Information to include for Grants:

• Grant Name, Funder and Stage (as requirements).
• Stages to track grant progress (prospecting, pending, won, lost, etc.). Keep this updated at all times.
• Type (New, Renewal, Lapsed), Grant Owner, and Programs.
• Requested amounts and decision date.
• For awarded grants, track: award amounts, grant start and end dates, funding purpose, funding type, coverage and restriction, Contract number, executed date, contract outcomes, actual outcomes and whether outcomes were met, plus comms requirements.

Deliverables

Create a tab for deliverables. Deliverables are the day-to-day tasks that propel your work forward: the applications, LOIs, and reports that all grant professionals are responsible for delivering on time. One grant can have multiple deliverables. For example, a grant effort can start with just an LOI deliverable. If you get invited to submit an application, that same grant will then have an application. If you win the grant, it will lastly have a final report. In this example, the LOI, application, and final report are all distinct deliverables that feed into one grant effort.

You’ll spend most of your time tracking and updating deliverables. Therefore, it’s important to get it right.

Information to include for Deliverables:

• Deliverable Name, Grant, Type, Stage and Due Date (as requirements).
• Types: LOI, Application, Report – Interim, Report – Final, Meeting, Cultivation, Presentation, Other.
• Stage: Planned, In Progress, Complete, Canceled. The most important component to track progress.
• Assigned To, Deadline Type (Estimated, Hard, Rolling), Completed Date, Notes.

For sustainability, make sure you track everything important about a funder, grant, or deliverable. For clarity, make sure it’s added where it should live. Follow these steps to get the most out of your grant tracking spreadsheet using the template I provided.

1. Start with the Organization Setup tab.

• Add in your team members. These will feed into the Grants and Deliverables “Owner” columns.
• Add in your programs. These can be cost centers, funding initiatives, or specific programming. Anything you’d fundraise around.

2. Add your funders.

• Start by adding in your funders.
• At minimum, include the funder name, type, relationship, mission, and funding priorities.
• Use the description field to add in the context and history with each funder, where applicable. Keep adding to the description over time.

3. Add your grants.

• Add in your grants. Remember, grants should represent and contain all the work (deliverables) that are needed to secure an award.
• At minimum, include the grant name, the funder it is associated with (a dropdown will automatically appear), and the current stage.
• It is highly recommended to include Type, Grant Owner, Programs, Requested Amount.
• Use the description field to hold any notes or added context about this particular grant.

4. Add your deliverables.

• The last step is to add in your deliverables for each grant.
• Deliverables are intentionally the most simple thing to create and add to.
• At minimum, add: Deliverable Name; Grant; Type; Stage; and Due Date.
• Adding an owner helps you track who is assigned to the deliverable.
• Type of deadline (hard, rolling, estimated) helps you plan. Hard deadlines are ones you can’t miss. Rolling are ones you can push back to a less busy time when needed. Estimated are ones you should check in on when the time comes.

5. Delete the example rows.

• When no longer needed, delete the example rows included in my grant tracker.

These are some of the best practices that I’ve developed during my time guiding a national team of 10 grant writers on data management.

• Use one tracker and know where it’s located. If you use Google, store the tracker in Google Drive. If you use Microsoft Office, store it in your OneDrive. This also allows you to share the spreadsheet with others.
• Don’t make copies of your spreadsheet. Spreadsheets seemingly have the ability to replicate on their own. Do your best to prevent this happening. If you lose your single source of truth, things can get chaotic quickly.
• Keep it updated. As soon as a deliverable is submitted, or a grant decision comes through, update your tracker.
• Give every deliverable an owner, so you know who’s assigned to get it done.
• Be consistent. Name your grants and deliverables consistently. If a stage means one thing to you, make sure it means the same thing to your teammate(s).
• Be thorough. If you have the data, add it to your tracker. Don’t keep it in your email or your notepad. Add it into the tracker immediately to ensure that it gets there.

A spreadsheet can work. However, it typically only works for organizations that apply for a handful of grants each year. Beyond that, it should be viewed as a temporary solution. Here’s why, starting with what I see as most important:

• Sustainability. In this guide, I’ve talked a bit about why sustainability matters. Unfortunately, spreadsheets rarely support sustainability. The reason is that most updates, context, and history — the incredibly important nuance — don’t have a spot in a spreadsheet. Five years from now, if you’re no longer with the organization because you won the lottery, will the new grant person know everything that happened with each funder you’ve vetted, talked to, or applied to? Will the new person know how to keep the spreadsheet going?
• Clarity. I’ve also talked about clarity in this guide. Spreadsheets can facilitate clarity, but it usually relies on significant know-how of advanced formulas, features, pivot tables, charting, and more. Even with these skills, it can be daunting to look at a spreadsheet and think through how to refine or overhaul it, especially if you’re concerned about breaking it.
• Reporting. In a spreadsheet, it’s not easy. Usually, reporting requires additional spreadsheets or tabs. One for grants submitted and pending. One for new grants. One for all grant awards in the fiscal year. And so on. Different spreadsheets that have to be separately managed, updated, and shared. Creating nice charts is possible, but not easy. And if you want a custom-built, niche report, you’ll have to build that by hand, pulling in all the details one by one.
• Managing Grant Awards. How would you track multi-year grant awards in a spreadsheet? How about logged and pending grant payments? Are these two separate spreadsheets? Perhaps three? Are all active grant contract outcomes stored in another spreadsheet? And are these active grant outcomes available to your program teams so they know what they need to deliver? Many questions that spreadsheets struggle to answer.
• The risk of deletion and fear of breaking it. How many spreadsheet users make weekly (or even monthly) backups of their spreadsheets? I imagine very few. What happens if you share the spreadsheet and a team member accidentally deletes a few rows and doesn’t realize it? Thankfully, if you’re hosting your spreadsheet on Google Drive or OneDrive, you can use version history to revert any changes. But that’s stressful, and requires either redoing some work, or finding and reverting that one specific delete.
• Where do you store your grant agreements, final budgets, and submitted narratives? Not in your spreadsheet.

Please use the grant tracking spreadsheet I built. I wanted to offer it for free to all nonprofits in an effort to help you better track your grants. When you’re ready to start using a grants management app and if you are considering Grantary, my provided grant tracker can import easily into Grantary.

Once you’re in Grantary, you’ll get access to these features and benefits:

• A visual, easy way to manage your grants.
• Deadline notifications via email and visible on the home page.
• Quickly add funders, grants, or deliverables.
• Pre-built reports that can answer just about any question your executive leadership might ask.
• Share with as many team members as you’d like, with the option to set permissions to “read-only.”
• Track grant payments, multi-year awards, and grant outcomes within each grant.
• Built to be accessible for all future grant teammates, with a dedicated help center to get anyone started.

Free for 30 days, no credit card required. Start your free trial →

• What to do after a grant decision — how to handle a win, and how to handle a denial.
• How to find new grant funders — finding and vetting the funders worth adding to your tracker.
• How to use AI for grant writing — setting up a project and writing a grant using AI.

What should a grant tracking spreadsheet include?

In my opinion, a grant tracking spreadsheet should track funders, grants, and deliverables separately. For funders, at minimum, include the funder name, type, relationship, mission, and funding priorities. For grants, at minimum, include the grant name, the funder it is associated with, and the current stage. For deliverables, at minimum, include deliverable name, associated grant, type, stage, and Due Date.

Can you track grants in Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes, and you can do so quite effectively if you’re working for a smaller organization or an organization that only applies for a handful of grants each year. Beyond that, spreadsheets can easily become unmanageable or they can inhibit the sustainability and clarity of your grants management.

Is the template free? Do I need to sign up?

Completely free, no sign-up required. Just click the link to be taken to my Google Drive, where you can download a copy.

How do I move my grants from a spreadsheet into Grantary?

When you’re ready, Grantary has a dedicated import page that will guide you through the process of importing your content. If you’re coming from the grant tracking spreadsheet I shared, all you have to do is export each tab into a CSV and then import.