Free Grant Tracking Spreadsheet (+ When to Upgrade)
A working grant tracker needs six pipeline stages, deadline and reporting-date columns, and a success-rate formula, not just a list of funder names, and should track success rate, average award size, time-to-decision, pipeline value and reporting compliance. Reporting deadlines, not application deadlines, are the ones charities most often miss, since they are set after the money has already landed. Spreadsheets work well until a charity is running roughly 15 to 20 live applications at once.
Download the tracker (what’s in it)
I built this tracker because I kept doing the same manual work every application cycle: retyping funder names, hunting deadlines in old emails, losing track of live bids. You don’t need paid grant tracking software to fix that, not at first. Our free grant tracking spreadsheet is a ready-to-use template with five linked tabs: a pipeline view, a deadline calendar, a reporting-dates tracker, a success-rate dashboard, and a funder contacts log. It is built for charities running anywhere from three to twenty live applications and needs no macros or add-ons to work in Google Sheets or Excel.
The pipeline tab is the core of the tracker. Each row is one application, with columns for funder name, programme, amount requested, stage, deadline, assigned lead, and notes. The deadline calendar pulls dates automatically from the pipeline tab and flags anything due within 30 days. The reporting tab does the same for post-award reporting dates, which is the part most trackers built from scratch forget entirely. The dashboard tab calculates your success rate and average award size from whatever is in the pipeline tab, so the numbers update themselves as you fill in outcomes.
You can grab the download using the form on this page, or simply rebuild the structure below directly in your own spreadsheet; both routes give you the same working tool, because I would rather you actually use a tracker than chase a download. I put this template together myself, the structure I use for my own charity’s applications — our grant funding handbook covers the wider cycle it sits in.
How to use it: pipeline stages that work
The pipeline stages that work for most small and medium charities are: Researching, Drafting, Submitted, Under Review, Awarded, Declined, and Reporting. Each application moves through these stages in order, and the stage column is what your success-rate and pipeline-value formulas key off, so keep the labels exact and consistent.
- Researching: you have identified the funder and are checking eligibility, not yet committed to applying — our grant readiness checker fits this stage.
- Drafting: you have decided to apply and are writing the bid; our pre-submit checklist is worth running first.
- Submitted: the application is in, and you are waiting on a decision.
- Under Review: the funder has acknowledged receipt or asked follow-up questions; use this to flag bids needing a response.
- Awarded / Declined: the outcome. Awarded applications move automatically into the reporting tab.
- Reporting: the grant is live and has outstanding reporting obligations attached to it.
Keep declined applications in the sheet rather than deleting them. They feed your success-rate calculation and, reviewed every six months, tell you which funder types and programme sizes you are actually winning, which should shape where you spend research time next.
The 5 metrics to watch (success rate, avg award, time-to-decision)
The five metrics worth tracking on any grant pipeline are success rate, average award size, time-to-decision, total pipeline value, and reporting compliance rate. Together they tell you not just how many grants you are winning, but whether your pipeline is big enough and your funder mix realistic for your income targets.
| Metric | Formula | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Success rate | Awarded ÷ (Awarded + Declined) | Shows whether your targeting and bid quality are working, not just your volume |
| Average award size | Total awarded £ ÷ number of awards | Helps you judge whether smaller, higher-volume funders or fewer larger bids suit your capacity |
| Time-to-decision | Decision date minus submission date | Lets you plan cash flow and know when to chase a funder |
| Pipeline value | Sum of amount requested across all open stages | Gives trustees a live view of fundraising exposure, useful for board reporting |
| Reporting compliance | Reports submitted on time ÷ total reports due | Protects your relationship with funders you will want to reapply to |
Most charities using a grant tracking software or spreadsheet consistently for a full year see their success rate settle somewhere between 20% and 40%, though this varies hugely by funder type and sector; use your own trend over time rather than benchmarking against a single external figure. Building our grant-finder I read hundreds of funder pages — rates vary too much by type for one benchmark to matter much; our charity funding statistics page has the wider picture.
Reporting deadlines: never miss one
Reporting deadlines are missed more often than application deadlines because they are set months after the excitement of winning a grant has passed, and they rarely live in the same place as your application calendar. The fix is to log every reporting date the moment a grant is awarded, not when the report is actually due.
As soon as an application moves to “Awarded” in the pipeline, add its reporting dates (interim and final, if both apply) directly into the reporting tab, along with what the funder actually wants: a narrative report, financial breakdown, case studies, or all three. My rule: reporting dates go into the tracker the same day the decision arrives. Set a reminder 30 days out, not three days out, since good reports need the same lead time as good applications. Persistent late reporting is one of the fastest ways to damage a relationship with a funder you will want to approach again, and some funders now note reporting history when reviewing repeat applications.
From experience: A grant tracker earns its keep on reporting dates, not application deadlines. Application deadlines announce themselves; reporting deadlines arrive in silence, months after everyone has stopped thinking about the grant — so the reporting tab is the one part of my template I treat as non-negotiable. Miss a report and you quietly lose the funder you most wanted to keep.
Signs you’ve outgrown the spreadsheet
A charity has outgrown its grant tracking spreadsheet when it is running more than roughly 15 to 20 live applications at once. The other signs: two or more people overwriting each other’s updates in the same file, or more time maintaining the tracker than researching funders. At that point the problem is not the spreadsheet’s content, it is version control, reminders and multi-user access.
Other signs include: reporting deadlines slipping despite your best efforts to diarise them, trustees asking for pipeline reports you have to build manually each time, and funder research eating hours that should go into writing bids. This is exactly the gap purpose-built grant tracking software is designed to close, with shared pipelines, automatic deadline alerts and reporting built in rather than bolted on. I sell software in this category, so let me be straight about fit: at five applications a year you do not need it — the spreadsheet is genuinely enough. For a comparison of the options available to UK charities, see our grant management software listicle, and for finding new funders in the first place, our UK grant finder post and the Grant Finder tool itself are the natural next step. If you are still working on the applications themselves, our how to write a grant application pillar covers the writing side in full.
What to do next
Download the free tracker, load in your current live applications, and commit to updating stages weekly rather than in an end-of-month scramble. Review your five metrics quarterly with whoever owns fundraising, and revisit the “outgrown it” signs above every six months as your pipeline grows.
Ready for a pipeline that updates itself and never misses a reporting date? Join the CharityIQ trial waitlist →
Frequently asked questions
Use a single pipeline with clear stages (researching, drafting, submitted, under review, awarded, declined, reporting), one row per application, and columns for deadline, amount and assigned lead. Update the stage as soon as anything changes so the tracker reflects reality rather than last month's status.
At minimum: funder name, programme, amount requested, pipeline stage, application deadline, decision date, and reporting dates for any awarded grant. A success-rate formula and a deadline calendar turn a plain list into a tool you actually use day to day.
Divide the number of applications awarded by the total number of applications with a decision (awarded plus declined), ignoring anything still pending. Calculate it over a rolling 12-month period so seasonal funder cycles do not distort the figure.
When you are managing more than roughly 15 to 20 live applications, when multiple people need simultaneous access without overwriting each other, or when reporting deadlines keep slipping despite manual reminders. At that scale, dedicated grant tracking software typically pays for itself in staff time saved.
Yes, the same pipeline structure works for both; just add a column flagging restricted versus unrestricted funds, since your finance team will need that split for year-end accounts and SORP reporting regardless of tracking method.