Using what you have on hand, or are familiar with, can sometimes be a good strategy if you are just starting out and not regularly writing and receiving grants you need to track. But once you get further down that path, it becomes apparent you need the right tool for the job. If any of the five points below resonate with you, then you are probably an excellent candidate for a grant tracking software solution that is built to help you save time and be more successful.
A grant management solution shows you what you need to know, when you need to know it. It’s tempting to use software for multiple purposes, thinking you’re being cost prudent; but forcing a tool to do more than it’s intended can cost you more than you think you’re saving.
Top 5 Reasons Excel is Not a Grant Management Solution
1. Limited Ability to Centrally Organize Funder Details
When using Excel as your grant tracking software, most often only the funder name is listed. Excel isn’t designed to keep all the historical funder information at your fingertips. You can enter it again, every time you target them for a potential grant request—but that means spending excess time on manual data entry; and even then, you run the risk of inputting old, faulty information or saving over recent notes made by a colleague.
A grant management system will have one place to store information about your past interactions with a funder. You will be able to see what attempts and successes have happened previously and refer to any recommendations on how to be more effective with them in the future. This visibility is critical to saving you time, and also not looking foolish in front of a funder because you’re unaware of the history between your organizations.
2. Complexity of Spreadsheets Quickly Increases When Tracking All Your Grant Details and Tasks
Keeping track of not only the grant deadline but all the steps and tasks leading up to it—or after you receive an award—is not easy to do with Excel. You start with five columns and before you know it you’re juggling 10, 20, 50, or more—not to mention multiple sheets.
Tracking the date for an LOI or on-site visit is important and may be assigned to several teammates to manage. Tracking proposal deadlines, submissions dates, notifications, and grant terms is already challenging without add more complexity to your workflow. Adding report deadlines and tasks in Excel makes updates harder and tracking responsibilities accurately more difficult for your entire team.
A real grants management solution tracks key data like amounts, deadlines, statuses, and categories for every funding opportunity efficiently. It should also enable full team collaboration, with each member managing assigned tasks and grant deadlines clearly and effectively.
3. No Email Reminders
There is a lot Excel can do. It’s a great tool for analyzing data in multiple ways, performing complicated calculations, or creating pivot tables. But if you are tracking due dates—it isn’t designed to send you automatic email reminders that keep you on track.
One email reminder can be the difference between meeting your grant proposal deadline—or worse, missing a critical follow-up. Missing a proposal deadline is serious—it forces you to wait for the next funding cycle. Missing a follow-up requirement can jeopardize future funding from that grantmaker by damaging your organization’s credibility.
4. No Central Repository for Important Grant Documents
Spreadsheets make it hard to quickly organize and connect grant documents with relevant information for tracking and reporting. t Keeping a separate storage place—which could be on the network, or on someone’s personal computer—in sync with the information on your spreadsheet is a challenge.
Grant tracking software organizes documents by the specific task, grant opportunity, and funder they belong to. You can quickly look up what you submitted a couple of years back. You can pass an audit by showing that you store all grant contracts in a centralized location, back them up regularly, and make them accessible to everyone who needs them.
5. Analyzing and Reporting Your Grant Funding Updates is Complex and Time-Consuming
If you have all of your granting information in multiple spreadsheets and associated documents stored on a hard drive, how easy is it to analyze your data and report on funding? There’s no “Opportunities by Status” report built into Excel—you’d need to create such a report yourself using complicated formulas. Aside from the excess time it would take, the reporting would also be unreliable due to the added complication of human error.
Entering grant information takes about the same time in a spreadsheet as it does in a grant managemnt system. But try tracking how much time you save when you want to answer any of these questions:
- Who are your top funders for the ‘Keep Kids in School’ Program?
- How many grants did you get from Foundation vs. Corporate sources last year?
- What is your win percentage last year based on the amount requested, or based on number submitted?
- How many grant deadlines do you have coming up next quarter?
- How many grants has your organization awarded to date? How many are pending a decision?
The right grant management solution is something you can lean on to make you more successful in your grant funding efforts. Consider a trusted vendor who trains staff and supports your solution to build a successful, sustainable grant practice.
Contact Foundant today to see how they provide grant tracking software solutions to transform your work.
About the Author
Foundant Technologies has specialized in making philanthropy easier and more impactful through innovative software solutions and exceptional client experiences since 2007. Passionate about philanthropy, our team is dedicated to meeting the unique needs of grantmakers, scholarship providers, community foundations, and nonprofits to enable change-makers to make the world a better place for all.