How do you record your grant pipeline if you haven’t got a fancy CRM?

A client asked me this week if I had a template they could use to record the status of their relationships with grant funders, so they could keep track of upcoming deadlines, next steps and their funding pipeline for different projects. I’ve created similar documents for previous roles in the past, but it’s not something I had to hand as a general template…until now.

After a short while reminding myself how pivot tables work I’ve written something that can capture and track key information on the status of your funder relationships. Can it compete with some of the proper fundraising CRM systems on the market? Nope. Is it a step up from just writing a list of names on Excel? I think so.

Have a look and see what you think.

Hopefully, the different fields are quite self-explanatory, but there are a few things that need to be set up before you can fully use it. This short video provides an overview of the tracker, and some tips on getting the most out of it.

We’ve made some tweaks to the Funder Pipeline Tracker, with Version 2 uploaded on 19th June 2025. This short video shows what’s changed and why, as well as showing “behind the scenes” to understand how the Projected Income and Weighted Grant amount sections work.