How to keep track of grant deadlines without missing one

A reminder that a deadline is three days away is only useful if you've already started. From the charities I've spoken to, the reminder often never arrives, and when it does, the work hasn't started.

So here's how I'd track grant deadlines, and what I'd want to know about the dates themselves.

Where do grant deadlines go missing?

From the charities I've spoken to, the grant pipeline usually lives in a spreadsheet. Often it's a big one, probably around 20 tabs. It's full of valuable information, built around that charity, and it makes sense to the person who built it.

But on its own, it doesn't remind you of anything. Nothing tells you which grant to work on first. It relies on you putting the date in your calendar, or opening the sheet every day and spotting that something's looming. You could build a priority order into it yourself. In my experience, in a spreadsheet that gets convoluted fast.

What do funder deadlines actually look like?

Before you track a date, it helps to know what kind of date it is. This part comes from our register, not from my own experience. In September and early October 2026 our checks read 72 funders' own pages. Here's what those pages showed.

• Rolling. More than four in ten said applications are rolling or accepted at any time. Some of those still decide at meetings a few times a year, so a rolling application can wait for the next meeting. One page said trustees meet in February, June and October.
• Rounds with dates. More than four in ten gave a dated deadline or a funding round. Dates can move from year to year, so don't assume last year's date still holds.
• Closed until. Some pages said a round had closed and when it would reopen, or that no round was open at the moment.
• Invitation only. A handful don't take open applications. They invite applicants.
• No deadline we could find. About one in four said nothing about a deadline that we could find. We record that as "not stated". We don't guess.

Some funders fall into more than one group: one fund rolling, another with a fixed date. So those shares add up to more than 100%.

What this means for your tracking: a date on its own isn't enough. For each funder, write down which kind it is. "Rolling, next meeting October" is a different job from "closes 1 December".

What I'd build tomorrow for a two-person charity

If I were setting up deadline tracking for a small charity with no budget, I'd keep the spreadsheet. Then I'd build a small bot that reads it.

It looks at your current grants and reads the dates. It runs a quick check, and it emails you when a deadline is a month out, then a week out, then a few days out. A short email: "Just a reminder, this grant closes in a week."

That's a small build in my view, and nobody has to remember to open the sheet.

What's the difference between a reminder and a system?

A reminder tells you something's due. It doesn't tell you when to start, or which grant to start with. And it doesn't tell you who has the time to research and write all of these from scratch. In my experience, most charities don't.

So if the reminder arrives and you've not started, it's not much use. What you want is a system that says: this grant closes soon, and here's a first draft to start from.

How long does that take? One charity we work with told us it took about an hour and a half from opening a first draft to submitting it. That included changing the funding ask the draft had suggested. It's one application, so treat it as a first data point.

Why a date has a shelf life

Funder information moves. A database might not have caught a change that's already on the funder's own page. In my view the funder's page is the one place to trust.

So our system re-verifies a funder's facts if they were last verified more than 30 days ago, against the funder's own page, before they're used again. I don't want an application written from out-of-date information. The aim is that every draft starts from facts checked in the last month.

You can do a version of this yourself. Put a "last checked" date next to every funder in your sheet. If it's more than a month old, open the funder's page and look again before you act on it.

What I'd never automate

I'd never automate sending the application. The charity has to own it.

My view is that the personal connection between a charity and its funder matters, and some of it is lost when someone else presses send. There's also a practical reason. We can get something wrong about your charity, or you might know something we didn't. You should read it first, and you should be the one who presses the button.

A draft from us is where the charity starts. Someone at the charity reads it, edits it and submits it.

What to try this week

• Add two columns to your funder sheet: what kind of deadline it is (rolling, round, closed until, invitation only, or not stated), and the date you last checked the funder's page.
• Sort by date. Pick the three closest and check each one on the funder's own page.
• Set up one reminder email, by script or by calendar, for a month before each deadline.

And if you'd rather have the checking and the first drafts done for you, that's what we built.