Spreadsheets versus a grant management system

There is no shame in running grants on spreadsheets. Plenty of excellent funders do. A spreadsheet is flexible, free, and everyone knows how to use one. The question is not whether spreadsheets work; it is where they stop working, and whether you have reached that point.

What spreadsheets do well

Credit where it is due. For a small number of grants, a spreadsheet gives you a single table you control, instant formulas, and no software to learn. If you run a handful of grants a year, you may not need anything else yet.

Where they start to leak

The trouble begins as volume and accountability grow.

• Re-keying. The same details get copied between an application form, the spreadsheet, an email and a finance system. Each copy is a chance to introduce an error.
• Version anxiety. Which file is current? Who edited this cell, and when? A spreadsheet has no reliable answer.
• No real audit trail. You cannot prove a decision was not changed after the fact. For public or charitable money, that is a genuine gap.
• Due diligence by hand. Checking each organisation against the Charity Commission and Companies House across browser tabs is slow and easy to skip under pressure.
• Reporting and chasing. Tracking which grantee report is due, and chasing politely, becomes its own part-time job.
• Publishing. Turning a spreadsheet into valid 360Giving open data is an annual scramble.

None of these is fatal on its own. Together, past a certain volume, they quietly consume your team.

What a grant management system adds

A purpose-built system removes the re-keying by carrying each application from intake to publication on one record. It runs due diligence automatically, captures decision rationale in a tamper-evident trail, gates payments on conditions, schedules and chases reports, and publishes to 360Giving with a click. The point is not more features for their own sake; it is fewer manual steps and a record you can stand behind.

How to know you have outgrown the spreadsheet

A few honest signals: you dread the audit or board paper because assembling the history is painful; you have had at least one "which version is right" moment that mattered; you skip due diligence when busy; or you spend real time chasing reports. Any one of these means it is worth a look.

The good news is that moving no longer means a six-month project. Modern tools import your history with a dry-run report first, and let you open your next round in minutes. We wrote up the move in migrating off a legacy system, and a buyer's checklist in choosing software in 2026.