How to Track Your Donors in Spreadsheets (+ Free Donor Database Template)

When you start a new nonprofit, you’re all about the mission. You’re excited to get out there and do the work, driven by passion, gumption, and probably an extra shot of espresso or two (or ten). 

But, soon enough, you find yourself getting distracted by all the other stuff that helps you live out your mission—and one of the biggest pain points is managing and tracking donor data. 

Managing donor information is hard enough for large, established nonprofits with big staffs and full tech stacks. For small and brand-new nonprofits—especially those operating on such a tight budget that they don’t have any dedicated donor management software—the task of tracking donations, profiles, addresses, and receipting can soon feel totally overwhelming.

Hopefully, your organization will one day reach the point where investing in a dedicated donor database is doable. But, until then, you’re still gonna need a way to track your donors using only spreadsheets that doesn’t have you pulling your hair out. If that sounds like you, then you’re in the right place. 

Spreadsheets Are Great …

For smaller and brand-new nonprofits, digital spreadsheets like Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel come with plenty of advantages as a donor database solution.

• They’re familiar. Most people already know their way around a spreadsheet, which makes onboarding new team members or volunteers much simpler. No steep learning curve. No special training required.

• They’re free (or free-ish). Google Sheets doesn’t cost a dime, and Excel often comes bundled with software many organizations already use. For nonprofits trying to make every dollar count, that’s a big deal.

• They’re flexible—but be careful. Spreadsheets are highly customizable, which means you can tailor them to your exact needs. Be warned, though: A completely blank sheet can feel pretty overwhelming. 

On that last point, the biggest problem with a spreadsheet database can be getting started. If you’re a novice (like most of us), you can get struck down with a really bad case of decision paralysis.

… But Spreadsheets + Templates Are Better

That’s why a pre-built donor tracking template can be such a game-changer—it removes all that decision-making fatigue by providing you with a smart structure from the jump that will also help you avoid some of these common pitfalls:

• Inconsistent data entry. Without set fields and dropdowns, it’s easy for one person to enter “$100,” another to write “100.00,” and someone else to forget the dollar sign entirely. Over time, that mess can break your formulas, skew your reports, and drive you slowly insane.

• Lack of relationship tracking. Spreadsheets that focus only on transactions mean you might lose sight of key donor details—like when they last gave, how often they give, or which campaign brought them in.

• No easy way to analyze trends. Without built-in dashboards or pivot tables, it’s hard to spot giving patterns, track campaign success, or identify your most loyal supporters, let alone report those things back to your board.

Here’s the best part: We have a free donor database template with tons of built-in best practices that’s compatible with both Google Sheets and Excel. In this article, we’re going to walk you through how to use that template and explain the basics of tracking donors in spreadsheets. 

Once you’re finished, you’ll be ready to download this template and start your very own donor database. 

All right, let’s go!

Download my Donor Database Template

How to Track Donors in Our Database Template 

The most helpful thing a digital spreadsheet can do is use formulas to automate all the math that forms the basis of your nonprofit’s accounting. You enter a donation amount into its given cell and, presto, it’s added to the total fundraising revenue at the bottom of the sheet.

With a donor database template like ours, all those formulas are built in. We’ve organized and filled out all the basic fields and columns you’ll need for your database. All you have to do is enter the appropriate donor info!

Our template is broken into eight primary sheets. Here’s how they’re labeled and what they do: 

• Constituents: Track and manage your organization’s relationships with individual donors. This is your main hub for donor data.

• Transactions: Log each donation made to your organization. This tab helps you monitor giving history and donation amounts.

• Funds: Categorize donations by fund designation. This will help you track where contributions are allocated.

• Campaigns: Organize your fundraising efforts by specific campaigns, like an end-of-year appeal or capital campaign.

• Appeals: Drill down into the individual appeals—like emails or mailers—that are part of your broader campaigns.

• Dashboard: A simple visual summary of your donor and donation data. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of your fundraising performance.

• Pivots: Pre-built pivot tables that help you analyze your donor and donation data from multiple angles without manual setup.

• Field Management: Define dropdown options and field values for consistency across the spreadsheet. Think of it as your template’s behind-the-scenes control panel.

As you can see, all the basic components of a database are included—plus a few features go beyond the basics! Let’s go section by section and talk about how to use the template as well as the broader donor tracking best practices involved. 

Constituents

The Constituents sheet is your master list of supporters—a centralized hub where all the essential information about your donors’ lives in one organized place.

Each row in this sheet represents a unique individual or organization, and each column captures an important detail, including:

• Basic contact information like name, email, phone number, and mailing address.

• Useful segmentation fields such as State, Country, and Job Title, which make it easy to filter and group donors for targeted campaigns or personalized outreach.

• Communication preferences, including opt-in status and preferred method of contact, so you can respect their boundaries and increase the likelihood of engagement.

Here’s where it gets really useful: Over on the right-hand side of the sheet, you’ll find a set of calculated fields (they’re italicized and shaded gray) that give you a quick snapshot of each donor’s giving history. These include:

• Total number of gifts
• Total dollars donated
• First and most recent donation dates
• Largest gift amount

Because these fields are formula-driven, you don’t have to do any of the math yourself. Just keep your data up to date, and you’ll always have a high-level view of each donor’s history. This information is perfect for creating donor segments, prepping for stewardship calls, or generating board-ready stats on the fly.

Transactions

The Transactions sheet is where you record every donation your organization receives, allowing you to maintain a clear, organized, and detailed log of donor activity. Each row in this sheet captures a single transaction, including:

• Donation date
• Gift amount
• Payment type (like credit card, check, or cash)
• Designation fields for Fund, Campaign, and Appeal

These fields do more than just document a gift—they give you a foundation for understanding why someone gave, what prompted them, and where that donation is meant to go. That kind of insight becomes especially valuable when you’re trying to evaluate the performance of a fundraising campaign or report back to your board and funders.

To connect the dots between donations and donor profiles, the template uses an Account ID field that links each gift back to the correct record in the Constituents sheet. This is crucial for maintaining a holistic view of your supporters’ giving histories. 

When used properly, it powers the calculated donor summaries you see in the Constituents tab—ensuring you’re not just tracking one-off gifts, but building full pictures of supporter relationships over time.

Funds

The Funds sheet gives you a simple but powerful way to track where your donations are going. Each row represents a specific fund—for example, your General Operating Fund, a Scholarship Fund, or a Capital Campaign Fund.

By assigning donations to these defined Funds (you’ll do that in the Transactions sheet), you can:

• Earmark gifts for specific purposes
• Track restricted vs. unrestricted revenue
• Ensure accuracy in your financial reporting

This is especially important when you’re dealing with grants, major gifts, or donor-specified contributions that need to be spent in certain ways. Having a clear system for categorizing gifts ensures you’re honoring donor intent while also setting your organization up for easier audits and more transparent reporting. Two birds, one stone. 

This sheet also plays nicely with the dashboard and pivot tables, which makes it easy to break down revenue by fund and understand where your fundraising efforts are having the most impact.

Campaigns

The Campaigns sheet helps you organize your fundraising efforts at a higher level. While individual donations might come in response to a specific email or event (tracked in the Appeals sheet), Campaigns represent the umbrella initiatives behind those actions.

Think of Campaigns as the big-picture efforts that guide your fundraising strategy. One campaign might be your year-end giving push, while another marks your spring membership drive. You can create entries for capital campaigns, GivingTuesday, second gifts—whatever you want to run!

In this tab, you can list the name of each campaign and add relevant notes or timeframes. Once defined here, each campaign becomes available as a dropdown option in the Transactions sheet, where you can assign it to any incoming donation.

Why is this useful? Because it gives you a broader view of how your fundraising strategies are performing over time. With this structure in place, you’ll be able to group and analyze donations by initiative and measure overall campaign success. 

Having that info in hand will help you report impact with confidence, whether it’s to your team, your donor, or—most importantly—your board.

When used alongside the Appeals and Funds tabs, this system creates a three-dimensional view of your fundraising efforts: what each gift was for, why the donor gave, and how you reached them in the first place. That’s the kind of insight that helps small nonprofits think and act like seasoned pros.

Appeals

The Appeals sheet helps you get more granular with your fundraising strategy by tracking the individual tactics you use to bring in donations. While Campaigns represent the big picture (like a year-end push), Appeals are the specific touchpoints—an email blast, a direct mail letter, a social media post, or even a phone call.

In this sheet, you can define each appeal by name and associate it with the appropriate Campaign. Once you’ve done that, you can tag each donation in the Transactions sheet with its corresponding appeal. That way, you’ll know which message or channel actually prompted the gift.

This kind of tracking allows you to identify which fundraising efforts are working best. It’s a simple step that can yield powerful insights—especially when it comes to understanding donor motivation and improving your overall fundraising ROI.

Dashboard & Pivots

The Dashboard sheet is where your data comes to life. Built to give you a high-level snapshot of your fundraising performance, this tab pulls key metrics from the tables in the Pivots sheet and displays them in clean, easy-to-read charts and tables.

At a glance, you’ll be able to see:

• Total number of supporters
• Total number of transactions
• Total dollars raised
• A monthly breakdown of donations over time

These visual summaries are perfect for quickly gauging (and reporting on!) your nonprofit’s fundraising health. Are gifts growing month over month? Are your campaigns gaining traction? The dashboard helps you answer those questions without having to dig through rows and rows of data.

Everything in the Pivots sheet that feeds the dashboard is pulled directly from your Transactions tab, meaning the moment you log a new gift, your reports update too. It’s a set-it-and-forget-it approach to data analysis that gives you fast access to charts, counts, and totals without having to build anything from scratch.

Field Management

The Field Management tab is the command center for customizing how your database behaves—but with a few important caveats. While some of the fields listed here actively drive dropdown menus in the Constituents and Transactions sheets, others are simply reference lists meant to guide data entry.

Let’s break it down:

• Editable dropdowns: Fields like Account Type, Status, Country, State/Province, Phone Type, Email Type, Gender, Preferred Channel, and Transaction Method are all linked directly to validation lists. When you update the values here, those dropdowns will reflect the changes elsewhere in the spreadsheet—ensuring clean, consistent data entry every time.

• Static fields: On the other hand, many of the field definitions listed in the first columns—like Job Title, Name Prefix, or Donation Notes—do not pull from this tab. They’re included here to help you understand what each column in the spreadsheet is meant for, but they aren’t dynamically linked.

This dual-purpose setup makes Field Management a valuable tool for keeping your data tidy. By controlling the dropdowns that matter most, you reduce the risk of typos, prevent inconsistent entries, and make filtering or sorting donor information dramatically easier. 

Bonus: You Get a Data Hygiene Checklist!

When you download the donor tracking template, you’ll also get access to a simple data hygiene checklist that will help you keep your donor records clean, consistent, and analysis-ready.

Not to get existential, but maintaining a database like this one is a never-ending battle against the encroaching, tireless forces of entropy. People forget to fill in fields. Addresses get formatted in six different ways. Someone enters a first name in all caps. 

Over time, those little inconsistencies can snowball into big headaches (or a full-blown meltdown if you really take that thing about entropy to heart). 

This checklist is here to stop that from happening. It walks you through a set of best practices for data hygiene, including:

• Making sure all required fields (like First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, and Mailing Address) are complete

• Ensuring standard formatting across commonly segmented fields like State, Country, and Job Title.

• Spot-checking for missing or inconsistent data before campaign launches or reports.

• Giving your data a quick health check before importing it into a CRM down the road.

The best part? It’s editable. You can customize it to match the needs of your organization and the quirks of your data. Use it as a monthly check-in tool, a training aid for new volunteers, or a pre-campaign prep list.

Planning for the Day When Spreadsheets Won’t Be Enough

Spreadsheets—especially a well-built database template like this one—can take you far. They help you stay organized, build solid data habits, and give you the tools to run your fundraising with confidence. But eventually, as your nonprofit grows, you may start to feel the limits of these simpler programs.

That’s exactly what happened to Marine Mills Folk School. When their community programs exploded in size and scope, their spreadsheet system couldn’t keep up. They made the move to Neon CRM, and it transformed the way they managed everything from donor data to program registration.

This template isn’t designed just to solve your current challenges. It’s also designed to set you up for success later. But when is the time to make the switch? We can’t answer that for you, but we can tell you to check out Marine Mills’ story and learn how they knew it was time to level up. 

Start Strong, Grow Smarter

You don’t need to be a spreadsheet wizard—or have a fancy CRM—to start managing your donor data like a pro. That’s why we built this template for real nonprofit professionals, not Excel experts. With built-in structure, smart formulas, and a visual dashboard, it’s designed to get you up and running with minimal fuss and maximum impact.

Getting started is easy:

• Click the link below to access the template.
  
• Go to File > Make a Copy to save it to your Google Drive or download it as an Excel file.
  
• Open the “How to Use” tab for simple, step-by-step guidance.
  
• Start entering your donor and transaction data—or just play around with it until it feels familiar.

Not sure where to begin? Start small. Add a few supporters. Run a quick pivot report. Use the Data Hygiene Checklist to clean up your records. The point is: you don’t have to do it all at once. But with the right tools, you’ll be ready for what’s next.

Good donor management isn’t just about spreadsheets—it’s about building relationships that fuel your mission. This template is your first step toward smarter, more effective fundraising.

Get My Free Donor Database Template