Community Games Funding Excel - Free Template

1. Open the Funding Tracker sheet and add one row for each event or project. Enter the area or county committee, county, contact person, event name and grant source.
2. Enter the application date and the amount requested in euro. Use the date format DD/MM/YYYY and enter amounts such as €2,500.00 rather than mixing figures and text.
3. Update Amount Approved when the funder confirms its decision, then record Amount Received when the money reaches the committee bank account.
4. Enter Expenditure to Date after invoices, receipts or payments have been checked. The Balance Remaining and % of Request Approved columns provide the working summary for the row.
5. Choose the appropriate Status, such as pending, approved or rejected, and keep it updated whenever the application moves forward.
6. Use Grant Sources to record the funder's name, relevant contact details and notes about the scheme. Check the funder's own guidance before entering a deadline or eligibility note.
7. Open Dashboard before a committee meeting to review the charts, then read Instructions if another volunteer is taking over the workbook.

At application time

A county committee volunteer often has several events moving at once: an athletics final, a swimming gala, an arts competition or a team travelling to a national stage. The Funding Tracker gives each project its own row, so a Cork committee can distinguish an U-14 athletics final from a separate equipment request instead of combining both under one vague grant total.

Start a fresh review at the beginning of the Community Games season. If four local areas each submit two applications, the committee already has eight lines to monitor, with a contact person and county attached to every item. That is much easier to discuss than a shared email inbox containing eight different versions of a budget.

When the committee reviews commitments

Use Amount Requested for the original application, Amount Approved for the funder's decision and Amount Received for the bank receipt. For example, if a county committee requests €3,000, receives approval for €2,400 and has been paid €2,400, the approval percentage is 80%. If €1,050 has been spent on venue hire, medals and transport, the remaining balance is €1,350.

The distinction between approved and received matters. An approved grant is not yet available cash, so the treasurer should not treat it as money in the bank when planning a July event.

For treasurers and handovers

The volunteer treasurer can update expenditure after the weekly payment run, while an event coordinator supplies the supporting figures. A bookkeeper helping a small committee can then review the whole pipeline before the monthly meeting rather than reconstructing it from WhatsApp messages.

Image 1 shows the Funding Tracker layout: the teal header row runs from Area / County Committee through % of Request Approved, with the input fields and calculated funding fields arranged across the row. Image 2 shows Grant Sources, while images 3 and 4 show the Dashboard and Instructions sheets.

The same review rhythm also fits a weekly collection record when the committee needs a clear audit trail before the monthly meeting.

Read the funder's conditions first

There is no single national deadline or approval rate for every Community Games funding scheme. Each local authority, sports partnership, sponsor or national body sets its own eligible costs, matching-funding rules, closing date and evidence requirements, so record the actual scheme name in Grant Source rather than writing only grant.

A practical control is to save the application form, approval email and payment confirmation with a matching file name. If the application is for €5,000 and the funder approves €4,000, the committee should retain the decision showing whether the €1,000 shortfall must be funded locally or removed from the event plan.

Keep the financial evidence together

Community groups should retain invoices, receipts, bank statements and grant correspondence for the period required by the funder and by their own accounting records. My clear preference is to link every expenditure total to a simple receipt folder and payment reference; an unexplained €620 total is much harder to defend than four invoices adding to €620.

Where the committee is a registered charity or company, its constitution, funder terms and reporting obligations may require additional records. A company making statutory filings deals with the CRO, the Companies Registration Office, while a charity may also have reporting duties to the Charities Regulator. This workbook does not replace those filings.

Protect volunteer and participant information

The Funding Tracker contains a Contact Person field, not a participant register. Do not add children's names, medical details or unnecessary PPS numbers to this file. Under GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, collect only information needed for the funding task, restrict access and delete it under the committee's retention policy.

For example, a funder may need the treasurer's name and email but not the date of birth of 40 young athletes. Keep any participant information in the approved safeguarding system, not beside grant amounts on a shared spreadsheet.

Approved funding is mistaken for available cash

The most expensive error I see is treating Amount Approved as Amount Received. A committee may have €6,000 approved for a summer programme but only €3,000 paid before supplier invoices fall due. If it commits the full amount too early, the treasurer may need to find €3,000 temporarily from unrestricted funds.

Enter the bank receipt separately and review the difference at every meeting. A grant promise and a cleared bank payment are two different control points.

Several events are hidden in one line

Putting an athletics final, a football tournament and a transport project into one row makes the expenditure figure useless. Suppose the combined request is €8,000, but €5,500 relates to transport and €2,500 to facilities. When transport costs rise by €700, the committee cannot see which activity is responsible or whether a restricted grant can be moved between them.

Use one row per event or project and keep the Event / Project wording consistent. Do not create a new spelling for the same event every time a volunteer updates it, because inconsistent labels make the Dashboard harder to interpret.

Receipts are not matched to the total

Entering €1,850 in Expenditure to Date without retaining the underlying receipts leaves a gap when the funder requests a final report. A €450 bus invoice, €900 venue invoice and €500 equipment invoice explain €1,850; three rounded estimates do not.

Another common problem is a status that never changes from pending. The committee then spends time chasing applications that were approved months earlier. At month end, filter or review Status and update it from the approval email, rejection notice or bank statement.

Personal data is copied into the wrong place

Volunteer files are often emailed beyond the original committee. Adding participant names or children's details to a funding tracker increases the impact of a lost laptop or misdirected email without improving the grant calculation. Keep this workbook to committee, project and financial information, and use password protection or a restricted shared drive where appropriate.

Attach the update to an existing meeting

Choose one fixed point rather than waiting for someone to remember the file. The simplest routine is a 20-minute review before the monthly treasurer's report: check new applications, update decisions, match receipts and confirm that Amount Received agrees with the bank statement.

At the end of the meeting, assign one named person to each missing item. If six rows need follow-up and each takes five minutes, the committee has a visible 30-minute action list instead of a vague promise to chase grants.

Use a small number of consistent controls

• Use the same event naming pattern, such as Cork U-14 Athletics Final, for every update.
• Enter dates as DD/MM/YYYY and all amounts as numbers formatted in euro, not text copied from an email.
• Keep the source approval email and receipt folder named with the same event and grant source as the row.
• Before circulating the workbook, remove unnecessary personal information and give editing access only to the people who update it.

My preference is to update the tracker when the bank payment is posted, not when a volunteer expects payment. That keeps Amount Received tied to a verifiable transaction and avoids overstating funds by even €1.

Know when Excel is no longer enough

This workbook is suitable for a manageable pipeline. If the committee reaches 100 active applications, has several bank accounts, needs approval workflows or wants every invoice linked to a transaction, move to dedicated grant or accounting software rather than creating ten more tabs.

Export a final copy at year end and retain it with the committee records. A spreadsheet that is reviewed monthly and archived after the season is more useful than a larger system that volunteers stop updating after two weeks.