Prospect research tracker
Screen many funders against one model.
One payment of $39. Three files you download and keep, with no subscription and no account.
Files
3 files
Formats
Excel and Markdown
Method included
None. That is the course.
Licence
One person, your own work product
Every one of these have a free counterpart published on this site, linked further down so you can take it. What the paid version adds is set out beside each one.
For someone at a small nonprofit deciding which foundations are worth an application, who currently keeps that reasoning in a browser tab, an inbox and their head.
It contains no funder data. There is no list of foundations in this file and no way to supply one that would still be true in a month. If you came for a list, this is not it.
Screen a set of funders against one consistent model, in one file, rank the ones that survive against each other, and be able to say in a year why each was pursued, held or dropped.
Each one is listed with what it does and, more usefully, what its structure forces you to supply. An empty cell in a funder document is a question you have not answered yet.
funder-prospect-research-tracker.xlsx
Excel
Eight sheets: a 200-row prospect register, the scoring sheet, a shortlist ordered by rank, a drop register, a 600-row source log, the gate and factor definitions, setup and a start here.
The screen result on the scoring sheet is read from the gate columns, never typed. There is no cell in the file where you can assert that the gates passed, so a funder that failed one has no total, no band and no place on the shortlist.
run-one-screening-pass.md
Markdown
The procedure for one funder, start to finish, in the order the evidence should be read.
Guidelines first, filing second, and it says why: a filing tells you what a funder has done, and only the current guidelines tell you what they will accept now.
Passages quoted from the files in the pack, not rewritten for this page. This is the standard the whole set is written to.
“A gate you have not checked is not a gate you passed.”
Why not evidenced counts as a fail
Start here, in this kit
“Thresholds chosen afterwards always confirm the decision someone already wanted.”
On setting your own thresholds
Start here, in this kit
“Most funders should not survive the gates.”
What a good screening pass looks like
Run one screening pass, in this kit
Take these first. If they are enough, you have what you need and you should not buy the pack.
Each one downloads directly from this site. No account, no email, no excerpt: the complete working file.
The honest boundary
What you get instead: one file where every funder is screened against the same six gates and eight factors, ordered against each other by score, with the evidence beside each answer and a dated reason behind every decision.
A dropped funder with a written reason is research you never repeat. A dropped funder with no reason comes back next year as somebody's new idea.
Three products, one subject. This one is the instrument; the others teach the research behind it.
The instrument. It runs the published model across up to 200 funders, orders them against each other, and keeps the evidence.
The method, including the funder research field guide: how to read a filing, where the answers live, and what a weak answer looks like.
See the courseThe course plus the ten-sheet working workbook, which carries funder research inside the whole proposal system rather than on its own.
See the courseOne named person may use these files for their own work, on as many funders as they like. The licence covers the work you produce, not the files themselves, so passing the blank workbook to another organisation is not included. The full wording is on the terms page.
No, and it says so on the first sheet. There is no list of foundations in this file. We could not supply one that would still be true in a month, and a stale list is worse than none. You supply the funders; the file holds the screening.
Same model, different instrument. The free matrix screens one funder per copy of the file, which is fine for one funder and unusable for twenty, because twenty copies cannot be compared with each other. This runs the model across a 200-row register, gives every scored funder a rank against every other one, fills a shortlist and a drop register from it, refuses to score a funder that failed a gate, and keeps the evidence and the dated reason behind every decision. Both free files are linked on this page.
No. It has a procedure for running a screening pass in the right order, but the research method, including how to read a filing and what a weak answer looks like, is the funder research field guide inside the course.
Yes, on the Setup sheet, in one place that every band on every sheet reads. The file tells you to set them before you score a specific funder rather than after. Pursue at 22 of 32 and hold at 16 are the published defaults, not rules.
It should, and here is exactly what has been checked. Every one of its formulas uses the long established spreadsheet functions, and the build fails if a dynamic-array or version-gated function appears anywhere in the file, so nothing in it depends on a recent Excel. That is a check on the file rather than a test run in three applications: nobody has opened this workbook in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice in turn, and saying so is more useful to you than a claim nobody stood behind.
$39
One payment of $39. Three files you download and keep, with no subscription and no account.
Secure checkout by Lemon Squeezy. Instant digital delivery. One-time payment, files you keep.
Questions before buying? Write to hello@thedigitalkit.co and a human answers.
Your privacy choices
We use optional analytics to improve the site and understand how people find us. Change your choice any time from the footer. Read our privacy policy.
