Nonprofit Fundraising & Communications Calendar (Excel)

Tomorrow is GivingTuesday, and for many small comms teams December is the month the calendar holds more than the people can produce.

A habit worth keeping before any campaign month: plan to capacity, not ambition. Count the pieces your team can realistically make each week, multiply by the weeks left, and compare that with what is scheduled. If the plan runs over, defer evergreen content first and protect the ask, the thank-you and the report back to donors. Those three carry the campaign. Most other posts can move to January.

You go into the season knowing what will be cut, before it gets cut for you at midnight.

Our Fundraising & Communications System for Excel and Google Sheets builds this in. You set a posting rhythm, months over capacity are flagged, and lower-priority items are suggested for deferral. In the fictional BrightSteps example, December runs at 107% of capacity and three evergreen posts are recommended for deferral. Each campaign brief has one primary KPI and a required donor follow-up, and an identifiable story can't be marked Ready without documented consent and a dignity review.

It isn't a social media scheduler, and it writes no captions for you.