GivingTuesday Planner for Nonprofits (Excel & Google Sheets)

GivingTuesday falls on December 1, seven weeks from today, and teams that start writing in the final week spend the day catching up.

• The fix is a schedule that counts backwards from giving day:
• Six to seven weeks out: agree the money goal, donor goal, story and any matching gift.
• Four weeks out: decide audiences and the ask for each.
• Two weeks out: draft every email and post, and get them approved.
• The day before: walk through the run of show.
• The days after: thank every donor, oldest gift first.

With that done, the team spends giving day sending, watching and thanking.

Our GivingTuesday Planner for Excel and Google Sheets is built on that sequence. A one-page brief flags any of its 8 required fields still missing, a 60-row task board dates itself backwards ("14" means two weeks before), and a log for up to 300 gifts tracks thank-you status. The readiness score runs 0 to 100 with every weight visible: brief 20, audiences 15, messages 15, channel plan 15, tasks on track 25, giving-day prep 10. In the sample file, four days out, readiness is 80 and the gap is the day-before checklist.

The score measures preparation. It doesn't predict money raised.