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Answer by Aaron Gertler 🔸3
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I just use a spreadsheet. It's not fancy or particularly efficient, but I like how easy it is to add new columns, create graphs, add notes, etc. Flexibility beats speed for me, since it's not like the data entry takes much time anyway. (This doesn't answer your request for a "better" method, but it answers the top-level question!) 

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Laurin1
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Yeah that is what I have been doing as well, thanks! I am considering building something a bit more sophisticated, would love to get your feedback once I have something more concrete :) 

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by Laurin
1 min read7 answers 0

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Hi all, 

I have been part of the EA community for some time now. I have been keeping track of my donations in an Excel spreadsheet but I am starting to find this a bit tedious. I'd be curious to hear if there are some better options to track donations? I am even considering to build a small tool to make it easy to track my own donations and maybe even share your personal stats online (e.g. on your company website/personal website) to create social proof and inspire others. 

 

Would love to hear your thoughts on how you are managing your donations and what your challenges are with it and how you are solving them :) 

-Laurin

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Kevin Ulug

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I use the Giving What We Can pledge tracker. If you take the 'Try Giving' option you might be able to access it: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/

Laurin1
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Yeah I have seen that as well, thanks for sharing! Do you know if you can actually share that publicly as well? 

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Kevin Ulug
If it's possible to share I don't know how. I suspect not. It does have a summary chart that you could screenshot every once and a while: "You have donated $X  and fulfilled Y% of your pledge", for one each year and one for all time.

Aaron Gertler 🔸

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I just use a spreadsheet. It's not fancy or particularly efficient, but I like how easy it is to add new columns, create graphs, add notes, etc. Flexibility beats speed for me, since it's not like the data entry takes much time anyway. (This doesn't answer your request for a "better" method, but it answers the top-level question!) 

Laurin1
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Yeah that is what I have been doing as well, thanks! I am considering building something a bit more sophisticated, would love to get your feedback once I have something more concrete :) 

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Laurin

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Thanks for your feedback everyone. I have been thinking about this over the past days and created a small prototype of how to solve this problem better and why we might want to find a better way to solve it. 

I created a different post in this forum about it here: 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BB4ybaGZArwAmfqNX/inspiring-others-to-do-good

Would love to get your thoughts and continue the discussion there. 

-Laurin

Ahmad Abugosh

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I was thinking of the same thing myself! There are many personal expense budget tracker apps, but I haven't come across any charity or impact budget trackers. I'm currently just using Google sheets, but I'm actually a developer so I was also thinking of developing my own app to share with the community.  Let me know if you want to work on it together! 

-Ahmad

Laurin2
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Would love to stay in touch, I am pretty new to development but I some 'product' experience so would love to exchange ideas and get some feedback from you once I have something down. :) 

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Daniel Duvanå

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I’ve built a Glide app (a no code platform: https://www.glideapps.com ) based on a Google Sheet for me and a couple of friends to keep track of our donations. I’ve automated monthly donations and currency conversion in google sheets. If anyone is interested I can share the sheet file and make the Glide app copy-able. Here are some screenshots: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mlY6Td6yi53grzqoZg6ippF-g-nntxdp/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NzhYX2N6GBEEm37W4L3x7Q9lA8MZlqWO/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m22TulPl9hcUUnJg_s2DMdhLKNNy96QU/view?usp=drivesdk

It’s all swedish, but I think you get the idea. Since it is a webapp it is easy to share with others and I have made it easy to register new donations.

Laurin2
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Very cool project! Would definitely love to have a look at the app itself that you build. If it's not too much work to share it in any way, I would definitely appreciate it. Did you build it in a way in which you can also share the webapp link directly? E.g. via your personal website?

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Daniel Duvanå
Yes, I can share the app with a link directly, however the way I've built it right now people with the link can not only see our donations, but edit some stuff as well, so I don't want to share it outside our group right now. But I'm starting to realize that I might want to change that so it's easier to share progress with people outside our group. It's not really practical to share on your personal website as en embedd or something like that though. Instead it's a stand alone web app. I might make a template that others can use if anyone would be interested.  Do you have any ideas for features or something in particular you're looking for?  

🔸✨BSman ✨🔸

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I now do (almost*) all my donations through a donor-advised fund which has tax and convenience advantages I discussed in this post.  It automatically keeps a record of all my donations.  It's not a public record, just for my info.  [Edited to clarify that Giving What We Can offers you a "dashboard" to record donations, but unlike whether you have taken the pledge the exact donations you have recorded are not public].

*I occasionally donate to facebook fundraisers or other "one off" donations that I don't do through the DAF and these I don't track anywhere. 

Laurin1
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Thanks for the insight. I didn't know that the GWWC pledge tracker is something that you can share publicly. I thought it was just your personal dashboard to keep track of it. 

Do you share your GWWC pledge tracker with others or do you keep it private? I'd be curious to hear what your reasons for either option are! 

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🔸✨BSman ✨🔸
Sorry, I was unclear! GWWC's list of members who have taken the pledge is public but yes the dashboard is (as far as I can tell) just for you to record donations privately.  

Jaime Sevilla

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I use Ayuda Efectiva to donate. 

They automatically manage your portfolio of donations to the charities they support (AMF, Malaria Consortium, SCI Foundation, Deworm the World and Hellen Keller International; I think more are coming later) and keep track of the donations you made, as well as their expected social impact.

They only operate in Spain, so if you want to get a fiscal deduction and live elsewhere you are out of luck. But I think it is a great model, and I wish it would be copied elsewhere!

Laurin1
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Thanks for the help! :) Do you share your donations in public anywhere as well? 

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Jaime Sevilla
There exists the option of generating a personalized invitation to join Ayuda Efectiva where you show information on your impact so far. It doesn't explicitly say the amount donated.
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