Use Excel's AI to Build a Fundraising Dashboard

What This Does

Copilot in Excel analyzes your giving data and builds a fundraising progress dashboard — showing total raised by segment (major gifts, grants, annual fund, events), progress toward goal, and monthly trends — without requiring you to know pivot table formulas.

Before You Start

• You have Microsoft Excel with Copilot enabled (requires Microsoft 365 Business Standard or higher)
• Your giving data is in Excel with column headers: Date, Donor Name, Gift Amount, Fund/Segment, Gift Type
• The Copilot button appears in your Excel Home ribbon (far right)

Steps

1. Export and open your giving data in Excel

Export your gift records from your donor CRM (Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, or Salesforce) to Excel. Make sure the data includes: date, donor, amount, fund designation, and gift type (individual, grant, event revenue, corporate).

2. Format as a table

Select your data range and press Ctrl+T to format as an Excel table. This helps Copilot understand the data structure. Give the table a name like "GivingData" in the Table Design tab.

3. Open Copilot

Click the Copilot button in the Home ribbon (right side). The Copilot sidebar opens.

4. Request your dashboard summary

Type your request in the Copilot chat:

• "Show me total giving by month for this fiscal year as a bar chart"
• "Create a summary table showing total raised and number of donors by fund segment"
• "Calculate our progress toward a $500,000 annual goal by fund type"

5. Build the full dashboard

Continue with more requests:

• "Which 10 donors gave the most this year? Show as a table."
• "What percentage of giving came from grants vs. individual donors vs. events?"
• "Create a chart showing monthly giving trend vs. last year"

For each request, click Add to sheet when Copilot generates the result.

What you should see: A sheet with multiple summary tables and charts, automatically populated from your raw data. Troubleshooting: If Copilot misidentifies your columns, specify them explicitly: "The gift amount is in column D, the fund segment is in column F."

Real Example

Scenario: Your board meeting is in 3 days and you need to present Q3 fundraising results vs. goal, but your giving data is in a flat Excel export and you don't have time to build pivot tables.

What you type: "Create a Q3 fundraising summary showing: total raised by segment (major gifts, grants, annual fund, events), progress toward $500,000 annual goal, and top 5 gifts received. Include a comparison to Q3 last year."

What you get: A formatted summary table with the breakdowns you requested, ready to paste into your board PowerPoint — in 5 minutes.

Tips

• Save the resulting dashboard workbook as your monthly template — export fresh data each month, paste it into the "GivingData" tab, and ask Copilot to "refresh the dashboard with the updated data"
• Ask Copilot "What trends do you see in this data that I should flag for my board?" for a plain-English narrative you can include in your board report email
• Use this dashboard monthly, not just for board meetings — the visibility into giving patterns helps you make better stewardship and outreach decisions

Tool interfaces change — if a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.