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 (most organizations buy the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on; smaller ones may have free basic access; ask IT if you're not sure)
• Your giving data is in Excel with column headers: Date, Donor Name, Gift Amount, Fund/Segment, Gift Type
• The Copilot icon appears in the lower-right corner of the Excel window

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. Check your headers (and optionally format as a table)

Copilot reads your column headers to understand the data, so make sure each column has a clear, unique header and there are no merged cells, subtotals, or empty rows. Formatting as a table is no longer required, but it is still worth doing: select your data range, press Ctrl+T, and give the table a name like "GivingData" in the Table Design tab so ranges stay stable as you add gifts.

3. Open Copilot

Click the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of the Excel window. The Copilot sidebar opens on the right. Microsoft moved Copilot off the Home ribbon to this corner button; press F6 to reach it by keyboard (Alt+C on Windows or Cmd+Ctrl+I on Mac where those shortcuts have rolled out), or right-click the corner button and choose Move to ribbon if you prefer the old placement.

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.