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The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration

Excel course for fundraisers and grant managers

Fundraisers, development officers and grant managers use Excel to analyse giving, follow grants and report results. This guide selects the teaching in The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration for that work: donor list cleaning, giving-level formulas, gifts by donor, campaign and year in PivotTables, a grants calendar, budget against actual modelling and a campaign dashboard.

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Taught by Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

What you will be able to do

At work, you will be able to:

  • Use date grouping and slicers in PivotTables to explore how gifts vary by donor, campaign and year.
  • Build a gift pyramid by assigning giving levels with nested IF or IFS, then using COUNTIFS for donor counts and SUMIFS for gift totals at each level.
  • Prepare donor records for analysis by removing duplicates, clearing stray spaces with TRIM and separating names with Flash Fill or Text to Columns.
  • Maintain a grants calendar for applications, deadlines and reports due, using status drop-downs, overdue highlighting and remaining working days.
  • Compare spending with each grant's budget through variance and percent variance, with KPI cards and slicers to explore the results.
  • Present campaign performance through charts, KPI cards, slicers and a timeline on a dashboard, calculating return on investment with IFERROR.

Projects

What you will build.

The course has 14 projects. These four matter most here.

  • Marketing dashboard in Excel with slicers at work (MarketPulse): KPI cards, a spend against revenue chart and a monthly ring, filtered to one channel by the Channel and Campaign slicers.

    Project 08

    MarketPulse

    One screen that shows which campaigns earn back their spend.

    Assess fundraising appeals through PivotTables, charts, KPI cards, slicers and a timeline, using ROI calculated with IFERROR to identify appeals that bring in more than they cost.

  • Excel PivotTables and a PivotChart of sales data (SalesPlusPerformance): net sales by product category as a column chart, with State, Region and City filters.

    Project 05

    SalesPlusPerformance

    A sales question answered in seconds, straight from the order data.

    Explore donor gifts across campaigns and years with a few clicks: group dates by year and use slicers to select an appeal.

  • Task tracker in Excel (TaskFlow): start and due dates, status, priority and a progress bar for each task, with working days left, days past due and unfinished high-priority tasks highlighted.

    Project 07

    TaskFlow

    One sheet that shows what is done, what is late and what is urgent.

    Keep grant applications and reports on a calendar with drop-down statuses and coloured overdue items. A deadline timeline and remaining working days show when each is due.

  • Budget vs actual dashboard in Excel (FinanceGuard): total budget, actuals and variance cards above a monthly line chart and a column chart by department.

    Project 09

    FinanceGuard

    The budget vs actual report finance teams send every month.

    Read a grant's spending alongside its budget on a dashboard, comparing individual lines through monetary and percentage variances.

Lessons

The lessons that matter, in course order.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration has 186 lessons. This page picks out 55 of them, 4 h 49 min of video. Each lesson keeps its number in the course.

Where to start

Lesson 19 Excel tables

If donor or grant lists are already part of your Excel work, start with Lesson 19 to get the data clean first. The lessons here include the whole of Managing data in Excel, available free by email with its practice files when requested on the course page. For a first introduction to Excel, start at Lesson 1. If you regularly use tables and PivotTables, head to Lesson 105 for campaign reporting or Lesson 115 for grant budgets.

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55 of 186 lessons · 4 h 49 min

03 Managing data in Excel: sort, filter and tables (Dunder Michael Paper employee database) 9 lessons · 1 h 1 min Practise on an employee database to learn the techniques for maintaining donor lists. Organise records in Excel Tables, sort and filter them, clean them with TRIM and Find and Replace, remove duplicates and separate names with Flash Fill and Text to Columns. Frozen headers and printing complete the list work.
  1. 19 Start here Excel tables Create and format a table, structured references and total row 8 min
  2. 20 Sorting data in Excel Single and multi-level sort on an employee database 6 min
  3. 21 Filtering data in Excel AutoFilter, text and number filters on employee data 10 min
  4. 22 Cleaning data in Excel TRIM, Paste Special values and Find and Replace 13 min
  5. 23 Remove duplicates in Excel Find and delete duplicate rows in an employee list 6 min
  6. 24 Flash Fill in Excel Split first and last names automatically 3 min
  7. 25 Text to Columns in Excel Split data by delimiter into separate columns 6 min
  8. 26 Freeze panes in Excel Lock header rows and columns while scrolling 3 min
  9. 27 Printing in Excel Print area, page orientation, scaling and page layout 6 min
04 Essential formulas and functions (IF, SUMIF and more) 7 of 13 lessons · 45 min Count donors and total their giving at each level with COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, SUMIF and SUMIFS. Set those levels with nested IF and IFS, use AND and OR to test donor conditions in pairs, and check completeness with COUNT and COUNTA.
  1. 31 Nested IF and IFS in Excel Customer value tiers with nested IF 6 min
  2. 32 Nested IF and IFS in Excel Sales performance labels with the IFS function 5 min
  3. 33 AND and OR with IF in Excel Flag high-value deals with multiple conditions 8 min
  4. 34 SUM, COUNT and COUNTA in Excel SUM with FILTER and counting numbers with COUNT 7 min
  5. 35 SUM, COUNT and COUNTA in Excel COUNTA, unique counts and completeness checks 4 min
  6. 36 SUMIF and COUNTIF in Excel Conditional sum and count with one criterion 8 min
  7. 37 SUMIFS and COUNTIFS in Excel Sum and count with multiple criteria 7 min
07 PivotTables and PivotCharts: data analysis made easy 10 lessons · 33 min Learn on sales orders how PivotTables, PivotCharts and slicers can break gifts down by donor, campaign, month or year. Refresh the analysis after adding new gifts.
  1. 57 PivotTables 101 in Excel What a PivotTable does and the sales dataset 5 min
  2. 58 Preparing data for PivotTables Clean data with TRIM, PROPER, find and replace 5 min
  3. 59 Create your first PivotTable in Excel Insert a PivotTable from a sales table 1 min
  4. 60 PivotTable fields in Excel Rows, values, columns and Value Field Settings 2 min
  5. 61 PivotTable summaries in Excel Sales by product category and grouping by date 4 min
  6. 62 Slicers in Excel Filter PivotTables with clickable buttons 3 min
  7. 63 PivotCharts in Excel Create interactive charts from a PivotTable 5 min
  8. 64 PivotTable design Tab Report layouts, PivotTable styles and number formats 5 min
  9. 65 Refresh a PivotTable in Excel Update pivots when source data changes 2 min
  10. 66 Excel Ninja Challenge PivotTable sales by region, category and monthly trend 1 min
09 Project: task automation with data validation and forms 9 lessons · 49 min Adapt TaskFlow to a grants calendar with a protected sheet and a Gantt-style timeline. Status and priority drop-downs organise the entries, highlights mark overdue and completed items, and NETWORKDAYS with TODAY calculates working days remaining.
  1. 79 TaskFlow project tracker in Excel Overview of the task tracker dashboard 4 min
  2. 80 Designing a task tracker in Excel TaskFlow layout, columns and headers 5 min
  3. 81 Data validation in Excel Status and priority drop-down lists in TaskFlow 8 min
  4. 82 Conditional formatting in Excel Highlight overdue and completed tasks 8 min
  5. 83 Gantt chart in Excel Build a project timeline with conditional formatting 6 min
  6. 84 Data bars and icon sets in Excel Visual priority and progress in TaskFlow 6 min
  7. 85 NETWORKDAYS and TODAY in Excel Days remaining and task deadlines in TaskFlow 5 min
  8. 86 Protect a sheet and lock cells in Excel Secure the TaskFlow tracker workbook 4 min
  9. 87 Testing an Excel task tracker Stress test TaskFlow with sample data 3 min
11 MarketPulse campaign intelligence dashboard 10 lessons · 50 min Build the MarketPulse view from cleaned and checked campaign data, planning KPIs with ChatGPT and Copilot. Calculate return on investment and conversion rate with IFERROR, then bring together PivotTables, charts, a timeline, KPI cards and slicers. The teaching uses marketing campaigns; the dashboard also suits appeal results.
  1. 105 MarketPulse marketing dashboard in Excel Project overview and campaign data 4 min
  2. 106 Clean and check marketing data in Excel Remove duplicates, Copilot KPI plan 4 min
  3. 107 Plan a marketing dashboard with ChatGPT KPIs and the PivotTable strategy 4 min
  4. 108 Marketing PivotTables in Excel Build the MarketPulse pivot back end 6 min
  5. 109 CTR, conversion rate and ROI in Excel Marketing KPI formulas with IFERROR 4 min
  6. 110 PivotTables with Copilot Generate and verify marketing pivots in Excel 6 min
  7. 111 Marketing charts and a timeline in Excel MarketPulse dashboard PivotCharts 4 min
  8. 112 KPI cards in Excel Marketing KPI cards for the MarketPulse dashboard 7 min
  9. 113 Slicers for an Excel dashboard Interactive filtering in MarketPulse 4 min
  10. 114 Polish an Excel marketing dashboard Final formatting and insights in MarketPulse 9 min
12 Project: FinanceGuard budget variance analyser (budget vs actual Excel dashboard) 10 lessons · 52 min Use FinanceGuard's approach for a grant budget as well as a departmental budget. Budget and actual tables feed a SUMIFS and dynamic array model, with coloured number formats for variance and percent variance. Read the results through PivotTables, KPI cards, a combo chart and slicers.
  1. 115 FinanceGuard budget vs actual dashboard Excel project overview 3 min
  2. 116 Excel tables for budget and actual data Organise the FinanceGuard datasets 4 min
  3. 117 Budget vs actual model in Excel SORT, UNIQUE, VSTACK, LET, TEXTSPLIT, SUMIFS 8 min
  4. 118 Budget variance in Excel Calculate variance and percent variance 4 min
  5. 119 Custom number formats in Excel Show budget variances with colours and signs 2 min
  6. 120 PivotTables for budget vs actual The FinanceGuard pivot workspace 8 min
  7. 121 KPI cards in Excel Summary cards for a budget variance dashboard 4 min
  8. 122 Budget vs actual charts in Excel Combo chart with secondary axis for variance 5 min
  9. 123 Slicers and PivotCharts in Excel Interactive FinanceGuard budget dashboard 4 min
  10. 124 Finish the FinanceGuard dashboard in Excel Final polish and variance insights 10 min

Instructors

Who teaches it.

Virginia Thorn smiling at the camera, dark hair tied back, wearing a navy top.

Instructor, Excel with AI

Virginia Thorn

Emmy Award winner. Teaches Excel with AI at Coding Liquids.

Questions

Asked before starting.

Which Excel course teaches skills for fundraisers?

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration from Coding Liquids covers Excel skills used in fundraising and grant work. These include preparing clean donor lists, assigning giving levels with IFS and analysing gifts by donor, campaign and year with PivotTables. The same lessons serve a grants calendar kept in the TaskFlow tracker, spending set against a grant budget with the FinanceGuard model and campaign reporting on the pattern of the MarketPulse dashboard. This guide selects 55 lessons, taking 4 hours 49 minutes from the course's 16 hours.

Will fundraisers learn about donor databases or Gift Aid in this course?

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration covers Excel, not donor management systems, fundraising regulation or tax relief schemes such as Gift Aid. Its teaching applies to data exported from a donor database into Excel, where you clean it, segment it and report on it.

How can a fundraiser create a gift pyramid in Excel?

Combine the techniques taught in The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: assign a giving level to each donor using nested IF or IFS, count donors within each level with COUNTIFS and add their gifts with SUMIFS. Display the levels in a PivotTable or chart. The teaching uses sales data to create customer value tiers, and the same approach applies to giving levels.

Can a grant manager compare a grant's budget with its spending?

Yes. FinanceGuard in The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration teaches a model using separate tables for budget lines and spending. SUMIFS adds the spending for each line, while variance and percentage columns reveal amounts under or over budget. KPI cards and slicers help you read the comparison. The example is a company budget, and the model also applies to a grant.

Excel with AI

See the whole course.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: 16 hours of video in 186 lessons, built around 14 projects, with lifetime access, a Certificate of Completion and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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