Why do I need a pivot table?

Well, picture this; you’ve got tonnes of data about your supporters. You’ve got the donations they’ve made, the raffle tickets they’ve bought, the fun runs and bake sales they’ve sweated over, and so much more.

In fact you have a badly finished Sudoku puzzle of numbers in front of you, and you need to make sense of it.

Sound familiar? Then think… pivot table!

A pivot table can take that jumble of information and transform it into a clear, organised, and easy-to-understand report. No more head scratching over endless rows and columns – with the use of a good pivot table you can have valuable insights at your fingertips – instantly.

Imagine you want to know which campaigns got the most donations or which donors are the most generous. With pivot tables, you can sort and group your data instantly. You just drag and drop, and voilà! You’ve got a beautiful table showing the sum of donations for each campaign or the total contributions from each donor.

But there’s much more, if you want to see your data in a different way, you can. By shuffling rows with columns, you can change the calculations as quickly as you can change your mind.

Pivot tables also come with charts and graphs which you can use to visually express your insights, making presentations a dream. With pivot tables, exploring your charity data becomes an adventure. You can dive deep into the numbers, discover trends, uncover patterns, and maybe even spot a donor or two that deserves some extra appreciation.

There are helpful tutorials online, but I’m always happy to include pivot tables in my training sessions if you want a bit more help and lots of people do!