Microsoft Scenario Library Nonprofit Give teams quick access to insights and financial information

Available with: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio

Nonprofit scenario: Give teams quick access to insights and financial information

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Scenario

By automating routine financial tasks, nonprofit teams can save time, reduce errors, and get a clearer picture of how their funds are being used. Proactive anomaly and exception detection ensures nonprofits can resources on mission-driven work while maintaining compliance and donor trust.

1. Upload and query regional budget data

A new finance employee shares links to recent fundraising invoices directly into Copilot. They can then use natural language to ask questions like “Show me patterns in recent invoice approvals.”

Analyst icon

Analyst

Benefit: Save hours on manual data entry and review and provide immediate, actionable insights into spending and approvals.

2. Proactive anomaly detection

An agent scans budget and expense data for unusual spending patterns. The agent flags anomalies and alerts the finance team, helping preparing overspending and ensuring compliance.

Microsoft Copilot Studio icon

AI Agent

Benefit: Reduces errors, prevents overspending, and ensures financial records are always up to date.

3. Streamline invoice reconciliation

The employee can also request an agent’s help to monitor invoices—automatically detecting and resolving invoice exceptions using AI-driven validation, matching, and correction.

Microsoft Copilot Studio icon

AI Agent

Benefit: Reduce manual effort, improve accuracy, and empower staff to focus on mission-driven work while maintaining transparency and donor trust

4. Uncover strategic insight

Now, the employee asks the agent for a summary of fundraising spend versus budget for the quarter.

Microsoft Copilot Studio icon

AI Agent

Benefit: Supports better planning and decision-making with real-time analytics, helping the organization allocate resources more effectively.

5. Present crucial data to aid decision making

The finance employee can now get help from Office Agent to build a presentation that recommends future resource allocation, based on the agent’s work to identify key expenses and budget variances.

Benefit: Help leaders make informed, data-driven decisions about resource allocation, improving planning and maximizing operational impact.

KPIs

Opportunity to impact key functional area KPIs

How Microsoft Copilot can help improve expense ratios

The administrative expense ratio measures the percentage of an organization’s expenses that are being allocated to administrative costs. This helps measure the direct impact of a charity’s program relative to the cost required to run it to help donors identify high-impact charities.

How Microsoft Copilot can help increase volunteer retention

Measure the organization’s success with reducing attrition and increasing repeat volunteerism.

How Microsoft Copilot can help improve program impact

Define a program’s theory of change, monitoring and evaluation goals, and deliver impact faster.

How Microsoft Copilot can help improve fundraising ROI

Fundraising ROI is the ratio of net funds raised divided by fundraising costs.

1Access Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat at m365copilot.com, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat mobile app and set toggle to “Web”.

2Access Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat at m365copilot.com, the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat mobile app, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat app in Teams, and set toggle to “Work”.

3AI Agents allow Copilot to access your organization-specific apps. In the past this would have required an API call to get data from a system of record.

The content in this example scenario is for demonstration purposes only. You should evaluate how Copilot aligns with your organization’s business processes, regulatory requirements, and responsible AI principles.