Everybody needs to use numbers to do analysis. Whether you are tracking volunteer hours, counting donor dollars, or planning spending for the month, you need to keep track of numbers and use them to plan for the future. Excel can be used to conduct planning, manage budgets, create charts, analyze usage data, and keep records.

Take this workshop if you only use Excel’s most basic functions. You will learn ways to store and manipulate data, to help you make decisions and report to your manager or your board.

Afterward, you will likely find that your newfound skills allow you to save hours every week that you used to spend scratching your head over a calculator, freeing you up to do what you really love.

Learning objectives

• Create a new workbook and new worksheets in your workbook
• Understand and use some of the different cell formats, like text, currency, percentage, date, and time
• Use cell references to do calculations
• Use basic functions, like SUM() and AVERAGE()
• Convert a data table into a chart

What to bring
Bring your laptop to this interactive session.

Who should attend
People who are beginners with Excel.

Instructor
Maria Lahiffe, VO’s Education Officer, has a rich background in data analysis and education. She started her career as an Environmental Engineer, where she managed wilderness monitoring projects which collected data remotely every 15 minutes for 7 months per year. She analyzed all that data each winter and turned it into slick reports. After that, she spent 13 years in K-12 education, where she honed her skills in simplifying difficult topics. Maria is a confirmed data nerd who loves helping others learn how much valuable information can be extracted from data.