TL;DR
- Most nonprofits don’t have a data problem. They have an infrastructure problem.
- AIM went from scattered spreadsheets to a real-time executive dashboard in six to eight weeks.
- They used the Virtuous Nonprofit Benchmark Report to set goals and measure against sector averages.
- The result: a board with confidence and a leadership team that could finally make decisions with data behind them.
If your board is asking questions you can’t answer in real time, you probably don’t have a data problem.
It’s more of an infrastructure problem.
Most nonprofits are sitting on more donor data than they realize. The issue is that it’s scattered across spreadsheets, siloed in different systems, and rarely measured the same way twice. That makes it nearly impossible to spot trends, justify decisions, or give your board the confidence they’re looking for.
We’ve seen this play out over and over again. And we’ve also seen what changes when organizations build the right reporting foundation.
That’s exactly what the team at Agape International Missions (AIM) did. AIM is a nonprofit dedicated to rescuing and restoring survivors of sex trafficking. Their fundraising data was living in a patchwork of Google Docs, Excel files, and one-off reports. Nothing tracked the same way month over month.
Michelle Lundberg, AIM’s CRM Administrator, led the effort to change that. Emily Butler, AIM’s Chief Strategy Officer, helped define what the organization actually needed to measure and brought the right stakeholders into the room to shape the work.
Using Virtuous CRM+, Virtuous Analytics, and the Virtuous Nonprofit Benchmark Report, AIM went from anecdotal reporting to a real-time executive dashboard that their board trusts and celebrates.
In this post, I’ll walk through the six steps they took to get there, so you can turn your data into a dashboard that gets used daily.
6 Steps AIM Used to Build a Dashboard Their Board Trusts
Step 1: Get Honest About What Your Current Reporting Actually Costs You
The first step toward better data is about taking an honest look at what your current reporting is costing your team in time, credibility, and missed opportunities.
For AIM, the cost was real. Their fundraising data lived in a patchwork of Google Docs, Excel files, and one-off graphs. Each report was helpful in isolation. None of them told the same story month over month.
Michelle explained to us, “We had a lot of one-off spreadsheets. Graphs that were helpful to a degree, but nothing that was really measuring the same metrics over time. And it was pretty time-consuming to create those.”
That kind of setup doesn’t just slow down reporting. It slows down everything: how quickly you can respond to a dip in donor retention, how clearly you can present organizational health to your board, and how confidently your team can act on what the data is showing.
Your move: Before you build anything, document where your data currently lives. Then ask yourself: Can I answer these three questions right now?
- What is our [insert fundraising metric here] this month?
- How does it compare to last month?
- How does it compare to this time last year?
If you can’t answer all three in minutes, your current system isn’t pulling its weight.
Step 2: Define What “Organizational Health” Means to Your Team
This is where most dashboard projects stall out. Teams jump straight to building reports before they’ve agreed on what they’re actually trying to measure. The result? Dashboards that nobody looks at.
AIM approached this differently. Before Michelle touched a single report, Emily brought together board members, C-suite leaders, and frontline fundraising staff around one question: What demonstrates that this organization is healthy?
Emily described this: “The big question we were trying to get to is what gives our board, what gives our leadership, confidence that we are healthy and moving forward from a fundraising perspective.”
That collaborative process led AIM to focus on seven core KPIs drawn from the 2025 Virtuous Nonprofit Benchmark Report:
- Donor retention
- Average and median gift
- Donor expansion
- Recurring giving
- Portfolio balance
- New donor acquisition
- Donor lifetime value
Together, these metrics paint a complete picture of whether a fundraising program is healthy, growing, and sustainable.
Your move: Schedule a 60-minute working session with key stakeholders before you build anything. Ask each person: “What’s the one number that, if you saw it trending the wrong way, would immediately concern you?” The overlap in those answers is your dashboard.
Step 3: Take Small Steps to Success
Once you’ve agreed on what to measure, resist the pull to build everything at once. The fastest path to a dashboard nobody trusts is launching too much too soon.
Michelle had no prior experience with Virtuous Analytics when she started the project. She learned the platform through Virtuous Academy, support documentation, and a lot of conversations with the support team.
Rather than building from scratch, Michelle duplicated standard Virtuous report templates and adapted them for AIM’s specific needs. She dedicated a day or two at a time to exploring the platform, checking her work with teammates, and making adjustments as she went. Within six to eight weeks, the team was using the dashboard confidently and integrating it into leadership meetings.
Your move: Pick one metric. Build one clean, consistently measured view of it. Let that early win create momentum before you expand. The data will naturally lead you to the next question anyway.
Step 4: Use External Benchmarks to Put Your Numbers in Context
Internal data tells you what’s happening inside your organization. External benchmarks tell you whether it’s good.
AIM layered the Virtuous Benchmark Report into their dashboard work, comparing their metrics against both sector averages and top-quartile performers. The results were largely encouraging. They were tracking well across most KPIs. But the benchmarks also surfaced a clear opportunity: recurring giving had room to grow.
Michelle shared, “[The Virtuous Nonprofit Benchmark Report] gave us a temperature gauge to see where we’re doing well, and where we can improve.”
That kind of external context is valuable in both directions. It gives leadership permission to celebrate what’s working, and it gives them something concrete to point to when making the case for investing in areas that need attention.
Your move: Find the benchmark data that corresponds to your organization’s size and sector. Seeing your retention rate next to the sector average turns a number into a story.
Step 5: Let Data Confirm Decisions, Not Just Create Them
Here’s something that surprises a lot of people when they first build a reporting dashboard: most of the time, the data won’t completely shock you. It will confirm what you already suspected.
This is one of the most underrated benefits of good reporting.
AIM’s dashboard surfaced that recurring giving had been declining and revealed an opportunity for growth. Leadership had already had projects and personnel changes in motion. So, the data didn’t change their direction. But it did give them the confidence to commit to it fully.
As Emily shared, “[The Virtuous Benchmark Report] just confirmed that this was the right direction to go and that we need to keep placing priority and resources in this particular area.”
That shift from instinct to evidence is a meaningful one. It’s the difference between moving boldly and second-guessing every call. And for a board that needs to trust leadership’s judgment, showing up with data behind your decisions changes the whole dynamic. A strong fundraising plan is always more compelling when it’s built on real, consistent data rather than gut feeling.
Your move: When you review your dashboard, don’t only look for surprises. Look for the decisions your team has been hesitating on, and ask: Does the data support moving forward? Chances are it does, and that’s the green light your leadership needs.
Step 6: Build a Review Cadence and Actually Protect It
A dashboard no one looks at is just a chart on a screen. The cadence is what turns data into action.
AIM now reviews their fundraising metrics quarterly as a leadership team. They celebrate wins, flag gaps, and align on next steps from a shared source of truth. Individual departments can filter the dashboard to see their own donor segments, so everyone is working from the same data while still seeing what’s most relevant to their work.
The board reviews the same dashboards. No more building separate presentations from scratch before each meeting. No more reconciling conflicting numbers pulled from different spreadsheets.
Emily emphasized the benefits: “Having this dashboard and the benchmarks to show where we measure up has really given our board a lot of confidence that we are in a really healthy spot and doing the things we need to be doing.”
Michelle added that the segmentation capability has been especially useful: “We’re able to segment our data in a way that whoever it most involves can just click a button and dive into the data. It’s very easy to maneuver.”
The ability to break out donor segmentation by department, donor type, or giving behavior means every team has visibility into what matters most to them, all from one place.
Your move: Block the time to review fundraising metrics as a leadership team. The meeting doesn’t have to be long. What matters is that it happens consistently, with the right people in the room, all looking at the same numbers.
The Outcome: A Board With Confidence and a Mission With Clarity
When AIM launched their Virtuous Analytics dashboard, something shifted across the organization. Their board became more engaged. Leadership became more decisive. And the fundraising team finally had a single source of truth to rally around.
For an organization doing the kind of urgent, life-changing work that AIM does, that kind of clarity is how they demonstrate to every donor that their support is being stewarded with care, strategy, and accountability. And it’s a reminder of why data is the engine of responsive fundraising for any mission-driven organization.
If your team is still running on gut instinct and one-off spreadsheets, the distance between where you are and where AIM is today is smaller than you think. The process took six to eight weeks. The tools already exist.
The only thing left is the decision to start.
The benchmarks AIM used to set their goals are getting an update — and this time, the dashboards come built in.
The 2026 Virtuous Nonprofit Benchmark Report releases on April 21st, with fresh data on the seven KPIs that define fundraising health across the sector.
Check our resources page to access!
Already a Virtuous customer?
Add Virtuous Analytics to your suite of Virtuous tools to get:
- Pre-built dashboards ready to use from day one
- Role-based reporting so every department sees what’s relevant to them
- Real-time visibility into giving patterns, campaign performance, and donor trends
- A full-picture view for leadership and board-ready confidence for every meeting
Not on Virtuous yet?
Virtuous Analytics gives your team real-time visibility into the metrics that matter most: retention, recurring giving, donor growth, and more. All in one place, without the spreadsheets. See what AIM saw, with even less setup.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fundraising dashboard?
A fundraising dashboard is a visual, real-time display of your organization’s key fundraising metrics, giving leadership a clear and consistent view of performance over time.
What KPIs should a nonprofit fundraising dashboard track?
AIM’s dashboard tracks seven core metrics from the Virtuous Benchmark Report: donor retention, new donor acquisition, recurring giving, lapsed donors, average and median gift, portfolio balance, and donor lifetime value.
How long does it take to build a nonprofit fundraising dashboard?
AIM went from scattered spreadsheets to a working dashboard in six to eight weeks, dedicating one to two days at a time to learning the platform and adapting standard report templates.
Do you need technical experience to build a dashboard in Virtuous Analytics?
No. Michelle Lundberg had no prior experience with the platform and built AIM’s full executive dashboard using Virtuous Academy, support articles, and help from the Virtuous support team.
Why should nonprofits use external benchmarks in their reporting?
External benchmarks give your internal metrics context. They help leadership identify where the organization is excelling, where there’s room to grow, and how to set realistic, evidence-based goals.
