AI for NGO Finance Managers

Webinar 1 lays the foundations for using AI effectively in finance. Learners will set up and onboard their AI assistant, learn how to write effective prompts for finance tasks, and explore how AI fits within the Finance DPro’s building blocks of successful financial management.

Learners will have the opportunity to apply these skills in their first practical finance workflow before finishing the session with the essential principles of responsible AI use, data security, and human accountability.

• How to set up and personalize your AI assistant for finance tasks
• Why AI matters in finance and how it complements Finance DPro
• The fundamentals of effective AI prompting
• How to apply AI to coding supplier invoices
• How to use AI responsibly and protect sensitive data

Webinar 2 explores how AI can support financial planning by helping to build realistic, evidence-based budgets with greater confidence and efficiency. Learners will discover how to turn project activities into a structured budget, research and justify cost assumptions, and review AI-generated outputs using professional judgement. Through demonstrations and hands-on practice, learners will see how AI can strengthen the budgeting process while keeping finance professionals firmly in control of every decision.

• How AI can support financial planning and budgeting
• Building an activity-based budget with AI
• Researching and sourcing costs using reliable external information
• Checking and refining AI-generated budget outputs
• Using AI responsibly when working with financial data

Webinar 3 explores how AI can strengthen financial planning through budget stress-testing and consolidation. Learners will test how changes in assumptions, such as exchange rates, inflation and rising costs, affect a budget, before checking funding allocations and identifying potential funding gaps or double funding. Learners will develop practical skills in scenario modelling, validating calculations in Excel, consolidating financial information and preparing clear, evidence-based outputs for funders while maintaining professional judgement and accountability.

• How AI can support financial planning when assumptions change
• Using AI alongside Excel to model and check budget scenarios
• How changes to the budget can affect the funding position
• Using AI to identify funding gaps and potential overlaps

This webinar explores how AI can strengthen financial monitoring by helping finance teams understand what financial information is telling them and decide what action to take. Using the Tujenge case study, learners explore the four key questions that underpin effective financial monitoring, before using AI to identify variances, investigate their causes, assess their significance and support informed decision-making.

• AI-supported financial monitoring and variance analysis
• Identifying and explaining significant variances
• Adapting financial insights for different audiences
• Verifying AI-supported reporting against source data
• Maintaining accuracy, traceability and human sign-off

Webinar 5 focuses on internal control, the fourth building block of successful financial management. Learners explore how AI can support the four actions of effective internal control
—Direct, Prevent, Detect and Correct—by helping them apply policies, identify risks, check compliance and maintain audit-ready records. Through demonstrations and hands-on practice, learners develop practical approaches to using AI responsibly while maintaining professional judgement, accountability and strong financial governance.

• AI in the four internal control actions: Direct, Prevent, Detect and Correct
• Using AI to work with policies, rules and other authoritative sources
• Verifying AI answers against the original source
• Using AI to help prevent and detect control issues
• Maintaining a clear audit trail and human sign-off

This final webinar brings together the knowledge and skills developed throughout the course. Using the course case study, learners complete an end-to-end finance workflow that combines the four Finance DPro building blocks while selecting the most appropriate AI skills to support each stage. They then apply the same approach to design an AI workflow for their own role and discover how to adopt AI responsibly within their organization.

• Bring together the finance and AI skills you developed across the course
• Apply AI across a realistic end-to-end finance workflow
• Identify where AI could support tasks in your own finance role
• Plan how you will continue using and developing your AI skills
• Staying up to date as AI tools, guidance, and ways of working evolve
• Responsible AI use and organizational AI policy