Five Things I Built Last Month
Toto pulls back the curtain.
Last month I pulled financial data on 140 food banks into a ranked spreadsheet, built an interactive client deliverable that made a spreadsheet look like a dashboard, turned a clunky Excel model into a scenario-planning tool with variables I hadn’t thought of, generated talking points for a 50-slide conference deck, and built a send-ready survey…all without writing a single line of code myself.
I used Claude Code for most of it. If you haven’t heard of it, Claude Code is a command-line tool from Anthropic that lets you give Claude instructions in plain English from your terminal, and it writes and runs code on your machine. You describe what you want, and it figures out how to build it.
(I wrote about AI-assisted writing last year. This is the next step in applying this technology to other facets of a consultant’s work.)
This piece is about five workflows I actually used for client work in the last month, with the prompts I gave Claude Code so you can adapt them for your own projects.
A quick note before we start: Claude Code requires a paid Anthropic API account. The cost depends on usage, but for the kinds of tasks below you could expect to spend $5–15 per project. Whether that’s worth it depends on what your time costs. For most of us, it pays for itself on the first task.
Pull real data from free public APIs
ProPublica maintains a free Nonprofit Explorer API that contains financial data from millions of Form 990 filings: revenue, expenses, executive compensation, net assets, you name it. It’s public data that the IRS has released since 2013, and it’s available to anyone.
The problem is that “available to anyone” and “usable by anyone” are different things. To actually do something with an API, you normally need to write code: loop through search results, parse JSON, handle pagination, export to a usable format. That’s a couple hours of work for someone who knows Python, and an impossible wall for someone who doesn’t.
I used Claude Code to pull data on every food bank in the Feeding America network. The result was a spreadsheet with 140 organizations, including total revenue, contributions, fundraising expenses, net assets, total salaries, and officer compensation pulled directly from their most recent 990 filings. What would have taken me days of manual searching on ProPublica’s website took about 20 minutes.
Here’s the prompt I used (with placeholders you can swap for your own research):
I want to research nonprofit organizations using ProPublica's
Nonprofit Explorer API (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api).
WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Every food bank in the Feeding America network"
# Example: "Community foundations in the Southeast with revenue over $5M"
# Example: "Environmental organizations in California"
[Describe the organizations you want to research]
WHAT DATA I WANT FOR EACH ORGANIZATION:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: Name, city, state, EIN, total revenue, total expenses,
# contributions, fundraising expenses, net assets, total salaries,
# officer compensation, filing year
[List the specific fields you want]
HOW TO DO IT:
1. Use the ProPublica API search endpoint to find matching organizations
- The search endpoint is: /api/v2/search.json?q=[search term]
- You can filter by state with &state=[XX] and by NTEE code with &ntee=[code]
2. For each organization found, pull detailed filing data using:
/api/v2/organizations/[EIN].json
3. Extract the most recent filing data for each organization
4. Export everything to an Excel spreadsheet with clean column headers
Save the output as an .xlsx file. Sort by total revenue descending.A few notes on this. ProPublica’s API is free and doesn’t require an API key, which makes it a perfect starting point. The data comes from IRS filings, so it’s as reliable as the organizations’ own reporting. And once you have the spreadsheet, you can score, rank, filter, and analyze however you need to.
I’ve since used the same approach to pull data on community development organizations, environmental groups, and arts nonprofits. Each time it takes about 20 minutes, and each time it produces a dataset that would have taken me a full day to compile by hand.
Build client deliverables
There’s a page making the rounds among developers called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML. The premise: instead of handing someone a wall of markdown or a static document, you build a single HTML file with collapsible sections, sortable tables, small charts, and tabs. It’s the same information, but structured so people actually engage with it instead of skimming past it.
This idea translates directly to consulting. We spend a lot of time making recommendations that live in slide decks or Google Docs. Some of those recommendations would land differently if the client could interact with them: sort a list by different criteria, toggle between scenarios, or click into the detail on the items that interest them.
I took the food bank dataset from the first workflow and turned it into an interactive HTML report. Instead of a spreadsheet with 140 rows and 21 columns, the client got a single file they could open in any browser: a ranked list with the top targets highlighted, expandable detail cards for each organization, and filters by state, revenue range, and scoring criteria.
Check it out, it’s pretty cool: https://feedingamericaanalysis.netlify.app/
The prompt:
I have a spreadsheet [attach or describe your data file] that I want
to turn into a polished, interactive HTML report.
THE AUDIENCE:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "A client's leadership team evaluating partnership targets"
# Example: "A board of directors reviewing program performance data"
[Who will read this, and what decision are they making?]
WHAT IT SHOULD INCLUDE:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "A ranked list of organizations with key metrics visible,
# expandable cards showing full detail, filters for state and revenue
# range, a summary section at top with key takeaways"
[Describe the views and interactions you want]
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS:
- Single self-contained HTML file (no external dependencies)
- Clean, professional design — not developer-looking
- Works in any browser, looks good when shared as a file
- Mobile-friendly if possible
- Use a simple color palette: [your brand colors or "professional blues and grays"]
Build this as a single .html file I can send directly to the client.One important caveat: the first version Claude Code produces almost never looks right. I usually go back and forth a few times: “make the cards narrower,” “add a total count at the top,” “the filter isn’t working on mobile.” This is normal.
Turn your Excel model into something a client would actually use
I keep a stable of Excel models for different kinds of client work like financial projections, unit economics calculators, and scenario planners. They work but they’re ugly, they’re hard for clients to navigate, and they only model the variables I thought to include when I built them.
I took one of these—a basic business plan financial model with revenue projections, cost assumptions, and a five-year summary—and gave it to Claude Code with a simple instruction: make this better.
What came back had scenario modeling (optimistic / base / pessimistic), sensitivity analysis on the key variables, a cleaner layout with input cells clearly separated from output cells, and several assumptions I hadn’t included like churn rates by customer segment and a funnel velocity variable that modeled how long prospects take to close. It thought of things I wouldn’t have, and it built them faster than I could have built the parts I did think of.
The prompt:
I have an Excel model [attach the file] that I use for
[describe the purpose].
WHAT THE MODEL CURRENTLY DOES:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Projects revenue over 5 years based on subscriber count,
# pricing tiers, and growth rate assumptions"
[Describe your existing model]
WHAT I WANT IMPROVED:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Add scenario modeling (optimistic/base/pessimistic),
# improve the layout so input assumptions are clearly separated
# from calculations, add any variables or analyses you think
# would make this more useful for a founder presenting to investors"
[Describe what you want, AND ask Claude to suggest improvements]
IMPORTANT:
- Keep it in Excel (.xlsx format) — my client needs to open it in Excel
- Use clear cell formatting: blue font for inputs, black for calculations
- Add a summary dashboard tab if the model is complex enough to warrant one
- Include brief cell comments explaining non-obvious formulasThe key phrase in that prompt is “add any variables or analyses you think would make this more useful.” You’re explicitly inviting Claude to go beyond your brief. It won’t always suggest things worth keeping, but it often surfaces dimensions you hadn’t considered, and at minimum, it’s a useful check on your own assumptions.
Write talking points for a presentation you already have
This one probably saves me more time per use than anything else on this list.
I had a 50-slide deck for a conference presentation at the Ohio Arts Council. The slides were done. The content was solid. But I still needed talking points for each slide — the actual words I’d say while the slide was on screen, the transitions between sections, and the places where I’d pause for a question.
Writing talking points for 50 slides is one of those tasks that takes longer than you think it will, because you’re not really creating. You’re translating visual content into spoken content, which is a different kind of tedious.
I gave the deck to Claude and asked for talking points. Five minutes later I had a full speaker’s guide. I edited maybe a third of it, cut some sections that didn’t sound like me, and added a few personal anecdotes it couldn’t have known about. But the structural work of making sure each slide’s key point was articulated, transitions were smooth, and timing was realistic was done.
The prompt:
I have a slide deck [attach the file] for a presentation I'm giving.
CONTEXT:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "A 45-minute keynote at a state arts conference for
# nonprofit arts administrators and board members"
[Describe the event, audience, and time slot]
WHAT I NEED:
- Talking points for each slide (2-4 bullet points of what I'd
actually say out loud, not a script)
- Transition sentences between major sections
- Notes on where to pause for audience questions or reactions
- A timing estimate for each section
TONE:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Conversational and warm, not academic. I tell stories
# and use humor. I don't read from notes — these are reminders
# of what I want to hit, not a teleprompter."
[Describe how you present]
Output as a document I can print and bring to the podium.Build a send-ready survey
Our community’s rate-setting survey—the one that produced the most-read piece we’ve ever published—was built using Claude’s connector to Jotform. I described what I wanted the survey to accomplish, what questions I needed to ask, and what format the responses should come back in. Claude built the survey.
It was not perfect on the first pass. I edited questions, reordered sections, and rewrote several items to be clearer. Claude couldn’t get the conditional logic for reasons that I still don’t fully grasp. But it handled the tedious structural work.
The prompt:
I want to build a survey using [Jotform / Google Forms / Typeform].
PURPOSE:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Collecting rate and pricing data from independent
# consultants in the nonprofit sector for a published report"
[What are you trying to learn, and what will you do with the data?]
QUESTIONS I KNOW I WANT TO ASK:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# List your questions here, even if they're rough
[Your questions]
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Group questions into logical sections. Add conditional
# logic where it makes sense (e.g., if they select 'hourly rate,'
# ask follow-up questions about hourly billing; if 'project-based,'
# ask about project scoping). Include a mix of multiple choice,
# rating scales, and short open-text fields. Keep it under 10 minutes."
[Your structural preferences]
TARGET RESPONDENTS:
# ← CHANGE THIS SECTION
# Example: "Independent consultants with 1-15+ years of experience
# across strategy, fundraising, communications, and operations"
[Who is taking this survey?]
Build the survey and make it ready to send. I'll review and edit
before publishing.If you’re using Claude.ai rather than Claude Code, you can use the Jotform connector directly in the chat interface with no terminal needed. Ask Claude to create the form, review what it builds, and iterate from there.
Speaking of, please take the survey!
Wrapping up
Every one of these workflows started with decisions only I could make: which organizations to research, what scoring criteria mattered, which variables belonged in the model, and what questions to ask in the survey. The AI handled the the parts that are time-consuming but not intellectually demanding.
People either dismiss these tools because the output isn’t perfect on the first try, or they over-rely on them and skip the thinking that makes the output useful. The sweet spot is in between: you do the strategic and creative work, then hand off the build.
For independent consultants especially, that trade is significant. We don’t have a junior analyst to delegate the spreadsheet work to, or a developer to build the interactive report, or an admin to set up the survey. We just have ourselves and whatever tools we can figure out. These are the tools I’ve figured out.