Evernote for Nonprofits

 (This post was collaboratively written with Jonathan Weldon …using a shared folder in….Evernote!)

In case you’ve never heard of Evernote this blog post is written
from the perspective of a couple Inbox Zero & GTD geeks who are just as
likely to be discussing the latest keyboard shortcut or productivity trick as
we are where the next happy hour is. While we like to think of ourselves as early
adopters, Evernote was recently named Company
of the Year by Inc. Magazine and with more than 20 million users, it’s
pretty mainstream. While Convio is not affiliated with or a partner of
Evernote in any way, both of us are passionate about nonprofits and technology and
thought we’d share a few ideas about how this application can help nonprofit
professionals.

Why is Evernote Important?

A key aspect of any nonprofit’s operations is storing and
sharing information related to their mission, programs, outreach, and funding. You
are probably all too aware that tracking this information is becoming
increasingly complex. Convio has developed tools to help organizations track
and act on information related to constituents’ relationships (CRM) and online
engagement. There is another type of information and memory management that
relates to the everyday memories and knowledge management of your staff,
volunteers, and other supporters.

Visit Evernote’s website and you will be greeted with a
simple statement: “Remember Everything.” A few key features of the tool include:
syncing across devices, handwriting and text recognition, version
tracking, photo and audio notes. There are too many amazing highlights to
try to describe here, but this
2 min video gives a great overview!

The following ideas are just a few of the ways that we
thought different teams in an organization could use Evernote as a tool to
support their roles. If you have other use cases, we’d love to hear about them
in the comments.

Volunteer & Event Management

• Volunteer
  Information: Perfect place for your volunteer code of conduct, name card
  templates, and other printable material.
• Locations
  and Directions: Use Evernote to save directions to your headquarters and
  list of nearby restaurants and hotels, either as a free form note, geotagged
  note, or a PDF document.
• Events:
  Great place to chronicle your events, possibly to track attendees or feedback
  post-event. Could also use it as a repository for event pictures.

 Mission & Marketing

• Inspiration:
  When you’re out in the community, use the Evernote smartphone app to capture
  moments or ideas that relate to our organization. For instance, if you run
  across something your organization has changed (or could change) in the
  community this is a great way to chronicle the impact your organization makes.
• Social
  Media Archive: Tools such as If This Then
  That can put the Internet to work for you by creating tasks
  that automatically create notes within Evernote, allowing you to easily
  archive your social media presence.
• Website
  Redesign: Use the Evernote Web
  Clipper to share inspirations or ideas from other sites.

 Fundraising and Development

• Annual
  Reports: Store notes, facts, and ideas related to your annual report in one
  place throughout the year. When it comes time to start compiling the report,
  you’ll have everything in one place.
• Fundraising
  Appeals: With the Evernote mobile app, you can always have access to
  pictures, facts, and information about projects needing funding. If you’re at a
  meeting and an unexpected opportunity comes up, you’ll have digital copies of
  everything at your fingertips.
• Statistics
  and Facts: It always helps to back up your appeals with hard numbers but
  they can be difficult to remember and find. Evernote can make it much easier to
  get this information when you need it.
• Archive
  Appeal Letters: Most organizations keep a binder of previous appeal letters
  and copy for campaigns. Create a digital copy and you can have it with you at
  all times.

 Operations

• Manuals
  and Policies: A shared Evernote folder can be a great place to store
  manuals and policy documents.
• Project
  Management: With the checkbox feature in Evernote, you can track tasks that
  are assigned to people and review notes about when actions have been completed.
  Additionally, you’ll have all the related project notes in one place.
• Audio
  Recording of Meetings: The mobile clients and desktop apps allow you to
  record up to 90 minutes of audio which gets stored in a note. Never miss what
  was said in meetings by recording them for review later if needed.

 Conclusion

Ultimately, Evernote gets more useful the more
information you put in it, so hopefully you found this post helpful and will
consider giving Evernote a try. To reiterate, Convio is not partnered with
Evernote, we are just a couple of avid users and wanted to take this
opportunity to share our ideas on how your organizations could utilize this
fantastic tool in your day-to-day business. We are sure there are many more
awesome, and even obvious, ways of how Evernote could be used by nonprofit
organizations, so please use the comments to let us know how you’re currently
using Evernote or perhaps how you could put Evernote to work for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guest Blogger

From time to time, a guest blogger will appear on npENGAGE. Guest bloggers are industry experts contributing useful, relevant content to the conversation on npENGAGE. If you are interested in being a guest blogger, contact the editor.