(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.
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By Guest Blogger on Feb 9, 2012
Tagged: evernote internet Non-Profit nonprofit organization software Strategy technology