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Running an organisation wiki using Notion

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Reach Volunteering is the leading skills-based volunteering charity and the UK’s single biggest source of trustees for the voluntary sector.

Use this Guide to learn how to use Notion to collate, share and collaborate on processes and resources related to running an organisation.

Jump to steps
Key software:
Notion
How they set it up:
Setup costs:
None
Ongoing costs:
Free - £10/month
Guide in use since:
January 2020

Steps to running an organisation wiki using Notion

Start by talking to other teams in your organisation. Are they using any tools to share resources or ways of working that they can recommend? It might save you time to use the same tool as other teams because:

  • they will already be familiar with using it

  • it will make collating and sharing information across the organisation more streamlined

Reach Volunteering were already using Notion for documentation and decided it could work for creating and running their organisation wiki.

They were trialling new ways of recruiting using an anonymous method and wanted to share the learning internally.

Choose your platform, for example Notion. Notion is a free and flexible platform to share and organise information.

What platform you use will probably be influenced with what information you want to share and how.

You don’t need to map your whole organisation and its processes from the start. Rather, start with a specific process which has:

  • too much information for a document

  • has a lot of different resources or components

That way you’ll be able to show why you chose your tool, if you need to validate it.

You can then start to think about how you want to organise information. For example, do you want to do it taxonomically. using folders and tagging? Or do you simply need to publish a list of links (for example a link tree)?

Reach Volunteering found Notion useful because they could crosslink between videos, text and files. “It’s a single source of truth, all in one place.”

They started off sharing information on recruitment, for example a bank of useful questions for applicants. They didn’t want to use a Word Doc as the process they wanted to show involved different tools.

Now it’s time to start populating it with information.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a structure in mind yet as this will grow organically. You can restructure as your content grows, move pages around, rename them and even role back to previous versions.

Create a page for a single process, for example your GDPR policies and procedures. Add:

  • resources

  • tools

  • a way for people to get in touch

Explain:

  • how the page will be updated

  • any information needed about how to use Notion

Make sure you keep all information you add to Notion backed up somewhere else, such as documents saved on a device. There is always a risk of losing access to content on third party sites, such as through a server issue.

You can collate useful resources such as research, policies and tools into a table, or save them into a database.

Use tags to group things under themes. You can also use them to show an action or position in the workflow, for example “final stage” or “draft”.

In Notion you can expand your table to display in different ways, such as a Kanban board to:

  • track work

  • show works in progress

  • show who is involved

Kanban is a method of managing a workflow in a visual way, to help define and manage tasks. You can also make spaces for individuals or to share with others.

Consider the audience of your process. Is it internal only? Make sure you check the privacy settings.

 Trustee induction page on the organisation wiki

Reach Volunteering started using Notion to replace a file drive. Sometimes a document within the file drive would explain how to use the file drive, but there were gaps. “It wouldn’t be obvious that [the document] was the ‘meta’ doc. We didn’t have an adequate way of doing it before.” - Janet Thorne, CEO, Reach Volunteering

They also decided to make a public page on Notion showing their trustee induction, rather than a handbook to send to trustees.

When reviewing their equality, diversity and inclusion policies and procedures, they decided to put it all on Notion.

“We pulled together Jamboards, useful resources and training slides” - Janet Thorne

Create a workspace for your team and for others who you work with to communicate. Give people the right permissions so they can see when something is updated.

Ask staff and stakeholders what they think of the way you are displaying information and if there is anything they think can be changed or improved. Using a tool like Notion means you can constantly adapt to changing needs.

How you use something like Notion to create an organisation wiki will develop organically. As you add workspaces and get feedback, you will identify what works well for different teams and people and iterate as needed.

You can use the database function on Notion to create an insights board where you can share or review insights about your ways of working. This will be where you keep your feedback to help you constantly adapt.

Reach Volunteering review their insights quarterly (every 3 months).

You can contact Janet Thorne, CEO at Reach Volunteering: [email protected]