Evernote for Nonprofits
	Posted by Corey Pudhorodsky at Feb 09, 2012 06:01 AM CST Categories: NPtech, Productivity, Technology

 (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.