Did you recently agree to be the President of your National Charity League chapter? If so, then now you need to get organized for the upcoming NCL year! Notion is a great tool to use to keep NCL Presidents information in order.
I have been using Notion for years to keep my personal & volunteer life organized. I even used it during my four years as a VP Communications position in NCL.
Great Ways for NCL Presidents to get Organized with Notion
1. What is Notion?
First and foremost, I need to tell you a little bit about Notion. Notion is an online workspace that allows you combine task lists, notes, calendars, and databases in one location. The personal version of Notion is FREE to use, and it syncs across all of your devices. I have been using Notion for several years and they continue to make worthwhile improvements.
Notion is a collection of “blocks” that can be linked and moved around. Pretty much everything is a block – text, headers, pages, images, databases, etc. I don’t plan on going into detail on how to navigate around the workspace in Notion here, because there are lots of great YouTube videos out there that will give you the basics. If you are new to Notion, I recommend checking out the Thomas Frank Explains YouTube channel.
To download the app, go to Notion.so. Get my free template for NCL Chapter Presidents, by clicking here. To use this template in your own workspace, you must duplicate it first. For full disclosure, I recently became a Notion affiliate, so if you choose to purchase a paid version of Notion, I will receive a commission.
2. Create a NCL Chapter President Dashboard
Who has time to be looking all over the place for emails or files when you just need to get a task completed? With Notion, you can keep all of your NCL Chapter President information all in one central location. No more searching through the Chapter tab or the NCL Inc Resources tab on the website.
My NCL Chapter President template is a great place to start getting organized. You can fully customize it to fit your chapter and your needs. If you need to change a section, just rename it and make sure you have a tag in the Master Task list to match the section you change.
3. Create a Master Task List
You are the President that leads the entire chapter to make a meaningful impact. You are responsible for guiding the Chapter Board ,Patronesses & Ticktockers through effective community service, leadership & culture.
A master task list will help you keep track of all of the different responsibilities of a NCL Chapter President. You can view all of your tasks at once or you can filter by the different areas. Just click on the tabs that are located above the President’s Master Task List to switch to a different filter. Alternatively, you can click on the gallery image to really focus on the one area.
4. Free Notion Template to Get Started
Notion is FREE and so is the template that I have created for you! Trust me you won’t regret at least exploring this idea. You will first need to create an account at Notion.so, then you can download my template. If you want to learn a little about Notion before you get started, I would recommend the Thomas Frank Explains YouTube channel. If you have never used Notion, I would start with Thomas Frank’s Notion Fundamentals playlist.
The NCL Chapter President template can be found here. This free template has sample tasks for the 10 different areas of responsibility:
- Board Meetings & Retreat
- Financial
- VP Ticktockers
- VP Philanthropy
- VP Membership
- VP Chapter Engagement & Inclusion
- VP New Members
- Events
- Awards
- Transition
You can easily change these if you chapter has additional or different areas of responsibility for their NCL Chapter President position. You will undoubtedly need to add many more tasks!
4. Easy Collaboration with Others
While Notion is online, it is a secure place. The only way for someone else to view your information is for you to share it with them. You might consider sharing the VP Chapter Engagement & Inclusion page with the VP of Chapter E&I to help them plan the year’s meeting and events. Then you can collaborate with the them seamlessly without having to search through emails. Or you might share the Events page to help the Patronesses that are planning Senior Recognition or the Tea.
Once you have duplicated the template and customized it for your own NCL Chapter, just use the share option to invite collaborators to specific pages. You can give others full access to the page or limit it so they can only view or only make comments. It’s such a great way to collaborate with others!
TIP: Since Notion is an online application, don’t use it to store username, passwords or any other sensitive information.
5. Easy Access to Chapter Governing Documents
During my years as NCL VP Communications, I had many discussions regarding the bylaws and policies & procedures. An easy way to access these documents from your President dashboard is put them on your chapter Google drive and link to them using the Google Drive Embed feature. My template just links to two blank files on one of my Google drives.
Did you know that your chaptername@nclonline.org email address is actually a gmail account? So you already have a built in Google drive with that email address.
6. Stay on Top of Chapter Events
The annual Tea, Senior Recognition and Junior Style Show are likely the biggest events of the NCL year. The NCL Chapter President will have many tasks related to all of these events to make sure they go off without a hitch. Committee meetings will need to be attended, contracts will need to be signed, speeches will need to be prepared, etc…
Use this Notion page to stay on top of all of your event related tasks. One alternative option would be to create a subpage for each event within the Events page. However, if you choose to go this route you would need to make sure you linked the databases to your President’s Master Task list. However, I would not recommend changing it up, until you get very comfortable with using Notion.
7. Membership Drive Planning
One task that is vital to the survival of each chapter is the annual Membership Drive. Without new classes of 7th graders coming in each year, your chapter will dwindle down and cease to be sustainable. There are many other tasks you can add to this section, to help your VP Membership stay on top of her role. I have helped with many Membership drives and I know it is a big project with many steps to complete.
Unfortunately, I have witnessed years when the VP Membership forgot to complete some of the steps and it causes a lot of confusion. That’s why it’s important for the NCL Chapter President to have an understanding of how to help the Membership Drive procedure.
My chapter’s Presidents were almost always held the VP Membership role before becoming President. It’s just so helpful when you have a good grasp of the necessary steps to ensure a steady flow of new members.
8. Help Chapter Treasurer with Financial Tasks
Every year, the chapter will get a new budget. While most chapters are using BillHighway these days, Notion is an easy way to keep track of financial related tasks. Your treasurer will have many more tasks to track, however Notion can help the Chapter President ensure crucial financial tasks are getting completed in a timely manner.
9. Plan Board Meetings & Board Retreat
Notion is a great place to plan out your Board Retreat and monthly Board Meetings.
You can add columns to this to this database to create a Notes, Location, or Meeting Date column to help keep track of additional information you want to track.
Keep in mind this task list is part of a master task list. If you add a column related only to meeting information, you might need to hide that column in the other pages (i.e. Liaisons, Budget, Hours, Philanthropy Organizations & Transition).
10. Easy Transition to NCL Chapter President – Elect
Transition is so important. As you roll off your time as NCL Chapter President, think how easy it would be if you could just share your Notion database with the President-Elect. The new Chapter President could even keep you as a collaborator (see #4) and you could help her get the tasks setup for the new year.
This post is all about NCL Chapter Presidents using Notion.
You might not really need help, but if someone was willing to help you, would you turn them away?
During my NCL journey as VP Communications & Webmaster, I often helped the various board members get organized. For my own role of VP Communications, I developed a similar dashboard for VP Communication tasks. This Notion template can help you be more in control of the information you need to succeed.
The whole goal of the Notion template is to help make your NCL experience as a President more enjoyable. The more organized you are with this position, the more you can focus on the impact your chapter can have in your community. I encourage you to check out the template to determine if it could help you during your NCL journey.
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