Did you recently agree to be the NCL VP Membership 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 VP Membership 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. My goal is to help you stay organized during your NCL journey.
Great Ways for NCL VP Memberships can 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 Memberships, 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. Utilize a NCL VP Membership 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 VP Membership information all in one central location. No more searching through the Chapter tab or the NCL Inc Resources tab on the website.
This NCL VP Membership 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 Yearly Task List to match the section you change.
3. Download the 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 this 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 VP Membership template can be found here. This free template has sample tasks for the 8 different areas of responsibility:
- Membership Drive
- Prospective Member List
- Board Meetings
- Financial
- Standards + DEI
- Membership Committee
- Transfer Management
- Transition
You can easily change these if you chapter has additional or different areas of responsibility for their NCL VP Membership position.
4. Create a Yearly Task List
The VP Membership keeps the chapter thriving with the yearly membership drive. You are responsible for bringing the next class of Ticktockers & Patronesses into the chapter. Without you, the chapter could not continue.
A yearly task list will help you keep track of all of the different responsibilities you have as VP Membership. 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 VP Membership’s Yearly Task List to switch to a different filter. Alternatively, you can click on the gallery image to really focus on the one area.
The tasks in this database are sample tasks that you can use, change or delete. You will undoubtedly need to add more tasks that are specific to your chapter’s needs.
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 Membership Committee page with your committee members so it’s easier to work together to plan the year’s membership drive events. Then you can collaborate with them seamlessly without having to search through emails.
Another place that might be helpful to collaborate on is the Standards + DEI page. You might consider sharing this page with your chapter president or standards committee to help keep everyone up to date on any membership issues.
Once you have duplicated the template and customized it for your own NCL Chapter, just use the share option (top right corner) on the page you wish to share 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. 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. This template includes a database to help you plan your class sizes for the upcoming drive.
There are many other tasks you can add to this section, to help you stay on top of your chapter’s drive. I have helped with many membership drives and I know it is a big project with many steps to complete. So feel free to add whatever tasks and information that will help you have the most successful drive yet
6. 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 VP Membership dashboard is put them on your chapter Google drive and link to them using the Google Drive Embed feature. This template just links to two blank files on one of my Google drives.
Did you know that your membershipchaptername@nclonline.org email address is actually a gmail account? So you already have a built in Google drive with that email address.
7. Track Standards and DEI Tasks
There will always be members who struggle with making NCL work into their schedule or they have an issue with the financial commitment. That leads to topics that a standards committee will need to discuss. This page is a great place to keep track of all those standards related information and tasks.
You can also use this Notion page to help your chapter practice diversity, equity and inclusion. Keep track of tasks that will help your chapter’s membership be socially aware and compassionate towards everyone.
8. Help Chapter Treasurer with Financial Tasks
Every year, the chapter will get a new budget. Membership will likely have their own budget for membership drive promotion and meetings. While most chapters are using BillHighway these days, Notion is an easy way to keep track of financial related information related to each board position before you are ready to pass along to the Treasurer. In addition, Notion can also help the VP Membership and Treasurer ensure dues collection coincides with status updates.
9. Plan Board Meeting Reports
Notion is a great place to plan out your Board reports for the monthly Board Meetings. Each board report page has a section where you can keep track of monthly highlights, items that need feedback and motions.
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 Board task list is part of the yearly task database list. If you add a column related only to meeting information, you might need to hide that column in the other pages (i.e. Membership Drive, Financial, Membership Committee, etc…).
10. Easy Transition to Incoming VP Membership
Transition is so important. As you roll off your time as VP Membership, think how easy it would be if you could just share your Notion database with the incoming VP Membership. The new VP Membership could even keep you as a collaborator (see #4) and you could help her get the tasks setup for the new year. I would recommend that you publish your own VP Membership Dashboard to the web and share the link to the incoming VP Membership.
This post is all about how NCL VP Memberships can use Notion.
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 VP Membership more enjoyable. The more organized you are with this position, the more you can focus on this precious time with your daughter. Trust me, it goes by fast! I encourage you to check out the template to determine if it could help you during your NCL journey.
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