A simple system for tracking events and activities organised by your non-profit organisation.

If you help manage a small non-profit organisation as a volunteer with a full time day job, you’ll definitely have learnt a few shortcuts to systemise operations so that you can get as much done in as little time as possible.

I’d like to share with you a super-simple and easy-to-update system for recording and updating events and activities.

Firstly, let’s connect with the “why” behind this exercise. Why it is a good idea to maintain an easy-to-get-to running list to track all the activities and events your non-profit organisation runs?

Well, for one thing, it can easily help you keep track of key dates for later reference, which, in the absence of a system, you’ll most likely forget.  And, this list could be the foundation document for the President’s Report or other report that you might need to prepare before your registered society’s AGM, or for a proposal to raise funds, or to do a write-up for an impromptu presentation if you need to put something together quickly at short notice. 

It’s really simple, and you won’t need any fancy tools or apps. In fact it's really up to you to work out what suits you best. You can use a simple notebook, or a plain old word document, or a simple spreadsheet.

First, create a list/tracker. Step 1, note down your events – dates, venues and other important details you want to capture. Step 2, create a table with 3 columns (left to right) captioned “DATE”. “EVENT” and “DESCRIPTION”. Step 3,  populate the table with the events your organisation has held to date. If you can’t trace the information back far enough, just start from where you can. Better late than never! :-)

In order to maintain the system, you just need to create a reminder that will remind you to update the tracker at a regular interval. The key word here is "regular". You could link this reminder to the event itself, or to time.  A suggestion would be to make it a standard operating practice to either update the list every time your organisation has an event, or, if this is too tedious, make it a standard practice to update the list once a month.  I wouldn’t recommend going beyond 1 month, as by then there may be too many events and you may end up putting it off . One way of doing this is to put in a calendar reminder on a monthly basis. Every month, you'll get a reminder to do your updates. And when that happens, you must do it (or else the system won't work :-). 

Questions or suggestions, do feel free to email me at spiralcraft1701@gmail.com.