Tips on Creating SOP's for your Non-Profit Organisation

Processes? Procedures? Rules & Regulations? Errgh, how boring… volunteering is meant to be fun J! I hear you say. Now, while I do understand that pretty much only lawyers and accountants find procedures, rules and regulations fun,  putting into place some simple processes really does help with the running of any organisation – not just a non-profit organisation. Especially when your organisation is small, has no paid or full time staff, and is run entirely by volunteers.

More often than not, a small, newly-set up non-profit organisation or social enterprise is self-run a few individual volunteers (who are usually working full time elsewhere!:-)) and who are tasked with running the organisation.  What usually happens is that this small group ends up doing everything and kind of just “knows” what needs to be done. Half the time, they’re just rushing to stay on top of the deluge of communications, things to do and activities to run – and have no time to record exactly what they do or how they do it.

This system probably works pretty well most of the time as long as everyone does what they’re meant to, but sooner or later, you’re going to hit a snag when the people who normally do the job, can’t do it for some reason. Maybe they are going to be away overseas, or are not well, or are busy over the festive season, or something has just come up that’s going to prevent them from being able to do the job for a period of time or permanently. Another volunteer needs to take over - and then…the questions start. “What do I do?”, “How do I do it”, “What are the steps involved?”

Which brings me back to the importance of creating standard operating procedure or processes or SOPs.

Question 1 – when should our non-profit organisation start creating SOPs?

The answer is, right NOW J Don’t wait until they’re needed. SOPs need to be created in advance, and not at the last minute. Last-minute SOPs tend to miss out important steps and details, so plan ahead.

Question 2 – what sort of stuff requires SOP’s?

OK so for the super-organised productivity nerds among us, there is no limit to SOPs. Every single activity could be improved and done quicker and more efficiently, therefore, every single activity could benefit from a SOP. But, that would be simply be overkill in a small non-profit organisation or social enterprise. Bear in mind, most people dislike structure, rules and regulations. You don’t want to scare off volunteers by handing them a ISO-certification level manual crammed full of complex SOPs. You probably won’t see them again after that J!

 Just stick to the most important key processes. Stuff that needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. How to put an event or activity together. How regular communications like emails, newsletters, social media posts etc, get created and sent out. Practical stuff like that.

Question 3 – How do we create the actual SOP?

Talk to all the volunteers who normally do the job. Ask them questions about what they do, step by step. Ask them to share tips and shortcuts around the process. Ask about pre-preparation ie. what needs to get done behind the scenes before the event/activity. What happens during the event/activity. What happens after or rather, are there any follow-up aspects that need to be taken care of after the event. Next, type it all up and there’s your SOP!

Don’t forget to let the folks that normally do the job, review your SOP before you finalise it though. They may have stuff to add or have suggestions on reorganising the steps. All this input helps create a comprehensive SOP.

Question 4 – Do I need to have an MBA before I am qualified to create an SOP?

Absolutely not. The only skill you need is the ability to type, probably (unless you’re really old school and prefer to write things down, on pieces of parchment…:-). Seriously, an SOP can be nothing more than a series of steps described in simple English, typed up in a plain old MS Word document . That’s it. No fancy software programmes or killer apps are needed. (Though if you or someone on your team just happens to be a wizard at creating detailed flowcharts, colourful graphs and pie charts and whatnot, then knock yourselves out! J Just make sure the rest of us mere mortals can understand them easily…J

Question 5 – Should I use my laptop or my phone to create the SOP?

It doesn’t really matter, as long as somehow, the text can get onto your phone. Now if you have a Samsung phone, and better still, a external Samsung phone keyboard like I do, you could even create the SOP on your phone’s memo or note-taking app. I’m sure this is possible on other Android devices as well as IPhones too. Why do you need the text on your phone? So that you can easily copy and paste it into watsapp or even an email, when you need to. Having the data on your phone makes it super-easy to communicate. Let’s say a volunteer sends you a watsapp message asking “I’d like to volunteer tomorrow, what do I do?” you could just copy the whole SOP from your note-taking app and paste it straight into Watsapp.

Having said that, the text should also go in a word document or excel spreadsheet and be stored on your laptop, preferably in a folder marked “SOPs” (OK, so it’s not the most creative name around, feel free to come up with your own! J). The SOPs may evolve with time as you might need to edit them to delete irrelevant stuff and include other details as time goes by, so always mark each version of the document that you save, with the date. Don’t delete old versions as you may need to refer to them later.

Hope the above helps! Questions or suggestions, email me at spiralcom1701@gmail.com.