Policies, Procedures & Manuals Oh My!

Edited for new link and explanation

I understand there has been difficulty for many when trying to access the Dropbox link I originally included. Turns out I quickly and easily hit the limit for the free version of Dropbox and have struggled with how to share the library ever since ?

So I gave in and created an account for the FB RE User Group library and put everything on a Google drive. Anyone who clicks the image will be able to view and download anything from the drive. If you would like to share or add anything, you can upload to the folder "User Uploads" and they will be put into the right folder soon enough.nd yes, I know there are out dated items throughout all the documents and I'm ok with that. You'd be surprised at the kind of nuggets of gold you can find in user created content v. Vendor specific items (although there are plenty of those too). So hopefully this is helpful to at least one person, maybe more ?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GCTzpP-jGWLdOQ9wOTmrPwsgC6_j659Y

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Original post

I frequently see requests for organPizations' to share their policies/procedures/manual/ documents from RE users. All too often though I'll see the response "you need to write policies and procedures for your own organization" or “what works for one organization might not work for yours” or some other reason for not sharing documents.

And believe me, I get it because it's all true-policy documents are very specific to a. .n organization because it should not only outline the How but also the Why a task is done in a manner specific to that organization; they're a major investment in our time; and if you are required to write extremely specific procedures, they have to be frequently reviewed and updated to reflect updates and changes to the software and organization.

However... It irks me too because I know what it is like to be new to an organization who has nothing written but very high expectations that you can create it in a few weeks, and I remember what it was like to be new to BB (et al) and not even know where to start when writing a manual or policy or even a HTG, but come on .. it's not like we're holding the One PnP Manual to Rule Them All ?

I have amassed a collection of items over many years and finally got them all in one location and added them to Dropbox for anyone to access who wants to get some ideas.

Full disclosure - while I discarded many, there are still some (what I consider) outdated items and there are items in every style and type of formatting and writing - I did not review or critique or anybody's documents because I fully respect all the work put into them. There are documents that literally say press here click this type that, and there are documents that say "at this step add constituent". Again these are end user created documents and are often very specific to the organization, but hopefully you can give you a starting point.

I will give you my personal thoughts about documenting your policies and procedures based on 24- years of experience and collaboration:

If you are new to an organization, and especially if they don't have any written PnP to start with, make your timeline realistic. You can write up regular tasks first if they're fairly unchanging (think address changes; gift processing; data maintenance) but a comprehensive PnP may take a full year, depending on the organization, because when it comes to fundraising where you're laying out the steps say for a fall mail appeal-or a Gala or Walk -it's only going to happen once a year and until you live through it, you'll never know all of the nuances and caveats and weird little gotchas until after that appeal is over, the last check has come in and the final report is sent to the board. And if there is more than one campaign or event a year I can bet you a golden ticket every one will be different.

Write your docs as independent, individual one-off tasks or procedures or policies - this make it far easier for an end user just to print out the item they need for that task rather than an entire binder, plus it makes the prospect of having to write something from nothing much easier to handle when you know you can at least complete one or two fairly
quickly at a time without being so overwhelmed. So when it comes time to write up the PnP for your Gala, you will already have the pieces for how to set up the registration form, create the event record, create check in lists etc.

Create a document library on your shared network drive if possible so it's not tied or linked to you as the "owner" (if you have SharePoint create an intranet page for NXT *huge* bonus of that you can set it to automatically create it's own wiki to make searching so much easier) that follows the structure of the software or even department responsibility, and in a way that a user could logically drillll down to the task they need to learn about-and only focus on those modules your organization subscribes to. There's no use in creating a folder for the membership module if you don't have the membership module. I had great success and usage at my last org creating the document library like this:

RE NXT > Constituents>

RE NXT > Gifts >

RE NXT > Events > Add Participant Types

FE NXT> GL > Adding TCodes

FE NXT > AP > Reporting

LO > TeamRaiser
Etc etc

If you have database view and webview at your org, your documentation needs to reflect the procedures for both (even if you are the only one who uses database view, you will need backup at some point in your career)

Blackbaud has great documentation for webview. I know as much as you can advise someone "tell your staff to use the help in webview" sometimes it's just not going to happen. *Bonus* Links stay live when you copy and paste. When I worked in Higher Ed we used to joke that CASE really was short for copy and steal everything.

Seriously though, you will always have to do the work to perfect the PnP specifics to your organization but there's no need to completely recreate the wheel.

Here's the link, and if you have documentation you'd be willing to share-feel free to message me and I'll add it to the pile

RE Manuals and How-To Guides

And for the love of all unicorns everywhere... STOP USING THE PHRASE "IF I/YOU/SHE/HE GETS HIT BY A BUS).

Come on, be positive... Instead say " When I/YOU/SHE/HE/THEY win the lottery" ?