Using Notion for Club Management

“Effective communication is crucial in any management setting, particularly in ensuring clarity and efficiency. All organizations, workplaces, or clubs consist of people trying to work toward a common goal that would contribute to their success.

Similarly, as a college club, we wanted to streamline communication across the executive committee without loss of structure or efficiency. Hence, we tried to incorporate the use of a famous tool called Notion, which is a versatile all-in-one productivity tool that combines notetaking, project management, and collaboration features in a single platform. BITS Pilani Toastmasters Club has always tried to adopt novel ideas for the growth of the club. Streamlining and structuring the management communication has helped us ensure that we can spend our creative energy towards improving other aspects of the club. Also, since BITS Pilani Toastmasters Club is a college club, it has different requirements as compared to a community club.

As a college club, there is always a gray area between informality and formality in terms of management. Hence, platforms such as Notion help bring structure to the management of individuals as well as tasks without disturbing the dynamic ecosystem of the club. Notion allows users to create dynamic documents, databases, and Kanban boards, fostering seamless teamwork and organization. With its user-friendly interface and customizable layouts, Notion has gained popularity for personal and professional use, offering a centralized hub for managing tasks, documents, and collaborative projects.

We use Notion in the following ways:

There is a common workspace for all the ex-comm members, where everyone can make edits and additions. This allows club officers to manage their tasks such as poster making,
agenda preparation, etc., effectively.

The workspace consists of a Task Management database, which has all the information about the tasks we need to complete.

Each task entails information about the following parameters:

– Name: Links to the page containing information about the task needed to be completed
– Person: People who are assigned the task
– Date: Deadline of completing the task
– Status: Whether the task is completed or not
– Priority: The level of priority for the task

This database helps streamline the management of the day-to-day responsibilities of the executive committee. It also sets up accountability for each of the members to complete their tasks without the need for continuous updates from each of them. Also, there is the “Ideas” page, which records all the good ideas that can be implemented for the club. Every member can just type out their idea in the Quick Write first, which can later be moved to the Ideas Page whenever there is time. Due to this ideas tab, we were to set up a club meeting calendar, which allows the members to book their slots (through the VPE of course) for important roles like the TMOD, TTM, etc. so that they get time to prepare for their roles and make the meets even more engaging and fun. Finally, there is a “Resources” page that helps store all the necessary resources for each of the members (for example, VPE has the Google form link for the meeting roles, the VPPR has the template for the meeting posters for social media, etc.). This is not compulsory but serves as a great tool to keep everything in one place. Adjusting to Notion requires a bit of initial effort, but once you hop on the productivity express, there’s no turning back!

Submitted by 
BITS Pilani Toastmasters Club