Two Cool Tools for the Back Office
I'm about six months into my own nonprofit arts organization (parkcirclefilms.org) and am always looking for ways to work smarter and automate repetitive tasks. I wanted to share two excellent tools I've implemented to manage the administrative stuff so I can focus on our mission.
TWiki
TWiki is a really cool, open source wiki and collaboration system. It can be a bear to install, but the wiki engine is powerful and it sports awesome features like:
Project management and project development - Your IT staff can use it for coordinating on website or report development, and the marketing folks can use it to collaborate on your next big campaign.
Knowledge management - As my organization grows, more
volunteers have started getting involved. To keep the learning curve
low, volunteers are given a login to TWiki that gives them access to
our Policies and Procedures web and other pertinent information. Things
they shouldn't be allowed to read are kept private via group security.
Document management - This was what caught my eye first. We have meeting minutes, image files and other documents that I need to share easily and securely. Google Docs was my first attempt, but it lacks version control and you can only do text documents and spreadsheets. TWiki is good for keeping track of documents, and keeping them organized in a way that makes sense (because the file name "mrkt_sum_09_letter_stats.xls" won't make any sense in two months).
If it's good enough for Yahoo!, Cingular and SAP, I figured it was worth a shot, and I'm not disappointed at all. This is a great product that will scale into a nice intranet as we continue to grow.
Wordpress
Wordpress is the best blogging platform currently available. It's free and open source, and has hundreds of great plugins to extend it. We didn't need a full content management system, so this was a way to build a decent-looking web presence in just a couple of days. Creating and editing content is simple, so if I'm unavailable and we need a piece of information added to the website, I've got four non-techy people who can do it without breaking a sweat. I'm even testing out an event calendar plugin to let people more easily see our upcoming film schedule.
If you're not using Patron Edge Online for your web presence or to sell tickets, I highly recommend checking out Wordpress, or even Drupal if you need a full-featured content management system without paying full-time web developers to build and maintain a custom website.
What tools do you use at your organization to automate back office tasks or keep things flowing smoothly on the administrative side? Share your experience in the comments.