Step 1.

The heart of any effective organization is its people. Good contacts management is critical, and it pays to take the time to organize your contacts meticulously, and to keep these records up to date.

This means at minimum, keeping a master list complete with name, email, cell phone numbers, Twitter and/or Facebook profiles.

Better yet, also include profession, skills, volunteer interests and a record of their contributions.

Tip!

Don't let any old volunteer manage these lists for you. Make sure the keeper of the lists is reliable and accurate.

Step 2.

Create mirrors of everything important – your list should be on numerous hard drives and in numerous places in the cloud. An organization's list is its most valuable resource. It should be protected and also be considered confidential. BACK UP your contacts list regularly!

I.E...

Egyptian organizers saved each others’ names and contact information to Google Documents as well as offline in case they lost access to Facebook or the internet. For more, see our guide on preparing for loss of access to the web.

Step 3.

Collect email addresses from everyone you can, phone someone to get their new address when the old one no longer works, and back up your list frequently.

Step 4.

Keep lots of "lists" of groups of people. For example, one for your membership, another for your steering committee, another for other folks interested in your work.

Step 5.

Phone trees are an extremely useful tool to convey complicated information, reach those without email, and quickly rally the troops. They do, however, require appointing someone a Phone Tree Coordinator.

A phone tree is a pyramid structure that starts with the coordinator calling several others, and giving them the information to pass along. In turn, they phone those on their list, who pass it on to others, and so on, until the entire list has been called.

Each caller can normally contact from three to ten others. As the tree spreads out, and each participating member calls more, the number of people who can be reached grows exponentially- in other words, really fast!

Tip!

Consider using a tool like Frontline SMS to store and manage all of the mobile numbers of your membership.

Step 6.

Time management - we're called "activists" for a reason. Because we tend to be incredibly active doing the jobs that we think are truly important in this world. Time management is the art of tending to the important and time urgent, and knowing what to let drop. Time management is also the art of planning your projects, including timelines, resources required and task dependencies - in other words, what tasks rely on other tasks before they can be completed?

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