Spring Cleaning: Tips, Tricks, & Tools to Get Organized

Time for a little spring cleaning! While you don’t need an reason to bust out the mop and broom, this is a great opportunity to give your workplace a good internal and external scrubbing.

This goes beyond your counters and surfaces — although you should take a sponge to those as well. This is the opportune time to review the tools and processes that your organization uses on a consistent basis.

This guide will help you break out of the old, dusty systems that you have in place and explore new solutions. Below are some tips, tricks, and tools to get cleaned up, organized, and evaluate whether your organization is as efficient, inclusive, and transparent as possible.

Clean Your Office Space

This is the simplest way to refresh the energy within your organization and amongst your team. Sweep through the entire office or facility and give it a deep clean. Organize the spaces that seem cluttered. Bonus points if you feng shui the place! If possible, try moving things around to get a burst of simple, sensible, positive change.

Clean Up Your Communication Process

Communication is one of the top priorities amongst strong teams. If your organization’s communication is inconsistent or unorganized , then it’s time to clean it up. You can streamline your conversations through tools like Slack. By creating instant messaging opportunities and building team chats, you can increase transparency and even build camaraderie within your organization.

Organize Your Calendars

Creating a clear and detailed schedule will not only increase productivity, but will help your entire team feel organized, included, and respectful of one another’s time. If you don’t already, consider using a shared calendar such as Google Calendar. Take advantage of the features within tools like this. Create separate calendars for different departments and encourage your team to view and be familiar with the entire organization’s schedule.

Organize Your Projects

Joining a project or task management platform, such as Trello or Asana, will keep your plans transparent and your team on task. Give careful consideration to the flow you’ve created within these platforms. Are they as streamlined as possible? This is a great time to think about how your organization moves through projects and brainstorm with your team to explore whether there is opportunity for increased efficiency and collaboration.

Organize Your Marketing Schedules

Give your communications and marketing team more stability by creating a clear and manageable schedule for content creation and publishing. For social media, using tools like Hootsuite to quickly build and schedule their post time and date will allow your team to work efficiently. Using an email marketing platform, such as MailChimp or Constant Contact, will give your team the resources they need to create highly effective emails -- think professionally designed templates with clickable photos and icons. These mass mail platforms also allow you to collect data such as open rates, click-through rates, number of unsubscribes, so you can see what works and what doesn’t for your target audience.

Clean Your Data

Having clean and organized data should be a priority all year round, but every once in a while, it’s good to take a deep dive into the details within your data and re-analyze the layout. Consider whether your data is arranged in the most digestible way possible. Is it easy to understand even at a glance?

Using systems such as Salesforce Nonprofit CRM is a great way to house all of your data in a highly strategic way. Databases like these allow you to track a lot of information about your donors —  things like contact information, gift size and the date a donation was made, email and phone interactions — as well as set reminders for follow-up. CRMs also display the information in an organized and transparent way that your entire organization can understand through the reports function.

Clean Your Filing Cabinets

Go paperless! If you can, there are often options from vendors, partners, and other institutions to receive paperless invoices, receipts, and documents. This will help clean up your physical office space. And for all those notes you or your team might have lying about, consider using apps like Evernote or Google Keep.

Clean Up Your Reporting

If you don’t already, you should have weekly, monthly, or quarterly check-ins with your team. At the very least, you should have an annual meeting to review your organization’s past performance and upcoming plans and goals. Platforms such as Yearly help keep your reporting and presentation clean, organized, and engaging.