The handbook is this Notion page, an organized collection that serves as the single source of truth — our internal knowledge base. Each team lead or DRI ensures their section is up to date quarterly. Notion’s search and indexing makes it easy to find info.
We encourage a culture where the first response to a process question is, “Did you check the handbook?” We make our handbook public as public as possible and treat it as the single source of truth for all operations.
We also leverage Notion features:
- Linked Databases: For example, an SOP page can have a linked view of related “Incidents” or “Requests” if we track those, to see how often the SOP is used or if issues occur.
- Templates within databases: The SOP template can actually be a database template so whenever someone creates a new SOP entry, the structure auto-populates.
- Permissions: Most of the handbook can be world-edit for the team to contribute, but certain critical policies might be locked to HR/Legal editing.
Key sections include:
- Company Overview: mission, values (customer obsession, etc.), org chart.
- Policies: HR policies, remote work policy, expense policy, etc., each as pages (using a policy template).
- Teams: Each department or acquired firm has a homepage that describes what they do, their team members, links to their OKRs and SOPs. It’s essentially a mini-handbook for each team.
- Tools & Systems: Guides on using internal tools (with links to SOPs as needed), e.g. “Notion Best Practices,” “Using the Donor CRM,” etc.
- FAQs: Common questions (e.g. “How do I request design help for a campaign?”) with answers linking to the right process/SOP.
Project Documentation
- For each major project or campaign, the team creates a project page (using a template) at kickoff, and updates it through execution and retro. The template includes:
- Overview: Goals, timeline, team roles.
- Plan: perhaps a link to a project timeline or tasks database.
- Results: Once finished, fill in actual outcomes vs. goals (e.g. “Raised $500k which was 10% short of goal”).
- Retrospective: A table with “What went well / What could be improved / Actions for next time”. This retrospective section ensures lessons learned are documented and not lost. It might be visible to all so others running similar projects can learn. This ties to our continuous improvement ethos.
- All these project pages are tagged in a Notion database so one can browse past campaigns or initiatives and quickly find context, avoiding reinventing the wheel.