Knowledge Management Toolkit is Available

Last winter, I took on a project for the Michigan Advocacy Program (MAP) and Idealware  developing a toolkit for implementing knowledge management at your organization. This project was funded by a Technology grant by Legal Services Corporation, my erstwhile employer.

While geared somewhat for legal aid programs, the toolkit is fully usable for all sorts of nonprofits and businesses. It focuses primarily on document management, but includes advice on email, social media, and even non-technical information management practices.

The goal of the toolkit is to help orgs capture and easily manage not only the work product that they create, but also the thought processes behind that work. Too often, I’ve been at nonprofits that, after key turnover, knew what they had, like offices in certain cities and various programs and initiatives, but didn’t necessarily retain the reasoning behind the opening of those offices, or the strategy in pursuing some grant. Knowledge Management is about having all of the information that goes into your mission-based work at your fingertips. And this toolkit, hopefully, is a useful roadmap for implementing information management and knowledge capturing systems that will keep you focused on your key objectives. I hope that it will be helpful.

You can download the toolkit (for free!) here.

MAP has released an additional toolkit on securing your organization, and is funded to release two more. Idealware is overseeing the development with the help of subject matter experts like me. More evidence that the nonprofit sector is the BEST sector!