I was asked recently how to create an operations manual. The first thing you need to decide is what will be in it. Will it cover everything or will you have a separate personnel and financial policy / accounting manual? If you are doing an all-in-one you can always break it into pieces later, you don’t want to have something so unwieldy that it is never looked at.
A great way to start is to create a list of different activities that happen in your nonprofit every week:
- How is the mail opened?
- When are deposits made?
- How is payroll done?
- Who is making sure our reports are filed?
- Who approves the bills to be paid?
After five minutes of brainstorming you and your colleagues can have the beginnings of a manual. It does not have to be fancy, even a simple bulleted list will do the job.
