Tools You Can Use: Asana

At Donorly, we use a wide variety of online tools—research databases, social media schedulers, cloud storage, a CRM—but if there’s one thing we cannot live without, it’s Asana. Asana is to us what we imagine a Swiss Army knife must be to a seasoned outdoors-person: it does everything. Whether your team works remotely or all together in one room, this free tool (yes, another FREE tool!) is an awesome resource for keeping you on track and on time.

Here are three examples of ways Asana can support your fundraising efforts, beyond the traditional task list:

1. Agendas. Set up separate projects for each of your recurring meetings and give all of the attendees access to edit. This allows everyone to easily add items for discussion as they come up throughout the week. Asana will show who added the item and has space for anyone to add comments, links, or files before the meeting. Then, if an agenda item needs to become a task for a team member, simply assign it, add a deadline, and move it to another project page.

2. Big Picture Planning. Asana offers you the option to set up a project as a list (pictured above) or a board. This allows you to outline the macro-vision for your project, while assigning staff members sub-tasks with deadlines. We love them for creating fundraising plans, but they could be used for a variety of projects.

3. Content Calendars. You might find this handy for scheduling your email communications throughout the year, or for managing your graphic designer’s time and priorities. We use it to schedule content to go up on our blog and social media channels. Set it up as a list or default to the calendar tab (see below). Either way, you can easily assign dates and responsibilities—and keep everything in one place for when you’re getting content approvals.