In this article I will share how we are preparing the volunteer side for Swiss Service Design Week 2025 with a shared Notion document that has a general briefing for all volunteers and personal briefings for each volunteer.

A 9 minute overview of the Notion briefings for volunteers

The elements of the volunteer briefing in Notion

General briefing

This part of the briefing is the same for everyone.

• Video summary: A video guide that explains the key elements of the briefing and it's structure visually with an emotional note.

• Vision: Share why we are doing this work

• How: Share how we are doing the work

• Autonomy: Explain what level of autonomy people have

• Meetings to prevent silos: Give 3 dates (2 months before, 1 month before, 1 week before) for 30-minute meetings to coordinate

• Personal work style: Everyone can share what's special in his way of collaborating

The personal briefing

The personal briefing is where volunteers can learn about their tasks. All the briefings are visible to all the volunteers so that they can know what the other volunteers are up to.

• Link to get in touch: A link to a Linkedin Profile so that volunteers that don't know each other yet can get to know each other and get in touch.

• Personal video summary: A video summary of the tasks for the volunteer, the video is done in the local language of the volunteer

• Tasks: The tasks that the volunteer is responsible for (visible to all volunteers to help coordination)

• Getting started material: Inspirations, examples and early thoughts that can help the volunteer get started.

Why I built these briefings in Notion

Outside of the fact that I'm a big notion user, here is why I've used notion to create those briefings for the volunteers:

• Looks good enough: A notion document is quickly created and looks good enough without much work.

• Rich content: I can easily add links, videos, bookmarks within the briefing

• Easy to share: A notion briefing can easily by shared with a link and it looks great on all devices

• Easy to update: After having shared it I still can add elements to the document if the briefing evolves or the person needs more details

The Canva whiteboard for meeting notes

The plan is that before the meetings between all the volunteers, each volunteer enters already a summary of what he has done, what's next and issues to solve in the whiteboard.

By doing so during the meeting we can start by reading the review from everyone (remember reading is faster than listening to someone speaking) and then we can focus on:

• What wasn't clear and needs oral clarification

• The issues that need to be fixed and who will help

The goals is not to solve the problems during the meeting, but to synchronize everyone about what's happening and assign who will help who to solve the issues that are still open.