Browse all patterns

Setting up your knowledge base

Structure it the way people ask questions, not the way your organization is drawn on a chart. Teams reorganize; questions don't.
  • One page, one topic. If a page needs a table of contents, it is two pages.
  • Name pages as the question they answer. "How we handle expense claims" beats "Finance policy v2".
  • Say it once. The same rule in three places will disagree with itself within a year. Link, don't repeat.
  • Decide what is public. Most of what a nonprofit knows is not sensitive, and publishing it saves you answering the same question for every new volunteer, funder and partner. Keep people data and anything held under an obligation of confidence internal. The rest can be open by default.
  • Let everyone read and write everything internal. At this size, the risk of someone editing a page they shouldn't is far smaller than the cost of them not being able to fix a page that is wrong.

Your variation

Public by default is a choice, not a requirement. If you have gone the other way, note why.