Notion for Rapid Growth
ĒMA's Knowledge System for Employees & Partners
Training Workshops
Onboarding Process Improvements
Reduction in navigation complexity
The Problem
Jessie Ray inherited a problem that looked like it had already been solved.
Every Mother's Advocate is a nonprofit dedicated to preventing family separation by connecting mothers in crisis to advocacy and support. They had already invested in a Certified Notion Consultant and spent months working to customize Notion. The workspace looked structured with teamspaces, affiliate dashboards, and several wikis. On paper, they did everything right.
But when Jessie stepped into her role as Director of National Programs, she found herself staring at a system she couldn't understand. "I had never heard of Notion," she said. "When [they] said we had shifted away from Google Docs and that this is the tool we were using... I was blown away by it as a tool and then also what you were able to accomplish. But it was very overwhelming at first."
The workspace wasn't just overwhelming. It was operationally brittle. Information lived in silos. The same content existed in different versions across multiple places. There was no centralized place to manage all resources whether for staff or the affiliate organizations across the country who relied on ĒMA for current guidance.
As ĒMA scaled its mission to keep mothers and babies together during crisis, it found itself facing a different crisis internally: siloed information that couldn't support the growth.
Redesigning Knowledge at ĒMA
By late 2025, ĒMA and Stackrie had built a system to manage their affiliate partnerships. What didn't work was:
- how staff found internal resources
- how documentation was created and maintained
- and how information flowed from headquarters to the national network
Program directors create resources, the Broward team pilots them locally, and some but not all of the resources get promoted to reach affiliate organizations across the country. But silos blocked the workflow, updates happened inconsistently, and many duplicate pages made it hard to find what was current.
ĒMA needed the workspace to behave like a governed system where ownership was explicit, updates happened predictably, and access boundaries aligned with workflow needs rather than who, internally, authored the information.
The Solution
We first centralized all internal information into one searchable wiki and one teamspace rather than scattering it across many pages and access permission levels. Next, all affiliate resources were combined into one database where many departments publish and affiliates have varied access. It is now as easy as changing a filter to see which resources are ready for external partners and which are for the Broward team.
This design choice allows for future agentic syndication of information. If internal policies change, a single relationship field can power Notion AI's revision of the publicly syndicated information.
We created two measures of ownership. Every page is now assigned to someone and one or more departments responsible for keeping it current with verification schedules.
How We Got Here
From "I Can't Figure Out How This Works" to "I Can Find, Update, and Manage Information"
- Views & Systems for Maintaining Notion
- SOP Writing Training & Practice
- Manager & IT Views + Cyclical Routines for Maintaining Notion
Prior to this engagement, Stackrie ĒMA in an on-site overhaul of the affiliate dashboarding system.
The Results
We created lasting change through effective training and upskilling for leaders. Program directors and team leads were trained in an SOP framework and given templates that speed up the documentation and maintenance processes. The training and self-help deliverables support leaders in adopting the system and training their own teams when to use each database.
We deployed an "audit system" complete with dashboards and routine procedures that allows staff to easily locate and fix out-of-date departmental information. Stackrie delivered new training materials for employees unfamiliar with Notion. One new team member found the overview "very helpful," and new employees can now onboard themselves to the system.
It feels much easier to find, update and manage the information we use.
Jessie Ray
Director of National Programs at Every Mother's Advocate
The system is no longer dependent on a single person to understand it. Every team that uses it, can contribute to maintaining it.
Built For Scale
ĒMA's team creates resources in one place and shares them with their national network with minimal duplication, version confusion, or requiring partners to navigate internal systems they shouldn't see. Staff can identify who owns what in seconds, new team members find what they need, and we reduced barriers to maintaining Notion with training and new maintenance routines.
The team is now capable of maintaining their Notion workspace themselves so the system can grow as the organization grows. Energy that used to go into fighting the knowledge system now goes back into supporting mothers in crisis and strengthening the national network of advocates keeping families together.
Fighting your knowledge system instead of using it?
Every Mother's Advocate
Engagement Details:
- Team Size: 6 - 15
- Industry: Community Social Welfare
- Service: Notion Implementation
- Engagement Length: 3 Months