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How do I increase program team use of Every Action?

  • October 14, 2025
  • 9 replies
  • 692 views
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Our organization has a strong program team that’s distinct from our development team in a lot of day-to-day operations. The dev. team uses Every Action to track contacts with our donors, which helps guide our stewardship and solicitation. 

We’ve struggled to ingrain Every Action use within our program team’s day-to-day operations, but we don’t want to miss important notes, especially when they’re having external conversations with members (at a community event, for example). 

What are some best practices for making Every Action feel accessible and convenient for those who don’t use it as a development tool? How do you make it feel like “not a lot of work” to record conversations with members?

Maybe a Google form that we could upload to notes? Thanks in advance!

Best answer by Andria

I’ll add a little to the BCC to notes suggestion - I used to export a monthly BCC user report (just counts per user) that our CEO used as an accountability tool. This way it became more visible to staff/supervisors on who was regularly using BCC to notes, and who the power BCCers were (whoever did the most BCCs that month). It was a playful acknowledgment moment to say “So and So BCCs so much they are always at the top of the report!” It’s surprising, but also not, how much visible accountability does the trick!

      9 replies

      J
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      • jeff
      • First Timer
      • October 14, 2025

      We use the BCC to notes feature as a way to capture program staff notes. 

      Whenever a staff sends a “wrap up” email to a collaborator thanking them for engaging with us at event X doing function Y, they BCC to note. It has been a straightforward way to easily get some basic info into EA without adding additional work to the staff. 

      As a bonus, it also lets them know if the person they are emailing doesn’t have an EA record. 

      Our data team then looks at a CAL with notes added by staff and cleans things up

        Liz Ragland
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        • Liz Ragland
        • Community Manager
        • October 14, 2025

        ​@Lark Valente here’s the full details on BCC feature if you want to check it out: 


        @jeff if an email address is not in EA and you get the bounce back notifying you of this, do you have a process outlined for adding that contact to the system?

        Liz at Bonterra
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        • jeff
        • First Timer
        • October 14, 2025

        The program staff just forwards us the bounce back and the original message. A nice product update would be if the bounce back email could include the original message, so that could be shared in one FWD instead of two separate emails.

          Andria
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          • Andria
          • First Timer
          • Answer
          • October 15, 2025

          I’ll add a little to the BCC to notes suggestion - I used to export a monthly BCC user report (just counts per user) that our CEO used as an accountability tool. This way it became more visible to staff/supervisors on who was regularly using BCC to notes, and who the power BCCers were (whoever did the most BCCs that month). It was a playful acknowledgment moment to say “So and So BCCs so much they are always at the top of the report!” It’s surprising, but also not, how much visible accountability does the trick!

            Liz Ragland
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            • Liz Ragland
            • Community Manager
            • October 15, 2025

            ​@Andria that’s a great idea! Measuring and reporting/acknowledging their effort is a great way to encourage usage of that feature. Sharing out this data can help influence positive behavior. 

            Liz at Bonterra
              J
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              • jeff
              • First Timer
              • October 15, 2025

              One additional piece of advice from this thread. BCC to notes is great from a practical standpoint. 

              What really moved things org-wide though was specifically naming EA usage as a point of emphasis in our multi-year strategic plan, and our yearlong org plan. Happy to follow up with anyone through private messages about what that process looked like. 

                S
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                I’ll add a little to the BCC to notes suggestion - I used to export a monthly BCC user report (just counts per user) that our CEO used as an accountability tool. This way it became more visible to staff/supervisors on who was regularly using BCC to notes, and who the power BCCers were (whoever did the most BCCs that month). It was a playful acknowledgment moment to say “So and So BCCs so much they are always at the top of the report!” It’s surprising, but also not, how much visible accountability does the trick!

                How did you run this BCC user report?  I’ve been using EA for a few years and still struggle to find the data I need.  I looked through the report options and CAL options and couldn’t find a way to get the BCC counts as you described.  Thanks!

                torvic vardamis
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                ​@scurtiskellogg 

                Jumping in here real quick. I believe the workflow here would be using the “Include only notes created via Personal Email To Notes” option within the “Notes” section on Create a List to get the list of contact records that have at least one note that was generated via a BCC.

                From there, you’re able to use the pre formatted Export called “Notes List”

                You can then use the resulting export to filter to just notes that contain “Subject” in the “Note Text” column. 

                I hope this helps!

                Andria
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                • Andria
                • First Timer
                • December 2, 2025

                I’ll add a little to the BCC to notes suggestion - I used to export a monthly BCC user report (just counts per user) that our CEO used as an accountability tool. This way it became more visible to staff/supervisors on who was regularly using BCC to notes, and who the power BCCers were (whoever did the most BCCs that month). It was a playful acknowledgment moment to say “So and So BCCs so much they are always at the top of the report!” It’s surprising, but also not, how much visible accountability does the trick!

                How did you run this BCC user report?  I’ve been using EA for a few years and still struggle to find the data I need.  I looked through the report options and CAL options and couldn’t find a way to get the BCC counts as you described.  Thanks!

                 

                I run a Contact History report and filter to Input Type: Email to Notes. 

                 

                This gives me a monthly report (this report reports on any 31 day timeframe - it says “the past 31 days,” but you can do any) that I can group by “contacted by” - this then shows me how many contact attempts per user/contacted by.  We do this monthly and just copy/paste the data into a spreadsheet to show month over month data. 

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