NGOstack vs Notion
Notion-style wiki spaces that connect to your funder reporting
NGOstack is a platform for NGOs and social-profit organisations, built by a German non-profit association: wiki spaces, projects, evidence and reporting in one place. Its wiki spaces will feel familiar if you use Notion — nested pages, a block editor, mentions and backlinks, full-text search, version history and a trash you can restore from, in the browser and in the desktop app.
So the decision here is not which editor you prefer to type in. It is whether your indicator tables, partner lists and reporting notes should sit beside the projects, milestones, evidence and funders they describe, or in a separate tool that someone keeps in step by hand every quarter. That is the question this page tries to settle.
What Notion is genuinely good at
Notion is a very good product, and NGOs use it for sound reasons. It is a blank canvas that a programme officer can shape in an afternoon without asking anyone for a schema, it has an enormous template and community ecosystem, and it is one of the fastest tools there is for getting an organisation's handbook, meeting notes and board pack out of scattered documents and into one searchable place. If your knowledge work is mostly writing — an induction guide, safeguarding policies, a running log of partner conversations — Notion does that job well and a migration would buy you very little. Nothing below is an argument that it is a poor tool. It is an argument about one specific piece of NGO work: the point where written knowledge has to turn into a number a funder will accept.
A funder asks for indicator 2.3, Q3 — where does the figure come from
This is the moment that decides the tool. A funder wants the Q3 figure against indicator 2.3, the evidence behind it, and confirmation that the last verification was not eighteen months ago. In NGOstack the indicator is a row in a wiki database, and its relation columns do not point at another spreadsheet — they point at the live records: the project, its milestones, its evidence items, and the funder itself. A rollup across that relation computes the total server-side, so the number in your report is derived from the same evidence records the field team updated, rather than re-typed from them. Choose the view that suits the reader: a table for the reporting pack, a board by verification status for the internal review, a timeline against the grant period. Each view carries its own filters, sorts and grouping over the same rows, so nobody maintains a second copy for the funder. And when the database is built from an IATI template, you can export IATI 2.03 XML from it — an IATI-aligned subset, so validate the file before submitting, but it starts from your actual records rather than a hand-built export sheet.
Moving your Notion space across, honestly
You do not have to retype three years of work. NGOstack takes a faithful Notion migration: you paste your own Notion internal integration token, migrate a whole space — databases, standalone pages and assets — or pick individual databases, and the token is sent per request and never stored. Typed columns come over as typed columns, select colours survive, relations between migrated databases are preserved, and Notion formulas become live formula columns wherever the expression is supported. Be clear-eyed about what does not travel: Notion views, rollup and lookup cell values, embeds, and very long row bodies are not migrated, so plan on rebuilding your views from the six types available — table, board, calendar, gallery, list and timeline — which usually takes minutes per database. CSV and XLSX import is there too, header-mapped and lossy by nature. The pragmatic move is not to migrate everything: bring across the databases that need to relate to real projects and evidence, and leave the rest where it is until you have a reason to move it.
Day to day, and what is not there yet
The whole wiki subsystem — spaces, pages and databases, all fifteen column types — is shared code between the browser and the desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, so the desktop app is the same editor over the same live data, not a reduced version. It is online rather than offline: there is no local copy and nothing to sync between devices, which is a simplification if your team works connected and a genuine constraint if someone drafts on a train. Three things you should know before you decide. The mobile app has a wiki module but is not yet at parity with web and desktop, so treat mobile as in progress. NGOstack has no team chat, channels or direct messaging, so keep the chat tool your organisation already uses — this replaces neither. And public share links are read-only and revocable, but they live on an NGOstack URL; a custom domain for them is not available today. Alongside the wiki spaces there is a searchable knowledge base carrying platform guides and community field knowledge, and AI knowledge standardisation — turning raw notes and files into clean structured entries — is part of that knowledge base and still coming, not something to build a decision on today.
Which to choose
Stay with Notion if your knowledge work is documentation rather than measurement: a handbook, policies, meeting notes, a partner CRM you maintain by hand, a team that drafts offline or lives on mobile, and reporting that a finance lead assembles once a year from sources outside any wiki. In that shape a migration costs you rebuilt views and habit, and returns very little; Notion is the better tool and you should keep it. Move to NGOstack if the same figures are being kept in two places — an indicator table in your wiki and the evidence in whatever system the programme team actually uses — and every reporting cycle starts with reconciling them. Concretely: if you report against indicators to more than one funder, if anyone has ever asked which of two numbers is the current one, or if IATI output is part of your obligations, then having your databases relate directly to projects, milestones, evidence and funders, with rollups computed from those records, removes a quarterly reconciliation rather than moving it. Pricing is country-tiered, with lower tiers for verified NGOs — see the pricing page — and the Notion migration means you can test the reporting workflow with your own data before committing to it.
What's included
The spaces capabilities this page refers to — all part of the one org plan, not a separate purchase.
Org & workspace wiki spaces
Notion-style wiki spaces for SOPs, knowledge and institutional memory — personal, org and workspace. Nested pages, mentions and backlinks, full-text search, version history and trash, plus revocable read-only public share links — the same editor in the browser and in the desktop app.
Wiki on mobile
Wiki spaces and databases run in the browser and in the desktop app today — the mobile app is catching up.
Wiki databases
Notion-style databases inside your wiki spaces — six views (table, board, calendar, gallery, list, timeline) and fifteen column types, with relations that point at your real projects, milestones, evidence and funders. Bring existing data across by CSV, Excel or a faithful Notion migration, and export IATI-shaped databases as IATI 2.03 XML.
Knowledge base
A searchable knowledge base — platform guides alongside community field knowledge.
The full picture: Wiki and knowledge base software for NGO teams
Comparisons
Other comparisons
Capabilities