correspondences from donors

SheryAnne Wui

Hello,


For how long should we keep, file and/or archive correpondences ex/ copies of checks, offline cc information, notes? What is best practice- short term, long term?


Thank you,

SheryAnne

JoAnn Strommen

The auditor for your organization should be able to help you with specificis relevant to your org.  Are you US, Canada, UK?  Some states may have different requirements than federal. Am guessing different type orgs have quite different policiies for certain things.


From your examples: checks if at all would be by finance (not development IMO), CC info usually 7 yrs, notes - totally depends on what the note is about.  No set answer in my opinion.


I would talk to my auditor.

SheryAnne Wui

JoAnn Strommen:

The auditor for your organization should be able to help you with specificis relevant to your org.  Are you US, Canada, UK?  Some states may have different requirements than federal. Am guessing different type orgs have quite different policiies for certain things.


From your examples: checks if at all would be by finance (not development IMO), CC info usually 7 yrs, notes - totally depends on what the note is about.  No set answer in my opinion.


I would talk to my auditor.

Thanks JoAnn! We're California, US. I've kept everything (check copies, cc info, notes) for the last few years now, and I'm running out of physical space. I've uploaded major info/major gifts to constiutent record.


And, that's not including the gift and constituent batch reports - do you save these???

JoAnn Strommen

Some orgs do keep everything, some keep nothing.


To answer your question, I've never kept constituent batch reports.  Figure records are in RE and that's enough. Can query if need list. 


Gift batch reports: I save a PDF of the report in a folder for the business office.  Don't know that they've ever been used. Just there as a back-up of info I guess. In my office I keep hard copy with paperwork attached for the gifts in the batch. I have used these from time to time if there's a question about a gift, account name on the check if RE doesn't seem correct, other staff has a question about something.  Once the fiscal year audit is completed, I deleted electronic file and have myself a shredding party for all the batches from that year.  This process was determined with input from our CFO - matches our policies for document preservation.  At some point I'm guessing more of this will just be scanned.


We're fairly small org so needs may be quite different for a large org.


Note: I was thanking the Lord that I had hard-copy of batch reports and paperwork a number of years ago when we lost 3.5 weeks of data input due to back-up not running correctly due to an IT staff person's error and computer system crashed.  Had data to use to re-create all those gift records.

Christine Cooke 2

SheryAnne Wui:

JoAnn Strommen:

The auditor for your organization should be able to help you with specificis relevant to your org.  Are you US, Canada, UK?  Some states may have different requirements than federal. Am guessing different type orgs have quite different policiies for certain things.


From your examples: checks if at all would be by finance (not development IMO), CC info usually 7 yrs, notes - totally depends on what the note is about.  No set answer in my opinion.


I would talk to my auditor.

Thanks JoAnn! We're California, US. I've kept everything (check copies, cc info, notes) for the last few years now, and I'm running out of physical space. I've uploaded major info/major gifts to constiutent record.


And, that's not including the gift and constituent batch reports - do you save these???

 

IRS does have rules on gift collateral.  I keep batches with collateral (check copies, notes etc) and the batch reports as a set and they are kept for 7 years.  We are incredibly tight on space, so a couple of years is kept in the office and the rest are stored off site.  A lot of orgs with space/storage issues usually are contracted with a storage service from my erperiences, and once a year they rotate things in and out, based on required length of hold, some things are forever, like transcripts (when you are a school)

JoAnn Strommen

As so many of us have limited space that was one of my points. 'Development office' does not need to keep all the batches/check copies as 'finance office' keeps them for 7 years. Why both keep it all?  In January I give finance office my credit card file marked for destruction in 7 years to just keep with all the required paperwork as that's the only piece they don't already have.

Faith Murray

Legally, I think an org is only required to keep 7 years of gift records (notes are not required unless they validate how you posted/designated the gift). But as long as Finance has those records, Development doesn't need to. We keep all our records 7 years even in Development, and it has come in handy now or then. Typically, we only really use last year's records, when there's a question and we need a physical reference. But there was one time a colleague accidentally deleted a constituent record that had gifts associated, and it messed up our FE integration. We had to dig out the old files and re-create the donor record and the associated gift records in order to get our system functional again. For issues of space, we keep last year's in our Development office, and previous year's records in locked storage nearby on campus.