Looking for cloud storage options

Becky Schmitt

We currently store copies of all of our acknowledgment letters in physical files in our fileroom and it's getting a little ridiclous (we've been operating for 30 years). So we are looking for options for cloud/electronic storage. We currently are using Raiser's Edge 7. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would the cost benefit be worth it to move to Raiser's Edge NXT? Or should we find another company to work with?


What solutions do you use?

JoAnn Strommen

Can I ask why you keep paper files that long? 


Don't know what type of org you are or where but I'm not aware of any reason why you'd need to keep acknowledgement letters for any significant length of time.  And certainly not hard copies.  We keep our electronic files of receipts for only a couple years.  Just make file when letters are generated.


Moving to RENXT or cloudstorage isn't going to get rid of the paperfiles unless you scan every doc.  In my opinion, not worth the time.

Becky Schmitt

JoAnn Strommen:

Can I ask why you keep paper files that long? 


Don't know what type of org you are or where but I'm not aware of any reason why you'd need to keep acknowledgement letters for any significant length of time.  And certainly not hard copies.  We keep our electronic files of receipts for only a couple years.  Just make file when letters are generated.


Moving to RENXT or cloudstorage isn't going to get rid of the paperfiles unless you scan every doc.  In my opinion, not worth the time.

I've only been here for 2.5 years, I have no idea why we have 30 years worth of paper files on some of our donors. It is a huge undertaking to be sure to get everything moved to electronic and we may have to convince my boss we don't need all 30 years worth of information.


But even if we don't scan all of the past years, we still need storage for future letters and supporting documents and I don't think our server can handle all of that. 

Jen Claudy

My last position had NXT and even before that, we moved to a completely electronic system.  Finance kept the records per the retention schedule, as required by the auditors and org policy.  We would scan gift paperwork, then file it in a box or drawer.  Once that fiscal year was complete & audited, we would shred that paperwork.  Before mailing acknowledgement letters, we would also scan those and add them to the gift paperwork.  The complete file would go on the Gift Record in NXT.  A back-up copy would go on an org server (mostly because I was responsible for all data entry, and many other tasks, so there was always a backlog).  Our CEO liked to hand write notes on ack letters, and many times he or another development staff member would want to go back and review or reference what he had written.


We didn't have a huge volume of gifts, so this largely worked for us.  However, you might also consider something like PaperSave.  I don't know much (anything, really) about it, just that it exists.  But it might be worth looking into.

Faith Murray

I can't see any need for keeping that many records of correspondence unless it was a specially-tailored letter to a major donor. Yes, it's useful to remember what you wrote to somebody, but let's face it -- 10 years from now, even the donor herself isn't going to remember what you wrote on that thank-you letter. We keep a digital record of our thank-you letters for about 3 years, for referencing, but even with that, we only keep the template, not a copy of each merged letter to each individual donor. The letter type coding in the donor's gift record is sufficient for referencing which letter template they received. Occasionally, we will keep a copy of a specially-written letter for a major gift, but even that gets shredded after 7 years.

Gracie Schild

I'm definitely on the side of scanning everything. We had a huge set of files, most of them utterly useless, going back to the dawn of time (well, 25 years or so), but when we moved into our new building, there was no room.  Rather than try and backtrack with scanning and attaching, we did a scan and shred process, which was great. We now have on our shared drive a huge file of PDFs, all in the order we sent them, of everything in those files, should we ever need to refer back to it.  We are currently checking some for information about scholarships or endowments that have been inactive forever., and it's a little labor intensive, but doable. Currently it's set up as a folder for each box we sent, then every file that was in the box is one long PDF document named as the physical folder was named. Before boxing them off for pick up, we went through and pulled the files of a handful of major donors and board members - so we do still have 3 drawers of hard files, but everything has been scanned and attached for 5 years now - and that's a heck of a lot easier.  We save certain things for about 18 months (after the FY audit) and then shred them, but, really, we save very little paper now.  


Use the "clean-out-the-closet" test. Have you looked at it/needed it for the last 2 years? No? Then scan for archival purposes and shred away. Why pay forever to store something you will rarely use? Pay once and have it out of your space and off your conscience. .We used Docufree and were very satisfied.

Stephanie Crawley

 

We don't use the cloud yet.  At bbcon, the cloud storage providers there (that I was aware of) were PaperSave, Amazon and Microsoft.  You may want to start there.

Jessica Smith 4

Hi Becky,

A little late but I wanted to chime in. We are a small Catholic high school so our volume of paper and traffic is alot smaller than some other organizations so our system may seem simplistic. Plus our Advancement team is small....just the director and me.

This year, with the addition of a new CFO and a new Advancement Director who are all about lessening our use of paper and files, we started doing everything electronically that we can. By that I mean we scan and save what would usually be filed. Apparently there is Google for business so our school uses Google for e-mail, docs, sheets etc so we all have Google Drives for sharing and storing. (There are classroom and grading options with Google too but I am not in the education side, just the advancement.) 


Our IT director set up an Advancement Google Drive so no matter who leaves the organization, the storage drive stays the same. We have folders set up within the Google Drive for things that we would normally file: 2016-17 Donations, Acknowledgments Sent, Batch Documents, Employee Payroll Deduction Forms etc. It's also good place to create folders to store CSV exports when we are working on mailings or the Annual Report. Even have a folder for those RE documents and manuals we consult!


Being able to share is so helpful. I can share a folder with our accounting team if they are having issues with posting and they don't have to keep asking me about donations on this date or that and can see everything they need. 


We scan each gift and any backup as a PDF and save it named with the donors name and gift date. (Smith, John 022817). Check copies are kept through the following month only and then shredded. All paper backup is shredded after it is scanned.

Credit cards are processed through a 3rd party and we get e-mails about donations. We save those e-mails as PDF's in the same way plus I save the e-mail in an e-mail folder for the year just in case. I delete the previous years e-mails when our new FY begins. 

We do our acknowledgments through the RE mail function and simply save the resulting Word doc with the date sent in the Ack Sent folder. We include receipt information on the acknowldgement so we don't send two things. 


Since this is our first year to do this it's a trial and error kind of thing. Our plan is to put all the FY's folders into one folder at the end of the year and start the new year with new folders. Kind of like clearing the filing cabinet into a box for storage to make room for the new files. 


While I would have liked to have taken our last few years of paper files and scanned them to get them out of the attic and be able to easily search the donations, no one else was keen on that so our electronic files will only begin this year. 


Hope you find the solution you need!