I’m looking for ideas to help me set up our documentation system, for everything from bylaws and articles of association to budget and financials, to policy, schedules, membership, and more. It’s our first year, so thankfully, the documents aren’t piled up too much, yet. Right now, all of the documents I create live in my personal google drive and I share the links to anyone who needs them. I’m not really consistent with keeping them up to date and I know this link sharing system is not sustainable either. Can you help?
This is a great question! Document storage for any organization is extremely important, and even more so for a nonprofit.
Where to Store Your Files
If your group is not a 501c3 nonprofit, my recommendation is that you create a Google account (that means an email account) for your group. I recommend this because it’s FREE and great for organizations that are just starting out. This will allow you to have a Google Drive associated with that email account and will provide up to 15 GB of storage space. Make sure to keep this account strictly group related. Don’t send personal emails or have personal files on this account. Within the Drive, you can develop a folder system for your documents and share those folders with the individuals who need access.
You can assign access levels by folder and by file. If you assign an access level to the folder, then any documents you add to that folder will inherit the access level of the folder. Assigning access levels by folder makes it easy to change access privileges when there is turnover in your leadership team. You can change that at the file level, if you need to, but make sure to remember to remove access for people who no longer need it.
The access levels available in a Google drive are Editor, Commenter, and Viewer. Allow anyone who will be organizing, adding and editing files to have Editor access. Allow all others who may need to view the files to have Viewer access.
If this account is using reaching its storage limit, you can purchase more storage inexpensively from Google. As of the date of this post, 100 GB of storage is available for about $20/year. Not bad.
If you decide to step down from leadership, there is a way to transfer the email and “ownership” of all of the files to a new leader.
If you are a 501c3 nonprofit, you may qualify for a FREE Google Workspace account, which will provide much more storage space. One nonprofit that I work with has 100TB of free storage space! A Google Workspace account will provide you with many additional features, such as the ability to have shared drives, shared calendars, and more.
Avoid Using Your Website
I recommend that groups avoid using their website as the only place they store their documents. It’s fine to have a copy there and display them, but it isn’t wise to use that as your document storage. Typically organizations don’t manage website stored files well at all. Files get uploaded and forgotten. They may not be uploaded in an organized manner making them hard to find. If you need to move your website to another platform, it can be a huge effort to transfer those files and is made worse if they are not well organized.
Organizing Your Files
Once you know where to store your files, you need to decide how to organize them. I have found there are two different approaches that work well. One is by document type and then by date. Your file structure might be Finances with subfolders for the years. Or Board Minutes with subfolders for the year and then additional subfolders for the month. This is the version that I prefer for most documents. I find that I can generally find a document faster using this format.
The other is by date and then document type. For example you might have a folder for 2020 and then have subfolders for Board Minutes and Finances.
Here’s a sample of the file structure that I prefer that shows the folder names and subfolder names in the first column and then who has what access in the second column:
| File Folders | Who and What Access |
|---|---|
| Organizing Documents –> Articles of Association –> Bylaws | You – Owner (full access) Vice President – Editor Access Other board members – View Access |
| Financial Documents –> Financial Reports –>Treasurers Reports —–>2023 —–>2024 –> Balance Sheets —–>2023 —–>2024 –> Budget —–> 2023 —–> 2024 | You – Owner (full access) Treasurer – Editor Access Other Board Members – View Access |
| Board Meetings –>2023 —–>01 Jan ——–>2023-01-17 Board Minutes Approved —–>02 Feb –>2024 —–> 01 Jan —–> 02 Feb | You – Owner (full access Secretary – Editor Access Other Board Members – View Access |
Adopt a File Naming Convention
The last thing to keep in mind when organizing your documents is the file naming convention. The goal is a naming system that allows your board to look at the file name and have a really good idea of what is in that file. The naming convention I prefer starts with the date and then the name of the file. I use the date format of yyyy-mm-dd. So a draft version of our board minutes for our January 17, 2023 meeting would be: 2023-01-17 Board Minutes Draft. Once corrections were made and the minutes were approved, the name would be 2023-01-17 Board Minutes Approved. You can see that reflected in the table above.
Anyone who creates a file for you should adopt the naming convention that you choose. This could be a learning curve and require some reminding, but it will pay off in the end when people can find the file they need as easily as possible.