We are in the process of purging files, and have some donors that are deceased - how long does everyone keep hard copied of donor acknowledement and other file materials, keeping in mind that there may be estates some years after the donors are deceased. I need to present some ideas to the team, and am wondering what others are doing.
I've worked at organizations at both ends of the spectrum when it comes to retaining hard copies. At my current org, we retain everything indefinitely. It takes an immense amount of space to store all those records and keep them secure, but we have occasionally accessed twenty year old information. Especially when we're looking at info from before the transition to Tessitura or when we used to manage campaigns and funds differently.
At a past organization, it was policy to purge hard copies after two years of origination. There were exceptions if we could show the hard copies were relevant to an ongoing donor relationship or we expected an estate gift. We did put more information into Tessitura there, the idea being that it was more secure than hard copies and easier to track in the event of staff turnover. This method required more time to sort through old hard copies and determine what to keep and what to purge, but only about twenty minutes a month after we had a handle on it. As we implemented the policy, we found that much of what we were keeping was no longer of use anyway and we did not miss anything we purged.