Paper Document Best Practices

Sara Niemiec · May 22

My team recently started implementing e-signatures on pledge forms and fund agreements instead of mailing out paper ones. After we get the form/agreement signed, I'm still printing out a paper copy for our records, in addition to saving a PDF on the donor's record in Attachments. I'm wondering, though, if printing out and saving a paper copy is best practice anymore, if it's unnecessarily duplicative. My initial dev work training taught me to have paper copies of important stuff like this, but I'm wondering if this is no longer needed. What are your thoughts?

JoAnn Strommen · May 22

Great question. We have countless files of documents going back decades…

Our current process is to attach PDF to record as you described. The PDF is also saved on a shared drive master file (folders for pledges / MOU / LOI. While I still see paper copies in the office, I think we are moving from hardcopies to scanned docs.

Carlene Johnson · May 22

Not gonna lie. I'm still a big fan of a three ring binder with all pledge agreements by fiscal year. I can't tell you how many times someone SWEARS that they saved it in all the right places and come to find out it was mis-labeled or mis-filed electronically.

Is it best practice? Who knows. Does it make me feel less crazy? Yes. I'm sure that some of this depends on volume.

You can pry my paper copies of pledge agreements from my cold dead hands. 🤣

Devan Bessinger · May 28

One consideration - at one point, RE attachments were not backed up. I don't know if that has changed because our org opted not to use attachments in the system (we use a 3rd party document storage system instead). You may want to check if this is still the case. If so, then I'd definitely recommend having a copy elsewhere outside of RE. Whether that is a paper hard-copy or a digital copy saved somewhere else is up to you, although I'd always recommend digital that is backed up and restorable!

Faith Murray · May 28

Like Devan, I am unsure if attachments are backed up currently with Blackbaud. After originally advising our staff not to use attachments, I have instead advised staff that they can use attachments, but must 1) also save an additional copy (hard copy or digital) and 2) add a query-searchable field to the RE record to accompany the attachment.

As far as whether digital files can replace hard copies, I'll quote something I heard from a lawyer at an educational conference. He was speaking about school records, but the same principle applies: if a court (or an auditor, or the IRS) asks you to provide required documentation, he won't care that your computer broke or your cloud storage was compromised - it is your responsibility to have the documentation on hand. To that end, I am a big believer in storing legally required documents in at least two different locations, whether that second be a hard copy or secure on-campus server storage.

Alex Beck · May 29

Also supporting what Devan and Faith have said. Until recently, I was putting PDF's on records and considered that viable, but I have since learned that most likely if something happens attachments cannot be recovered. Our org uses SharePoint, so I now put documents in folders within our department's shared files and link to those on the record.

Of course, there's not a lot of great options for bulk-downloading any attachments already added directly to a record. I've read that maybe you can pay for a service through Blackbaud to have attachments delivered in bulk to you, but there are also independent services out there that will do so as well, or I have seen github projects that will procedurally download attachments off constituent records but I have not tried implementing them myself as we do have the files. In your case, because you have the printed copies, you at least have a backup so probably not worth pulling from your DB to get digital copies of any you may not have stored anymore in digital form, as you can always just scan any you need a digital copy of should the need arise even if something happens to the copies within your DB.

My individual take is that having print copies does not make sense for my org these days. If we need a print copy for whatever reason, we can always find it on the record or within SharePoint barring that. Ultimately, if it suits your process better to have print copies and you're not running into storage issues, I do not see a reason to radically change what sounds like is working just fine for your org.

Sara Niemiec · May 29

Everyone, thank you SO MUCH for these incredibly helpful and insightful comments. You've given me a lot to think about, things I hadn't even considered. Much much appreciated!

Paper Document Best Practices

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