best practices 4 Preserving records from one board to the next

Thad, the best way to preserve everything is digitally, but there is an abundance of human work required to organize the digital repository to make it viable.

You will be hard pressed to get get volunteers to sign an "agreement" to perform all their volunteer work a certain way. That said, your CIC can adopt a digital platform and pay someone to ensure all your records are stored and organized appropriately. Having a CIC-based electronic repository is key to ensuring that your management company does not control access to every file (and helps prevent chaos when your CIC changes managers), but figuring out ONE place to store the files on your side of the fence is also a good idea. Many organizations store documents in their CRM tool, but CRM tools are not yet capable of integrating with Google Drive, MS Sharepoint, etc. in a meaningful way to establish a repository AND a collaborative document editing environment. That capability is in the works at several vendors.

Regards,
Steve

I just wanted to make sure your not expecting more paperwork than may actually exists. Have found people go on a "records hunt" that is a bit more "imaginative" the "reality". Sometimes I think some want records that are complete "fantastical". The reality is it's most not likely all you think it is. Just pointing this out so don't get too lost in the weeds assuming things that are not there.

When I had to gather the records for our HOA, it was a simple box in a closet. This covered 20 + years of the HOA records. It was just a normal file size folder box. It mostly contained like records of old contracts, ACC approvals, Awards, and odds/ends. Nothing blind blowing. We had the same vendors for years so there wasn't much exchange of contracts.

Our PM/Treasurer gave us a few copies of expenditures/collection reports for our meetings. Mostly handed out to owners. The actual records were electronic. So there would not be alot of financial records stored in box.

The CC&R's and Articles of Incorporation documents are Public. They were kept at the courthouse or state. By-laws were our records but they were also a copy along with the CC&R's. Not required to be filed but copy was filed with them. That would rule out seeing any kind of documents like that.

Knowing where and who is responsible for what documents/records is most of your issues. The Secretary is rewsponsible for many records like POC. The President does not act as "Secretary". The Board meeting notes may be Secretary. The financials Treasurer. if you have an MC they most likely have the financials/POC lists.

There is no real solid best practices as each HOA is different. It's just best to make sure those responsible for records know and have them.

Much depends on who is maintaining the records, the board/association, or a management company. If a management company, they may receive many boxes, but will only input current information, within the last 12 months. The rest they will just keep in boxes. I just terminated an association after 6 years, and no one has yet to ask for their records, after two months.

There are definitely best practices for record retention, retrieval, collaboration and general continuity.

I'm sure our property manager keeps a good pile of records for us and has a process to hand them to the next board, but I don't put trust in a property management company because we might fire them at any time and then we would lose all of those records. So......

I keep records on my Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage. I just checked and at the moment we have 24.3 GB of records. This is a little insane, about 21 GB are renderings of playground structures from a vendor (should be deleted) and the remaining 3-4 gb are actual association records.

In the event that I depart the board, I will put all of these records on a thumb drive, mail to the current property manager, and ask that he or she provide it to the point of contact for the next Board of Directors.

Easy peasy.

Yet you don't share what they are, which was the question from the OP

thank you!

Here's an example of the file folder structure on my computer

https://imgur.com/a/FeYgdvq

Wow, I wish I was as organized as you.ROFLMFAO.

From my days as a former Quality Manager, it should be noted that your governing documents are to act as a "how to" guide on how to run your HOA. Imagine if the world stopped for 100 years. New people came in to take over your HOA. The documents they would have? Your CC*R's, Articles of Incorporation, and by-laws. If you have any ACC documents that would apply too. Having records is just documentation of what took place. It is in now way a guide on how to operate HOA.

So again not sure what other documents you desire that would make things operate. Again, make sure your not looking for things that don't exist.

sure, lol. and congressmen just have to read the constitution. it's all in there.

yeah you missed a lot, but I fear it's not worth my time to answer your questions since you just want to get off topic again instead of answering the original question.

you got a records policy? then share it! you got a different opinion then start a new thread.

To MichaelT21