NAD Working Policy BA 70 10 6
NAD WP BA 70 10 6. Planned Giving & Trust Services Programs—Trusts, wills, charitable gift annuities, and other estate planning documents shall be retained permanently in their original form. Other documents including information worksheets, accounting reports, tax returns, correspondence, email messages and other routine materials may be retained in a secure and accessible electronic form. These guidelines shall be reviewed periodically, e.g., every three to five years.
Overview
If your organization has every slip of paper your Planned Giving & Trust Services (PGTS) department has generated from the very beginning of your operation, then this new policy should be good news to you and especially to your facilities manager. In the past, North American Division (NAD) Working Policy (WP) required PGTS departments to permanently keep every document in its original form. I will focus on how this new WP affects PGTS.
NAD WP applies to all organizations located within the NAD territory. Each organization is responsible for complying with all policies applicable to their various departments, including PGTS. NAD WP BA 70 Retention and Safeguarding of Records is one of the many NAD Policies that applies specifically to PGTS as well as other parts of the organization. Typically, you may find the full policy in the NAD WP (Red book), but until you receive the 2020 or later version of the Red Book you may find the latest WP voted November 5, 2019, on the staff.willplan.org website. You will need to use the NAD PGTS Portal user ID and password to access this online resource.
I will focus specifically on BA 70 10 #6 that is the addition to the previous policy and look at how PGTS departments may implement this new addition to WP.
There are three points I will discuss concerning this new document retention policy #6:
- Documents kept permanently in original form
- Documents kept permanently but not in original form
- Best practices
Documents kept permanently in original form
All ORIGINAL SIGNED LEGAL documents must be retained permanently in their original form. Even if these documents are scanned and available electronically, the originals must be kept in their original form. The WP gives a list of these documents (trusts, wills, charitable gift annuities, and other estate planning documents). These are classified as original signed legal documents.
Documents kept permanently but not in original form
Electronically storing INFORMATIONAL documents when an original is not legally required, yet access to the information may be required in the future, is where the benefit to PGTS document storage is realized. All informational documents such as information worksheets, accounting reports, tax returns, correspondence, email messages and other routine materials may be scanned and stored electronically and the originals destroyed.
The question is often asked if we have only copies in our files, do we need to keep the paper copy, or can the copy be destroyed after it is electronically scanned? This depends on the state law where the documents are to be used. You should ask your local legal counsel to include this question in your attorney opinion letter. This new NAD WP allows all photocopies to be stored electronically and then the copy can be destroyed. If a hard copy is needed in the future it can be printed at that time.
Best Practices
How to establish the processes and procedures as you implement this new WP is what we will look at next. The following is intended to be a description of a best practice for implementation of this new policy.
Each organization should establish processes and procedures for how electronic documents are stored in consultation with their Information Technology department and local legal counsel. These processes and procedures will define in greater detail how to distinguish in your state which documents are considered LEGAL and which are INFORMATIONAL.
To establish these process and procedures your local legal counsel should give a written legal opinion that defines the document retention requirements in your area(s) of service. This legal opinion should comply with the NAD WP and your local state law.
Security of the electronic data from destruction, loss, piracy, and theft must also be considered, and strategies should be put in place to keep the data secure. In the same way that paper files are protected by a fireproof vault the processes and procedures for electronic document security must be put in place to preserve the confidentiality and integrity of the information.
Since scanned documents can be archived for many years it is important to store them in a digital format that will be accessible in the future. The recommended type of electronic file format for documents is the Portable Document Format (PDF). This format has proven to be very resilient over the last decade and is currently the standard format recommended by the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the United States National Archives.
These processes and procedures for your organization should be voted on and placed in the minutes of your organization’s appropriate committees. The attorney opinion should be added to your current attorney opinions.
Benefit
Whether your organization decides to scan all past informational documents, or just start scanning going forward, the benefit that may be realized is the significant reduction of physical space required to store PGTS documents. I know many have been asking for this type of WP, and now you have it.