Document Retention and Destruction Policy

The corporate records of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (the “Organization”) are important assets. Corporate records include essentially all records produced as an employee, officer, director, or employee of an independent contractor (collectively, “Worker”) of the Organization, whether paper or electronic. A record may be as obvious as a memorandum, an email, a contract, or a case study, or something not as obvious, such as a computerized desk calendar, an appointment book, or an expense record.The law requires the Organization to maintain certain types of corporate records, usually for a specified period of time. Failure to retain those records for those minimum periods could subject the Organization to serious, adverse consequences including fines or other more serious sanctions imposed by a court or regulatory body.

With one important exception, please note that all Workers must fully comply with any published records retention or destruction policies and schedules. The exception relates to actual or potential litigation or regulatory action. If a Worker believes, or the Organization informs a Worker, that Organization records are relevant to litigation, or potential litigation (i.e., a dispute that could result in litigation), then Workers must preserve those records until the Board of Directors determines the records are no longer needed. That exception supersedes any previously or subsequently established destruction schedule for those records. If a Worker believes that this exception may apply, or has any question regarding the possible applicability of this exception, please contact the President & CEO or chairperson of the Audit Committee.

From time to time the Organization establishes retention or destruction policies or schedules for specific categories of records in order to ensure legal compliance, and also to accomplish other objectives. Several categories of documents that bear special consideration are identified below. While minimum retention periods are suggested, the retention of the documents identified below and of documents not included in the identified categories should be determined primarily by the application of the general guidelines affecting document retention identified above, as well as any other pertinent factors. Electronic records which are not selected to be retained for business reasons will be deleted from servers and drives in a regular cycle of no more than thirty days.

For a full table of all document types and their related retention and destruction timelines, download the full policy.