What happens to our records when the board changes?

Every organization that runs on volunteers hits the same moment eventually: the treasurer who kept the spreadsheet steps back, or the secretary who knew where everything lived moves away. What happens next says more about the software than any feature list does.

What stays, and where

• •Members, their dues history and their contact details — held by the organization's account, not by whoever happens to be logged in.
• •Board minutes, motions and votes — locked once approved, and searchable by anyone the new board grants access to.
• •The website — edited by describing a change, so keeping it current isn't a skill tied to one person.
• •Open action items — assigned to the position (Treasurer, Secretary) instead of the person, so they move with the title.

That last point is the one most tools get wrong. A follow-up assigned to a person's name goes quiet the day that person stops checking their old email. Assigned to the position instead, the same item is waiting for whoever holds the title next — who can update it straight from the notification, with nothing new to learn first.

What a new board inherits

On SorrelSites, a new director or officer arrives to a briefing built from the last year of decisions, the documents that explain them, and the access their position carries — already granted, not requested. And because minutes and motions are on the record instead of in a Word file, the new board can ask a plain-word question — what did we decide about the roof? — and get the motion and the vote it came from, not a search through a shared drive.

The test for any tool, ours included: hand the login to next year's secretary with no notes and see what they can find on their own. If the honest answer is not much, the record belonged to one volunteer, not the organization.