Principles and a few housekeeping Rules to Keep your small non-profit’s GDrive from becoming a ‘dumping ground’ of files.

Go to your home computer and open up the file system and take a look. How well organized is it? Can you readily find a file (say a photo) from three-years ago? How long did it take you, more less than a minute? If so, you are probably one of the few people who have control over their personal content management – congratulations!

If you are still looking for that picture and are/planning to use a G-Drive to organize a small non-profit’s (SNP) content, then you have come to the right place! This blog will give you some principles and practical ways to do this. Better still, assuming the SNP continues to follow these ‘rules of engagement’ [1], the 15GB allocation Google gives you should last your SNP decades!

Bad News and Ditches

First the bad news, there is no magic bullet. Instead, the following methods and principles involve really boring things such as consistency, discipline, methodology. If you don’t have these then you have the ‘Garbage in the Ditch‘ problem.

Garbage in the Ditch. Someone drives down the road, stops and throws their garbage out beside the road. A few days later, another person adds to the pile. Why, because there was already a bag there. Fast forward a few months and suddenly there is a large ad hoc garbage dump. Hopefully ‘someone’ comes and cleans up the mess and posts a sign saying ‘don’t dump your garbage here, there is a garbage can 1 KM down the road’.

This is in a nut shell what this blog is about, preventing a big pile of garbage growing from what started with a few simple files saved ‘somewhere’ to an unworkable mess that will, eventually need to be cleaned up.

Principles

The following are relevant to almost all SNPs. Remove anyone of them at your own peril [2].

1. Current Practical and Useful. The structure of the G-Drive must be practical and useful for the volunteers of the SNP who are using it at the moment – but must not infringe upon the utility of future volunteers.
   • Example: structure the G-Drive which best serves the current SNP volunteers but don’t expect future volunteers to clean up what you are doing now.
2. Year Must Be Your First Dimension. Organizing a G-Drive involves applying dimensions to content.
   • For example, a treasurer’s report and a volunteer list for an event are two very different dimensions although with some linkages (e.g. a cost line in the report about the event).
   • One common dimension is that they both happened in the same year, say 2098.
   • ‘Year’ must be your top dimension with other dimensions (folders) fanning out from the year.
3. Create the New Year’s Folder from a Template. The most important folder on your G-Drive should be next year’s template.
   • By using a template, you can quickly copy and paste in the most current structure and start using it when the clock strikes 12.
4. Lock Prior Year Files and Folders. After a grace period, make the previous year’s folder and files read-only. This prevents people from inadvertently working in the past.
   • If a file from a prior year is needed, a copy is made from the prior to the CURRENT YEAR.
   • Rename this old folder to something like ‘z2097’ so it sorts to the bottom.
5. Assign a Gate Keeper. Whether this is the role of the secretary, webmaster, or president, assign one person to apply these principles and rules to the G-Drive.
   • They should be accountable for the G-Drive itself (e.g. own the associated GMail account) and down to the first level below the year.
6. Assign Business Owners. The next level belongs to the respective business owner.
   • Example: Treasurer owns the Finance Folder, Secretary owns the Meetings folder, etc.
   • This business owner can do what ever they like in this space (within in reason [2]).
7. Review Annually with the New Board/Volunteers. Review the G-Drive principles and rules with new volunteers and at least annually with a new board. Refresh the template.
   • Projects that cross a year can be a challenge, typically ‘freeze’ what was done in the prior year folder and create a copy in the new year.
   • Ask you business owners to do a tidy up and remove versions and unused files so future searches and reviews are more effective.
8. Scale Your GDrives or Content Management. 15GB is a lot of space – until it gets filled with videos or photos from your events.
   • The above is really about a SNP’s administrative content not specialized content such as images.
   • Consider buying specific storage capacity for this type of content.

House Keeping Rules and Samples

The following are housekeeping rules; add or subtract as applicable for your SNP.

• ‘_ReadMe’ should be the only file at ‘Level – 0’, this file explains these rules.
• ‘_Enduring’ Folder for the VERY few documents that transcend a year, for example your by-laws, articles of incorporation, legal action against you, etc.
• ‘_Template’ Folder and Files for commonly used files in the directories (expense reports, project template, board agendas, etc.).
  • LOCK the above folders and files to prevent them from being used inadvertently.
  • Only Version the Past. If you are working on a file and want to make a point in time version, apply a date ONLY to the past file.

Sample Folder Structure?

Meant purely as a generic example, the following demonstrates how folders to the left of the ‘demarcation’ line belong to the gate-keeper while those to the right to the business owner.

Access Google Drive(s) From Windows

Finally, you can access your Google Drive from Windows (and presumably from an Apple computer) by downloading the Google Drive application. It seems that you can access up to four accounts and it is just like have the GDrive as a window drive [4].

Thoughts?

What are your thoughts? As always, leave me a comment with how you have solved the shared folder challenge in your SNP!

References and Further Reading

1. This term has slipped from a military context into a more general business term meaning how to conduct yourself. For more on the military term, see: Rules of engagement – Wikipedia.
2. These principles have been hard won after inheriting poorly organized drives in the career. This was depressing enough that I wrote a series of best practice documents, see the further reading below.
3. Sometimes in volunteer organizations people can act strange. If your Treasurer is storing their home video surveillance records on the SNP’s G-Drive, this is them Reductio ad absurdum – Wikipedia rather than acting in good faith.
4. This provides a good summary of Google Drive – Wikipedia.

Further Reading

The following is how I have dealt with the challenge of the Network Drive. Funny enough, a structure whose demise has been predicted for decades and yet continues to soldier on.

• Document Management: A Best Practice Methodology, Now Nearly 20 years old!
• An Excel Tool to Document File Directories.