Troop Records Retention Times?

[fritz1255]

As new Committee Chair, I inherited lots of Troop records, some from way back. Among other things, I have copies of registration forms for every adult leader since Baden Powell, most of whom are no longer with the Troop. How long should these be kept?

[Scouting179]

There is no written rule that I know of on this. We keep all our old records filed away, but our troop is only 15 years old.

[Billiken]

I was "digging" through a storage cabinet last night at the troop mtg.

Found troop meeting notes from the early 1970s and a bunch of Skill Awards

(Our trooop has been around since 1942.)

[wagionvigil]

Cool stuff for a Troop History Display

[riverwalk]

Absolutely and always try to keep old stuff like Records, haha. Some members will find a renewed interest someday, and will want these. Since National lost many records of earlier times (some years back), it's really important to keep any a Unit has.

[Lynda J]

Our troop has been chartered since 1948. We don't have records back that far but we do have records from the 60-70's. We went through those recently and kept all advancement and recharter records but because of space discarded lots of other stuff. Like registration forms. We simply don't have the space to keep it all.

[Suzyplus2]

We have recently merged another troop into ours and therefore inherited a number of binders full of old material, and I think this only goes back about ten years. Our parent committee has wisely granted permission to transfer all of this data to a .PDF format to allow for storage on computer disk.

Granted, the parent that indicated my suggestion of saving storage space by keeping them on disk would not be practical would have been given the practical pleasure of finding a place in their own home for storing all of these binders

I definately see the need for keeping old data, even for a long period of time, but I can't see keeping hard copies of every bottle drive flier since 1994 (the only change each year is the date ) Advancement records, on the other hand will be stored electronically, but also maintain a hard copy during the entire time that any boy listed on that form is still under age 18.

Just my two cents

Sue

[Billiken]

Granted, the parent that indicated my suggestion of saving storage space by keeping them on disk would not be practical would have been given the practical pleasure of finding a place in their own home for storing all of these binders Sue

ROTFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lynda J]

Love it. Like I say. If they don't like my idea come up with a better one yourself.