Governance Records
Articles, bylaws, minutes, resolutions, policies, trustee records, committee materials, and major approvals.
Document Retention & Destruction Policy
Preserve what matters. Destroy what should not remain.
The JR Institute is committed to preserving legal, financial, research, historical, personnel, and institutional records for appropriate periods and destroying expired records securely.
Governance Framework
This page provides a planned retention framework. Final schedules should be reviewed by legal, tax, accounting, employment, research, privacy, and archival professionals.
Policy Purpose
Records support accountability, continuity, evidence, and memory.
Keeping everything forever creates privacy, security, storage, discovery, and operational risk. Destroying records too early can erase evidence, violate law, or damage institutional memory.
The Institute intends to use defined schedules, legal holds, secure systems, controlled access, and archival review to balance those responsibilities.
Record Categories
Retention applies across paper, digital, audiovisual, and system records.
Financial & Tax Records
Ledgers, statements, receipts, payroll, grants, audits, tax filings, donor restrictions, and asset records.
Research Records
Protocols, approvals, data, consent records, analyses, laboratory records, code, publications, and corrections.
Personnel Records
Applications, compensation, benefits, evaluations, leave, training, accommodations, investigations, and separation records.
Contracts & Operations
Agreements, leases, insurance, vendors, procurement, facilities, maintenance, security, and technology operations.
Archives & Legacy
Institutional history, photographs, oral histories, publications, significant correspondence, and permanent collections.
Scope
This policy is intended to cover records created, received, stored, or controlled by the Institute, regardless of format, location, device, software platform, or storage provider.
Records may include paper files, email, messaging, databases, cloud files, photographs, audio, video, backups, research systems, websites, logs, and physical media.
Institutional Ownership and Responsibility
Records created or received in the course of Institute duties generally belong to the Institute, subject to contracts, intellectual-property rules, privacy rights, donor restrictions, research obligations, and applicable law.
Departments and record owners should identify official copies, apply retention categories, protect access, and avoid unnecessary duplicate storage.
Illustrative Retention Schedule
The following schedule is a planning framework and should not replace legal advice or a board-approved records schedule.
| Record Type | Illustrative Retention | Disposition |
|---|---|---|
| Articles, bylaws, minutes, major resolutions | Permanent | Preserve in governance archive |
| Tax exemption, annual filings, audited statements | Permanent | Preserve official copies |
| General accounting records and supporting documents | At least 7 years, subject to law and audit needs | Secure destruction after review |
| Contracts, grants, leases, and insurance policies | Term plus applicable limitations period | Review before destruction |
| Personnel and payroll records | Period required by employment, tax, benefit, and claims laws | Restricted access and secure destruction |
| Research protocols, consent, data, and analysis | Based on sponsor, discipline, participant, publication, and legal requirements | Archive, de-identify, or destroy under approved plan |
| Routine administrative correspondence | Only as long as operationally useful | Delete when no longer needed |
| Historically significant records | Permanent or archival review | Transfer to institutional archive |
Legal Holds and Suspension of Destruction
Normal destruction must stop when litigation, investigation, audit, subpoena, public-record obligation, insurance claim, research review, government inquiry, or other legal matter is pending or reasonably anticipated.
- Identify affected records, systems, accounts, and custodians
- Preserve relevant paper and electronic information
- Suspend automated deletion where necessary
- Document the hold and communicate it to responsible people
- Release the hold only through authorized review
No person may alter, conceal, delete, or destroy records covered by a legal hold or known investigation.
Email, Messaging, and Collaboration Platforms
Retention depends on content, not the platform. A decision, contract approval, research instruction, personnel action, donor restriction, or legal notice remains an institutional record even when sent through chat or email.
Important records should be moved or captured in the appropriate official system rather than left only in personal inboxes, direct messages, or temporary channels.
Research Data and Scientific Records
Research retention should reflect participant protections, consent, sponsor terms, intellectual property, publication, reproducibility, research integrity, security, and disciplinary standards.
Destruction or de-identification of research information should follow an approved data-management plan and should not occur while results remain under review, challenge, correction, or investigation.
Archival and Historical Review
Before destroying records with potential historical, scientific, cultural, family, or institutional value, the Institute should consider archival transfer.
Archival preservation does not automatically mean public access. Privacy, donor restrictions, research limitations, copyright, security, and family permissions may continue to apply.
Secure Destruction
Expired records should be destroyed in a manner appropriate to their sensitivity and format.
- Cross-cut shredding or approved document destruction
- Secure deletion or cryptographic erasure
- Certified media destruction when required
- Deletion from active systems and managed backups where feasible
- Documentation for high-risk or bulk destruction
Departing Trustees, Employees, Researchers, and Contractors
Before access ends, departing personnel should return records, transfer institutional files, identify active obligations, preserve required research and business information, and remove institutional data from unauthorized personal storage.
Access, forwarding, device return, account ownership, encryption keys, records custody, and confidentiality obligations should be reviewed during offboarding.
Framework date: July 2026
Preservation Principles
Retention is part of governance, cybersecurity, research integrity, and legacy.
- Classify by content. The same rule should apply regardless of whether a record is paper, email, chat, database, or video.
- Protect official copies. Store authoritative records in approved systems with clear ownership.
- Do not preserve unnecessary risk. Expired sensitive data should not remain indefinitely without a legal or archival reason.
- Stop destruction when a hold applies. Evidence preservation overrides the normal schedule.
- Separate preservation from public access. Archived records may remain private, restricted, sealed, or permission-controlled.
Records Questions
Ask before deleting records that may have legal, research, financial, or historical value.
Contact the Institute about retention categories, legal holds, archives, research records, privacy, secure destruction, or ownership of institutional files.
Submit a Records Inquiry
Identify the record type, date range, department, system, legal matter, or research project involved.
Contact the Institute