Committee Mailboxes and Folder Access
How to set up shared role mailboxes for your club's committees and events, and decide who can see which folders, so the structure survives every changeover.
On this page
Why role addresses, not personal ones
Most clubs start with the treasurer using their own Gmail for club banking, and the event chair using a work address for sponsors. It works, right up until that person steps down.
When they go, the club loses everything sent to that address. Not just future mail: the whole history. Sponsor agreements, grant correspondence, bank confirmations. There is no way to get it back, because the mailbox was never the club's.
A shared mailbox solves this. treasurer@yourclub.org belongs to the club, not to a person.
Whoever is treasurer this year gets access to it, and when they hand over, access moves with the
role. The mail stays.
Shared mailboxes are also free. They do not consume one of your nonprofit licences, and there is no limit worth worrying about for a club. A club with five committees can comfortably have twenty-five of them.
What we need from you
The District IT team can build the whole structure, but only the club knows who does what. Before we start, we need three things in writing:
- Your people. Full name, the committee or event they are on, their position, and a current email address we can send their new login to.
- Your shared mailboxes. Which role addresses each committee wants.
- Your folders. The filing structure you actually want, not the one you think you should have.
A simple spreadsheet is perfect. One row per person, one row per mailbox, and a plain list of folders.
Send it once, send it complete. A half-finished list means we build half a structure and then unpick it. If a position is genuinely undecided, write "TBC" rather than leaving it blank, so we know you have not just forgotten it.
Choosing your shared mailboxes
Work committee by committee. A typical club looks like this:
| Committee | Shared mailboxes |
|---|---|
| Board | president@ secretary@ treasurer@ media@ youth@ membership@ |
| Each major event | chairman@ treasurer@ secretary@ media@ logistics@ |
For events, put the event first so the address explains itself: bigball.treasurer@ is obvious
in a sponsor's inbox, treasurer2@ is not.
Two rules that save trouble later:
- Name the position, not the person.
fundraising.chair@survives a changeover.johns.mail@does not. - Name somebody for every mailbox. A mailbox nobody has been given access to is a mailbox nobody reads. If you cannot name a person for a role yet, it is usually better to leave that mailbox out until you can.
Planning your folders
Write the structure as a simple indented list: top folder, sub folder, and one more level if you really need it. Three levels is plenty for a club, and deeper structures are where documents go to be lost.
A structure that works well:
- Administration - board minutes, policies, reports, charter and by-laws
- Finance - budgets, bank, invoices, audit
- Membership - applications, inductions, new member packs
- Projects - community, international, youth, foundation
- Events and Meetings - weekly meetings, special events
- Marketing - logos, photos, social media, merchandise, website
- One folder per major fundraiser - usually a folder per year, plus a "Permanent" folder for the things that do not change (banners, supplier contacts, the risk assessment)
Never put a forward slash in a folder name. SharePoint will reject it.
"Events/Meetings" has to become "Events and Meetings" or "Events & Meetings". The same goes
for \ : * ? " < > |. It is much easier to fix on the spreadsheet than after
everyone has bookmarked the folder.
Deciding who sees what
For each person, pick one of three levels. Most clubs need nothing more complicated:
| Level | What they see | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| Full access | Everything, including finance and board minutes | Board members |
| Committee only | Their own event or committee folder, nothing else | Event committee volunteers |
| Shared documents | One general folder every member can reach | All members |
The middle level matters more than clubs expect. Event committees usually include people who are not Rotarians: a sponsor's marketing manager, a volunteer coordinator, a school contact. They need their own event's files and nothing else. They should not be able to browse the club's bank statements, and they should not be able to read another event committee's sponsor negotiations either.
Committees are separated from each other, not just from the board. If your club runs several fundraisers, each committee sees only its own folder. That is deliberate. Sponsorship figures and supplier pricing are commercially sensitive, and the committees often approach the same local businesses.
Common problems, and how to avoid them
These come up on nearly every club build.
The same person listed twice with two different email addresses. Someone sits on the board and an event committee, and gives their work address on one row and a personal one on the other. We then cannot tell which is current, and a password can go to an address they no longer check. Pick one address per person and use it on every row.
Someone with no email address at all. They still get a club account, but we have no way to send them the password. Give us any current address, or tell us who should pass the details on in person.
Mailboxes with nobody assigned. Every mailbox that is created but never given to anyone is a place mail quietly accumulates unread. Name someone, or leave it out.
Spelling that is hard to undo. Folder names and email addresses are painful to change once people have bookmarked them and put them on printed material. It is worth one careful read of the list before we build.
Old accounts left behind after a changeover. Every past office bearer who still has access is still able to open club files. See below.
What happens at changeover
Because the mailboxes belong to roles rather than people, changeover is mostly a matter of moving access:
- Tell the District IT team who is taking over which role.
- We give the incoming office bearer access to that role's mailbox.
- We remove the outgoing office bearer's access.
- The club's files, sponsor history and mail all stay exactly where they are.
Tell us who has left, not only who has arrived. This is the step clubs skip. Adding the new treasurer is the part everyone remembers; removing the old one is the part that matters for the club's security. Someone who left the board two years ago should not still be able to open the finance folder.
Once a year, ask the District IT team for a list of everyone with access to your club's Microsoft 365. It takes us a few minutes and it is the single most useful security check a club can do.
Getting help
Email support@rotary9660.org.au with your club name and what you are trying to set up. If you are starting from scratch, read Setting Up Microsoft 365 for Your Club first, then send us your people, mailboxes and folders and we will build it.