Once the board is done with a purchase package, the package is shredded. Our building purchased an industrial type shredder. The other option is to hire a shredding company, where the truck pulls up to your building and you can throw the package into the shredder.
PG

We do the same in some of my buildings. The packages are shredded in the Board room at the meeting it is discussed at.

AR

In our 500 unit co-op in NJ, each board member has a file cabinet drawer wherein confidential corporate papers can be storied and retrieved. This includes application packages.

Nothing is distributed to a board member unless it is in an envelope sealed with tape.

We have an industrial strength shredder (confetti, not strip) as there are now programs that reconstitute shredded documents. In Iran, after the shah was overthrown and the US Embassy overrun, the bags of shredded US documents where given to Iranian weavers who reassembled the pages.

We also have an external service that comes to our building and shreds (pulverizes) materials for us and provides a certificate of destruction.

Documents not immediately shredded are safeguarded in a locked cage.

Application packages are either destroyed immediately or safeguarded until destroyed.

Likewise corporate financial documents, arrears, payroll registers, etc. are subjected to the same process of shredding or safeguarding until destroyed.

None of these materials are discarded via the recycling route.

At the end of the interview, board members return their packages to the applicant. If there's no interview then the packages are shredded.

We also return the resale package to the applicant.

Why return to the applicant?

What if a board member made a notation in the package and then you decline the applicant?
The notation might serve as a basis for a suit.

Suggest you don't return, but shred instead.

We are smart enough not to make any notations on applicant's package.

Applicants like the fact that they get back their info.

If an applicant is refused we keep one copy in the office filed under "refused" This info is necessary if you go to court they want to know how many other applicants have beeen refused.

"Why return to the applicant?"

In our building, purchase packages are returned to the applicant, which I think is very smart. Computer technology has made life better in so many ways--but it has also made things like identity theft much easier. If I hand over to a group of people a packet containing all of the information necessary to steal my identity, I'm much more comfortable knowing what exactly becomes of that information.

What if a board member forgets to shred the packet? What if a board member accidentally throws the packet in the garbage, and it falls into the wrong hands? What if (god forbid) a board member is unscrupulous?

Much better imho to let the applicant have full control over his or her most personal information.

One change that has been made in our building recently: purchase packages are no longer left in front of board members' doors by the management company. The last board raised that as an issue when a packet went missing. (The board president wanted to maintain that way of doing things, but wasn't able to work his voodoo on the rest of the board and was outvoted three to one. Buy packets are now distributed by hand.)

The most practical method I think (mentioned by another poster in this thread if I remember correctly) would be to leave the buy packets in a locked storage area/box where they could be retrieved by board members.