A Fundraising Agency Routes Every External File Exchange Through Files.com and Keeps Google Workspace Inside

A direct-response fundraising agency raises small-dollar donations for nonprofit, political, and advocacy organizations across email, SMS, digital advertising, and direct mail. Behind the fundraising sits a serious data operation: an internal data lake and machine-learning models that predict donor behavior.

The raw material of all of it is donor data. Contact lists and personal information move constantly between clients, the agency's creative and data teams, and outside vendors. A direct mail campaign means graphic assets and copy proofs circulating between the client, the agency, and the print supplier. The data practice means list exports flowing out to clients on their own schedules. For the agency, exchanging files with outside parties is not a side function of the business. It is the business.

One Governed Route for Everything That Leaves the Agency

Before Files.com, external sharing ran on general-purpose collaboration tools, with Dropbox as the standard and every external client and supplier transfer managed by hand.

The agency wanted one governed path for the most sensitive asset the agency holds. Every file leaving the organization had to carry a log of which user accessed it. A print vendor or a campaign's ad shop had to be able to receive files without holding an account on the agency's collaboration suite. And a growing number of the agency's clients require BAAs, so the external exchange layer had to carry one. The agency wanted a platform built for external exchange, with the data it runs on leaving one way.

Keeping Google Meant Splitting the Estate

The obvious fix, replacing the collaboration suite wholesale, was never on the table. Google Workspace worked. Internal storage and collaboration lived there, and nobody wanted to disrupt how the agency's own teams do their jobs. The change belonged at the edge, where files cross into hundreds of outside organizations.

So the requirement took a specific shape: a split. Google would keep everything internal. One purpose-built platform would take everything external. That platform had to handle the complex workflows the agency uses to send and receive files with both internal and external parties, log user activity so the agency could see who touched what, distribute password-protected share links, carry a BAA, and offer machine paths like SFTP for clients who collect files on a schedule instead of clicking a link. Turning off Dropbox was the end state.

The agency selected Files.com to be the external half of that split.

One Governed Route Out of the Agency

Files.com became the single mandatory route for anything containing PII leaving the agency: donor data, contact lists, and personal information headed to clients, direct-mail vendors, and digital suppliers. Everything else about the build serves that one rule.

Each counterparty gets its own walled slice. Hundreds of external client and supplier users hold Files.com accounts, each scoped to their own folders through groups and granular per-folder permissions. A print vendor sees its jobs. A client sees its own data. Neither sees anyone else's. Internal staff, administrators included, sign in through Google or Okta SSO with two-factor authentication.

Onboarding was scripted rather than clicked. Using the Files.com REST API, the infrastructure team wrote Python that creates folder structures and provisions users in bulk, including applying the standard supplier folder layout across every client folder. Adding the next client or supplier is running a script.

The platform carries both human and machine traffic. For ad hoc sends, staff use password-protected share links under the agency's own domain. For the data practice, automated exports from the internal data lake are written into Files.com for clients to collect, and some clients pull those files over SFTP on their own schedules with no one at the agency touching them.

The Dropbox displacement ran as a phased migration. It began in Q1 2025 with one client delivery workflow and continued through an audit and consolidation of Dropbox data while both platforms ran in parallel. By May 2026, the agency was fully off Dropbox. Internal sharing landed on Google. All external sharing landed on Files.com.

Off Dropbox, With Room for Campaign Peaks

With the split complete, every file leaving the agency has one governed route.

Campaign peaks fit without rearchitecting anything. In one peak month the platform moved tens of terabytes, many times its typical run rate.

• Donor PII now leaves the organization one way, through Files.com, with user activity logged and every share carried under the agency's own domain. A client contract that requires a BAA is covered.
• Dropbox is retired entirely, and Google Drive no longer carries external exchange. Google does what it is good at inside the company, and Files.com handles everything that crosses the boundary.
• Onboarding the next client or vendor is repeatable: folder structures and accounts are applied through the API, not assembled by hand for each new relationship.

The external network keeps growing. External clients and suppliers now outnumber the agency's own staff on the platform. The agency's file exchange platform belongs more to its counterparties than to itself, which is exactly what an external exchange layer is for.

A Key Part of the Infrastructure

And the agency got there without taking anything away from its own teams. Google stayed exactly where it worked. Governing external data exchange did not require replacing the collaboration suite. It required splitting the estate and giving the outside edge a platform built for it.