Role email addresses (board@, treasurer@) and hand-over
Why a role address, and not a personal one
The difference is in who the owner is. With a personal address, or a free address in the name of a single board member, all the mail hangs on that one person. As long as they stay involved, you notice nothing. But the moment a disagreement arises or someone leaves, a familiar problem emerges: the former board member keeps hold of the mailbox. In forum-speak that's called "holding mail hostage": the association can no longer reach its own correspondence, and no one can change the password.
A role address turns that around. The address belongs to the role and sits under the organisation's domain. Whoever fills the role gets access; whoever gives it up loses it. The organisation itself always remains the owner. That's precisely why ownership is so important; your email truly yours goes into that in more depth.
Role email addresses like board@: two ways
You can set up a role address in two ways, and the choice determines how the hand-over goes.
As an alias (forwarding address)
An alias is an address without its own mailbox that forwards mail to an existing mailbox. treasurer@ then arrives in the personal mailbox of the current treasurer. Handy and free (you get 20 aliases per mailbox), but note: the mail lands in a private mailbox. On a change the alias's destination changes, but the old messages stay with the leaver. An alias is therefore ideal for ongoing mail, less so for preserving history.
As a shared mailbox
A shared mailbox is a real, dedicated mailbox for the role. Several people can work in it, each with their own login, without sharing a password. The messages sit in the mailbox itself, not with a person. That makes the hand-over clean: you give the successor access, revoke the leaver's, and the full history simply stays put. The difference between the two is explained calmly in what is a shared mailbox, and setting one up in setting up a shared mailbox.
How a clean hand-over goes
A change of board needn't be a moment of panic if you have your role addresses set up properly. In practice it comes down to this:
- The organisation is and remains the owner of the domain and the mailboxes. That's the basis; without it a leaver can still obstruct things.
- The new board member gets their own access to the shared mailbox, with their own login and optional two-factor authentication.
- The departing board member loses their access. You don't have to change a shared password, because there never was one.
- The history stays in the mailbox. The successor sees the ongoing conversations and can pick up straight away, without anyone having to forward an export.
- You reassign aliases where needed, so forwarding addresses arrive with the right person.
Because you never share one central password, the hostage risk disappears. There's no key one person can withhold; there's access the organisation grants and revokes.
Why this goes smoothly with Mailflux
Mailflux is professional email on your own domain, hosted in Europe and GDPR-compliant, and that own domain is the crux here: the organisation is the owner, not an individual. You create role addresses as an alias or as a shared mailbox, give each board member their own login and optionally protect sensitive mailboxes with two-factor authentication. Automatic backups make sure correspondence isn't lost, not even during a messy handover.
Looking for the broader context for your association? Then read email for your association or non-profit. An overview of all target groups is on who Mailflux is for.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a role address and a personal address?
A role address belongs to a role, such as board@, and passes to the successor on a change. A personal address belongs to one person and disappears or stays with that person when they leave, along with the mail.
How do I share a role address without sharing the password?
With a shared mailbox. Each board member gets their own access with their own login, so several people work in the same mailbox without one common password. You grant and revoke access per person.
How do I stop a departing board member from "holding the mailbox hostage"?
By the organisation being the owner of the domain and the mailboxes, not an individual. You simply revoke the leaver's access; there's no shared password anyone can withhold, and the history stays in the mailbox.