Do external parties need a Google account to access my documents?

As of April 8 2019, public Link Sharing of Google files and folders has been disabled. Instead you will need to explicitly share these files/folders with external parties.

External parties do not need a Google account to access a KIPP NJ / KIPP Miami Google file (Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.) or folder that has been shared with them. However, this will only provide View access to the files/folders.

In order for an external party to have Comment or Edit rights to a Google file/folder, the file/folder must be shared with that external party's Google account. In general, this will not be the same email address as that external party's regular email account, unless the address is @gmail.com.

See How do I share Google files/folders with external parties?