FGS Donates to the Malcolm H. Stern-NARA Gift Fund

Our society has renewed its annual membership in the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) for 2010. That organization is involved in many activities that help societies grow and prosper. One of those is their annual conference, which will be held in Knoxville, Tennessee, on August 18-21, 2010.

FGS is actively involved with a number of projects that focus on records preservation. One of the things that FGS's promotes and publicizes is support for the Malcolm H. Stern-NARA Gift Fund. Established in 1983, the Stern-NARA Gift Fund is a nationally supported program to finance the creation of finding aids and the microfilming of valuable research materials now preserved in the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. FGS is the administrator of this philanthropic organization.

The Stern-NARA Fund makes possible the creation of finding aids and the microfilming of valuable research materials now preserved in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. It helps to finance the creation of finding aids and the microfilming of materials now preserved at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. These microfilm copies, produced without government funding, are then distributed to the 13 National Archives Regional Archives branches for use by researchers. They can also be accessed through any LDS Family History Center in the world. You can view a partial list of microfilmed materials that the fund has facilitated at http://fgs.org/projects/sternnara.php.

Our Board has just authorized a donation of $125 to the Stern-NARA Fund for 2010. This equates to about $1 per member of our society. This is an extremely important way for our society to contribute to the worldwide genealogical community. Private donations are also accepted, and you can learn more about that at http://fgs.org/projects/sternnara.php.