EDITOR'S NOTE: For those of you who are thinking, “Yeah, right. It's a $1,000 April Fool's joke.”--no, we are not kidding. This is for real. Honest.

You may or may not be familiar with the Honoring Our Ancestors Grant Program. For those of you who have never heard of it, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the program. And for those of you who are already well aware of it, I'd like to give you a peek behind the scenes.

A Little History
Back in May 2000, I got the notion to launch a grants program to address the rather conspicuous need in the genealogical community. It seems virtually every project, society, library, and archive is under-funded. Cemeteries are in need of restoration, precious documents require preservation, pieces of our history must be captured now or lost forever ... I could go on for paragraphs.

I'm just one person, so there's only so much I can do, but operating on the water-on-a-stone principle (that constant drip, drip, drip can carve through boulders eventually), I decided to give a grant to one genealogical project or entity each month. I figured that consistency would gradually create some sort of cumulative impact.

I wanted to keep it simple. Anyone who's ever applied for a “regular” grant knows it can be a bureaucratic process. I wanted an application procedure that would take only five minutes, which is what you'll find.

Chai Anyone?
So what happens after you complete the application? Once a month, I print out all of the new applications. I toss these in a folder with applications from the previous five months (they remain active for six months and you're welcome to reapply). Then I grab the folder and my husband for a session at a local coffee house. There we indulge in some decadent coffee or tea concoction and debate the merits of the various projects.

We actually have our own scoring system. Requests from individuals get just as much consideration as those from organizations, but projects that affect more people are more apt to catch our eye. The “cool!” factor weighs heavily. Dazzle us with something innovative that others can mimic and you've got our attention. We short list the ones that we find most intriguing and then painfully winnow the selection down to one, reminding ourselves that other tempting ones can always be awarded next month's grant.

After that, we go home and I write a brief e-mail to the applicant to tell them they've been selected (note to applicants: please keep your e-mail address current!). Once I hear back, I put a check in the mail and a blurb about the project on my website. In fact, you can browse all the grant-winning projects back to May 2000. To give you a flavor, here are three of the most recent:

April 2004: The Wayne County Cemetery Preservation Society was established in 2000 for the purpose of locating and identifying all the cemeteries in Wayne County, Ohio. By 2002, they supplied the Ohio Genealogical Society with GPS readings and activity reports on 244 known cemeteries. They are also recording and digitally photographing inscriptions on the older and weathering tombstones in their pioneer cemeteries and in the older sections of the largest cemeteries. The group is trying to educate the public, with emphasis on school children and genealogists, on the existence of these old cemeteries and the need to record and protect them. This grant will be used to purchase a projector to help deliver their message to schools and community groups.

March 2004: Ksenija Batic is a student of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology in Slovenia, and has been researching her own family since the age of ten. She is working to develop a course on Genealogy and Family History at the University of Ljubljana as a first step toward eventually establishing an independent department--something of a challenge in a country that has only had a genealogical society for seven years. As part of her effort, Ksenija has enrolled in the National Institute of Genealogical Studies (Toronto, Canada). Having recently passed the basic series of courses with flying colors, she will use the proceeds of this grant to take the intermediate series.

February 2004: Totem Tracers Genealogical Society is the only genealogical entity in the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska (an area larger than Massachusetts and New Jersey combined), except for the local Family History Center. Totem Tracers invites the public to their monthly meetings, as well as their monthly “Resource Saturday,” held at the Kenai Community Library. They also produce a monthly newsletter and supply volunteers at the local library three days a week. This grant will be used to put Kenai Peninsula cemetery data on CDs for distribution to libraries and the public. An update to a book produced twenty years ago, this undertaking requires extensive effort, including travel to outlying native villages (sometimes many trips, usually flights or by boat) to read and map their cemeteries, as well as speak with Elders in the villages to insure that the organization is planning a respectful publication. The project currently incorporates 41 cemeteries and over 5,000 entries, and will be an important addition to Alaska genealogical resources, since the Kenai Peninsula was among the earliest areas settled in the state.

50th Grant Celebration
Where does the $1,000 grant come in? During our last session, my husband and I realized that our program was embarking on its fifth year--which led to the further realization that the fiftieth grant was fast approaching. The fact that our baby grant program was turning fifty months old struck us as cause for celebration! And so, for our fiftieth grant, we've decided to increase our usual award (which varies according to the project) to $1,000.

Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak is the author of Honoring Our Ancestors, In Search of Our Ancestors: 101 Inspiring Stories of Serendipity and Connection in Rediscovering Our Family History, and They Came to America: Finding Your Immigrant Ancestors.

Upcoming Events

- Ohio Genealogical Society
(22-24 April 2004, Wilmington, Ohio)

- Westchester County Genealogical Society
(8 May 2004, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.)

- Central Jersey Genealogical Club
(11 May 2004, Mercerville, N.J.)

- Ontario Genealogical Society Seminar 2004
(28-30 May 2004, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

- Heritage Education Commission Family History Workshop XXIX (2 October 2004, Moorhead, Minn.)

- Genealogical Society of Bergen County, New Jersey
(25 October 2004, Ridgewood, N.J.)

Details and links to upcoming events