We are committed to mobilizing Ancestry’s workforce and products to build more connected and resilient communities by empowering the next generation of history makers, preserving and amplifying at-risk history and supporting our employees and the causes they care about.
Empowering the Next Generation of History Makers Through Family History Research
Understanding the past is a powerful tool for building resilience, connection, and understanding for all ages.
At Ancestry, we have a long-term commitment to enhancing education. This is why we created AncestryClassroom, a no-cost program that provides resources and access to content from the U.S. collection of Ancestry, Fold3.com, and Newspapers.com.
For nearly a decade, we’ve offered these AncestryClassroom services – reaching more than six million students. But we’re just getting started. Our goal is to expand this free access to 10 million students by 2025.
In partnership with organizations like Facing History & Ourselves, we’ve developed a robust collection of resources, professional learning tools for educators, and Ancestry historical record collections to help students learn more about themselves, navigate the world around them, and become more resilient.
Leveraging resources from AncestryClassroom, high school teacher Keira Murphy created a meaningful genealogy curriculum that helps students at St. Edward’s in Vero Beach, Florida, find their personal places in history. With support from AncestryProGenealogists, St. Edward’s students learned the basics of genealogy, including how to search and cite historical documents. They gained lifelong interpersonal skills, such as how to interview relatives and local community members.
I believe teaching genealogy research skills to young students is critical to their development as a curious and conscientious student. AncestryClassroom resources provide excellent readings, lessons and webinars to enhance genealogy or general history discussions in the classroom. Ancestry’s K-12 resources have helped me inspire my students for many years.”
Keira Murphy, St. Edward’s Teacher & JumpStart Genealogy Founder
Ancestry is working to preserve important records that are in danger of being lost.
Every generation deserves the opportunity to know what and who came before them, but many important historical documents are in danger of being forgotten, overlooked, or destroyed. As part of our Community Impact Program, Ancestry has committed $3 million to acquiring, digitizing, and making at-risk records available for free by 2025. Below are just a few of our most recent philanthropic digitization initiatives:
The Ancestry World Archives Project is an established community of more than 75,000 people from around the world who volunteer time to help preserve historical documents and make them available online at no cost. To date, more than 200 million records have been indexed and made available for free through the Ancestry World Archives Project.
In 2011, Ancestry and the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum created The World Memory Project to help build the largest free online resource for information about victims and survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution during World War II. Using processes developed by the Ancestry World Archives Project, The World Memory Project allows anyone, anywhere, to volunteer their time to help families discover the history of their loved ones and restore the identities of people almost erased from history.
I will never forget the faces of the individuals who have shared their stories – a 3-year- old sent to London, a husband devoted to sharing his wife’s story – as I helped them search through records and build their trees so their lives and those of their ancestors could be preserved for future generations.”
Anna Fechter, Community Operations Manager with Ancestry
Providing employees with the time, resources, and incentives for giving back.
As a human-centered company, Ancestry is passionate about supporting our communities. With more than 1,400 employees eager to make a real difference, Ancestry not only encourages volunteering, but provides paid Volunteer Time Off, resources, and programs to make it happen.
Ancestry provides all full-time employees with 16 hours of paid time off to volunteer. With Volunteer Time Off (VTO), employees can contribute their time and talents to recognized nonprofit organizations that support the causes they are most passionate about.
Each year Ancestry employees can also donate one AncestryDNA kit and one World Explorer membership to a nonprofit of their choice for use in a raffle, giveaway, or auction.
Ancestry hosts an annual Global Week of Service featuring hands on volunteer opportunities including packing backpacks, planting trees, and indexing records. Aligned to our impact focus areas, employees volunteered to protect and preserve at-risk history, empower the next generation of history makers, and create a more sustainable and inclusive future for all.
Thank you Ancestry for implementing a Global Week of Service for employees to take time to give back. It was wonderful to spend part of my day today with colleagues putting together school supply kits for underserved youth through the Kids in Need Foundation. I enjoyed sharing this activity with my son who is learning to give back at an early age.”
Kate Eyre Sandfoss, Director of product commercialization at Ancestry
