Let’s do good together! Whether you have five minutes or lots of time to spare, there are many ways to serve through doing family history! From tagging photos to transcribing texts to reuniting heirlooms with families. This post and the upcoming RootsTech class will help you find a family history project that matches your time and interest level. Join the RootsTech Let’s Do Good Together Facebook Group for more ideas and discussions.
Post on social media about how you are giving back. Use the hashtags #RTLetsDoGoodTogether and #Rootstech. Tag @KeepMovingForwardWithMe on Instagram and Facebook or @KeepMovingTara on Twitter if you would like me to share them!
Ways to Give Back Close to Home
- Improve places names on the Family Tree app. You can help by associating a user-entered place with a standard place found on a map. This helps improve the accuracy of the shared family tree.
2. Do reverse indexing with the BYU Record Linking Lab.
3. Upload and tag a photo or document on Family Search or Ancestry.
4. Go through the photos of your ancestors on Family Search and make sure everyone is tagged.
5. Say “Thank You!” Thank an indexer or someone who has uploaded a photo/document to Family Search/Ancestry. Thank the person who completed your photo request on Find a Grave.
Online Ways to Give Back in Family History
- Index on Family Search. This tutorial will help you get started!
2. Photo Angels – help reunite photos and/or heirlooms with descendants. From Shrubs to Trees: A Genealogy Pay it Forward Genealogy Group is a fantastic Facebook Group to do this in. Summer Owens from the All Abound Together blog is another great example of how reunite ephemera with descendants. Check out Grete from Photos Without Families on Instagram for examples of how to share/reunite found photos on social media, too.
3. Family Search Research Wiki – many places need details.
4. Wikitree. Help with the Germany Project (wikitree.com)! Add German records to the tree to help make them more accessible to those looking for their German ancestors. You can also participate with other projects.
5. Answer questions in online forums such as Facebook Groups and Rootschat.
6. Index with Crowd Sourced Indexing: https://csindexing.com/. You can choose a project already created or create one of your own. Projects in a variety of languages.
7. Help the Church History Library identify missionaries in historic photos! This project is exciting to me. If you have ancestors who served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1900s you will want to check it out.
8. Translate records from other languages to English. I love the Genealogical Translations group on Facebook. Volunteer translators have helped me break through several family history brick walls!
Ways to Help Within Your Own Family
- Help family members digitize and upload their photos/documents.
2. Interview family members and preserve their stories.
Ways to Give Back in the Community
- Teach family history classes at the library or family history center.
2. Interview and preserve memories for seniors at local senior citizen centers.
3. Teach youth groups about genealogy.
4. Take photos for Find a Grave or Billion Graves. Add GPS to gravesites.
7. Volunteer for a genealogy or lineage society.
8. Donate time or money to a museum for family history.
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