Help Family Stories Live On

Greetings!

Is there a family story you’ve heard all your life but never written down? Maybe it begins at a holiday table, follows a journey to a new home, or centers on a relative whose life you wish you knew more about.

Those stories give meaning to the names, dates, and places we collect. Preserving them, and discovering the records that help us understand them, is how we create a legacy someone else can carry forward.

This Giving Days season, please join me in giving to the NGS Annual Fund to help more people discover and preserve their family stories.

Through my work as a storytelling genealogist and with NGS’s GRIP Genealogy Institute, I see how lifelong learning helps us bring family stories to life. Exceptional instructors, including Annual Fund chair Judy G. Russell, teach researchers to ask better questions, find and interpret records, and turn their discoveries into compelling stories. Judy’s work reminds us that preserving access to records and building the skills to use them are essential to telling our families’ stories.

Your gift supports NGS’s work to provide the education, resources, and connections that help turn curiosity into discovery, and discoveries into stories worth sharing.

And as you gather with family this season, ask someone to tell a story. Record the answer, note the names and places, and share it with someone younger. A small act of curiosity today can become a treasured family record tomorrow.

Thank you for helping make that possible.

With gratitude,

Gena Philibert-Ortega

Manager, GRIP Genealogy Institute

p.s. A $250 gift is a meaningful way to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary. And if you begin a new monthly giving plan by the end of the year, you’ll receive Judy G. Russell's "2027 Rowan and Griffin Genealogy Cat Calendar" as a special gift.