Community Family History Event
Hello everyone, I'm new here, never joined a group before on FamilySearch. I wonder if anyone has any experience or knowledge regarding a possible community outreach effort that has been on my mind recently. I remember reading an article in a small Hawaiian newspaper inviting the community there to discover their family history by attending an event where local family history consultants would help get folks signed up on familysearch.org and help them get started on their family history. I'd like to try something like that, possibly on a recurring basis, every month or quarter perhaps. But I hate to "reinvent the wheel" if someone else has already done this and worked out the bugs so to speak. The event(s) could be held at a "neutral" location like a local grange hall or local government building so everyone feels comfortable attending.
Anyone have any ideas?
Answers
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I'm a FSC director in Baltimore. Working with our stake communications people, we share information about community fairs and other events at which I can table for the FSC and they for JustServe. They participate with interfaith councils in the area and hear of good opportunities that way. I have my 5th event for the year coming up this week. Communications heard at an interfaith meeting last week that this big annual expo called Power of Age (focused on seniors and aging) had a couple of booths left. I emailed the contact to say, here's what our nonprofit freely offers and we'd love to participate if there's space. Then I realized that the booths cost from $600 to $1K+. Oops. When the contact replied she offered us a booth for free, even though they almost never do that because the booth fees are a fundraiser for senior programs. But she thought the expo visitors would really love our booth and services. (Thank you, Spirit of Elijah!)
When tabling we do just what you described, introduce people to FamilySearch through the various logged-out activities on the sign-in page (be sure to check the ones at the bottom of the page listed under Genealogy Resources). If they don't find a relative in the shared tree, they will find relatives in historical records. Then to see the person page or records, many will create an account.
This isn't the recurring event approach that you're considering. But Communications has the mandate to bring the Church out of obscurity and in our area where FamilySearch has no street presence, that's a good goal for us too.
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Interesting. What does your booth look like when you do them? What does your banner say to attract people over to your booth?
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I put up two yard signs from BYU Print & Mail that say, Free Today, Family History Help along with the FS logo and a QR code for our website on the FS wiki. We also have a FS table cloth from Print & Mail that we couldn't afford, but stake Communications offered to buy for us. They have a much bigger budget than our FSC and wanted to support our anti-obscurity efforts.
I've been using 3 posters on easels that may attract visitors, give us a conversation starter, and give them something to try:
-Where Was Your Family in 1950, with a US map and stickers people can attach either because they just know the answer or after finding family in the census.
-Discover Your Family Story at a FSC, which comes from the web page https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/about FSCs are very little known here so we refer to this poster a lot.
-Are You Related to Historic People From Baltimore? This has an image of a Baltimore landmark from 100 or so years ago and a QR code leading to an activity that the visitor can pull up on their phone. Try it here https://connectedtempe.surge.sh/. This link is for historic Tempe (AZ) relatives and is the original in what has become a series of sites for different US cities. I learned about this activity at a Bridge Forum meeting in this Let's Do Good Together group earlier this year, contacted the lovely people who created it, and they helped me set up a site for Baltimore. You could go back to the recording of the Bridge meeting to get Mike and Debbie's contact information but I don't think they'd mind me just giving it to you: michaelostler@gmail.com.
Then we have laptops for the logged-out activities when visitors want to give those a try.
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