Conservation Corner #1

Except for the last paragraph, this is a repeat of the Conservation Corner page from the first blog in March.

You will find that preserving your chapter history will seem daunting in the beginning.  To begin your process, let’s begin by recording your chapter property using the Chapter Property Inventory forms.  These forms are writeable forms meaning you can type and save the information directly on the form.  The only difficulty that you might have is attaching pictures to the form.  If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can do that easily.  If you don’t, you will need to do a few more steps to include the picture on the form.

Once you have the forms completed for your chapter, please send them to me to file.  The purpose of this is to have a back-up copy on hand in case of emergency.  These emergencies can be due to natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornados, but they can also be in the event a chapter must seek legal means to retrieve property.  Unfortunately, this has happened due to the family incorrectly believing that certain chapter property was actually the personal property of the family member.  The chapter had to seek legal help to get the chapter property returned.  Had these forms been available at the time, the family would have been presented the forms and known that the property was the chapter’s and not the family member’s that had unexpectedly passed away.

Please do not change these forms in any way as the forms were created by the NSDAR legal advisors and will hold up in a court of law.  Simply complete, sign, and send them to me.

The property of each chapter will vary.  Some will simply have chapter regent’s bar, minutes, original member papers, treasurer’s records, etc.  Other chapters may have additional property such as gavels, officer notebooks, scrapbooks, history books, etc.  while others may even possess furniture.  Whatever your chapter has, begin your process by taking inventory and recording its whereabouts.

I will be conducting a workshop at the District 6 workshop about all this and the other items needed from each chapter, along with the proper techniques needed to accomplish the work, that fall under the auspices of the state curator.  This will be the only in person workshop I will be giving.  For those of you who cannot attend, I will be putting the information on the blog.  Don’t forget about the webinar I conducted for NSDAR in January 17, 2012 entitled “Archiving Chapter Records – Making Your Chapter’s Mountain of Minutes, Records & Histories a Molehill!”.  That webinar is still available to view on the NSDAR Members’ Only website.