Our Big Ask for a Bigger Opportunity

We want to share a massive thank you to everyone who has donated to the Big Ask campaign.

Thanks to your generosity we are delighted to advise that we have hit our target and gone well past it. Our totaliser is currently showing $59,680, or 119%% of our goal for the campaign.

Whether you donated, shared the campaign, talked about the project with others, or simply cheered us on from the sidelines — thank you. Every bit of support helped make this happen. And continues to do so, as supporters are continuing to give to the cause.

Although we’ve successfully reached our original fundraising target, our “Big Ask” campaign is far from finished. In many ways, this is just the beginning.

For a start the team has to roll up our sleeves and get to work. When we launched the campaign, we outlined a clear vision for what our “Big Ask” was for. We highlighted our aims as: the digital townland atlas; the parish source guide; and more digital content.

Work has been ongoing in relation to the parish source guide for some time. We want to develop this resource first, as it is more straightforward to delivery, and we can use our work on it to make the mistakes and learn the important lessons for when we come to create the digital townland atlas.

We always knew these would be evolving projects, resources that would continue to grow, improve, and become more ambitious over time. And the reality is: the more support we receive, the more we will be able to offer.

So while we’re taking a moment to announce this milestone together, we’re also incredibly excited about what comes next, and we will be pleased to keep supporters informed of progress.

If you would still like to support the project, donations remain open. Every contribution – large or small – helps us continue building, improving, and expanding what we can do.

If you are not in a position to donate financially right now, sharing details about the campaign with others still makes a huge difference. In addition, there are other ways to assist, for example, through volunteering – transcribing data, checking/validating data, and for local members/supporters perhaps helping out in the library.

The large number of book donations received in recent years has significantly expanded the collection meaning there is plenty to do to keep on top of cataloguing and shelving to ensure these new additions are accessible to users of the library collection.

The Foundation is indebted to all our supporters and we wish to convey to you, again, how grateful we are for your support and the confidence placed on the team. We are excited about delivering these projects for the benefit of members, friends and the wider research community at home and overseas.

Digital Townland Atlas

Last year, to universal acclaim, we launched Andrew Kane's monumental Townland Atlas of Ulster. This incredible publication mapped all 16,000+ townlands in the nine counties of Ulster and identified each of them by parish (Catholic, Church of Ireland and civil) and landed estate. We want to turn this into a Digital Townland Atlas – an online resource that will grow over time. However, this is much, much more than simply putting the book online. Find out more about our plans for a Digital Townland Atlas.

Parish Source Guide

Alongside the Digital Townland Atlas, we plan to develop an Ulster Parish Source Guide. This will identify historical and genealogical records for all 300+ parishes in the province of Ulster and will be based on documents in archives as well as printed sources and publications. It will be an essential go-to resource for anyone looking for their ancestors in Ulster. You can find out more by following this link to the test page of the Parish Source Guide and view a sample entry for Ahoghill parish.

New Digital Content

At the same time, we want to vastly increase the level of content on our website for the benefit of the public and our members. We would like to go further - and faster. Since its launch in January 2024, our new website has grown immensely through the addition of new databases, e-books, and ‘Discover’ area content to the new site. Recently, we added a new 'Sense of Place' section to the Discover area and we plan to add new features over the coming months. Our YouTube channel is also expanding and we want to continue to add new talks to it. Find out more about recently-added resources and databases.

Opportunity has come calling – we don’t want to miss the boat

1. For charities like ours, generosity of this kind does not come along very often - we want to seize this opportunity with both hands.

2. The power of match-funding - even a modest gift of a few pounds/dollars/euro will build up with the match funding pledge. Our donors are ready to equal anything you can give.

3. Pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps – you can help us continue to be self-sustaining. The Foundation is a completely self-funding charity and has been for more than 18 years. We get no public funding, rather we are a net contributor to the local, and island-wide, economy. We bring hundreds of visitors to this island each year and support their research journey.

4. Creating more resources to help the research community. The majority of the funds will be used to develop more web resources – the Digital Townland Atlas, Parish Source Guide and genealogical databases, you are helping us to help you – a mutually beneficial relationship.

5. Futureproofing - you are supporting the Foundation to preserve and promote our shared past for future generations.