Have you ever helped review names or index historical records on FamilySearch? If so, you probably didn’t know exactly how your efforts would help someone, but you trusted that sooner or later other people would find the historical record that you made searchable and add it to their family tree.
But what if you didn’t have to just trust that what you were doing was helpful? What if you could actually know when someone benefited from one of your volunteer contributions?
A new feature on the FamilySearch website called Your Impact is making details like this more and more available. This new page highlights some of the family history breakthroughs your volunteer contributions have allowed others to make—and even identifies areas of the world where you’re having the biggest impact.
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers help make records searchable every year, and we want each of you to see how your efforts are affecting others and feel the value of the work you are doing. Every time your efforts on Get Involved help someone find or use a record, the new impact feature is designed to show you the result.
Every name reviewed and every record made searchable has the potential to help someone discover more about an ancestor, somewhere and somehow. Thank you for each and every contribution you have made or will make. We hope you will take a moment and see Your Impact today!
The Story of Your Online Volunteer Efforts—Going Back 10 Years
Longtime indexers for FamilySearch will be interested to know that the data on Your Impact goes back 10 years, to before online volunteer efforts on FamilySearch were called Get Involved. This means that if you indexed a name in, say, 2018, you could potentially come across it again in one of the impact charts or summaries.
The new impact page currently shows data for Review Names and Indexing, volunteer experiences found in the Get Involved app or desktop experience.
See How and Where You’re Making a Difference
The information on your impact page is specific to you and reflects the volunteer activities you have participated in. As you do more to volunteer, your impact page will update to reflect those new contributions and their impacts. Because of this, your page may have different charts or summaries than someone else’s.
To get to your impact page, sign in to FamilySearch.org, and click the Get Involved option in the top menu. Then, in the drop-down, click the link for Your Impact.
Impact Overview
The first feature to note is a button at the top of the page titled See Impact Overview. Clicking it opens a short pop-up experience that is part summary, part story of the good you’ve been doing. (The first time you visit Get Involved, the Overview should open for you automatically.) Some of the interesting facts you’ll find here include:
- Your total number of contributions
- The country to which you’ve contributed the most
- Your top volunteer activity
A contribution on the Your Impact page refers to completing a volunteer item in Get Involved, such as reviewing a name that could potentially be added to the FamilySearch Family Tree.
Note: This is separate from the contributions summarized in the Family Tree section of the site, which documents changes you’ve made directly to the shared tree. Both are valuable types of contributions, assisting your relatives and others in finding and documenting their family history.
People You Helped Find and Your Contributions in Action
Other possible sections you might see give more specifics about how your contributions have affected the Family Tree on FamilySearch. Here you’ll find information about people in the Family Tree that are now connected to names you reviewed. Their names and the details of how your contribution helped are shown on individual cards that you can browse or click on for more information. Each card represents an ancestor or family member that you helped someone discover more about.
Your Worldwide Contributions
Another section to explore is Your Worldwide Contributions. In a glance, you get to see where the records you’ve helped with are coming from.
For some volunteers, most of your efforts might have focused on one country, which is great! If you ever want to expand your list, try reviewing names in all the languages you are fluent in or ones you are learning to speak. Or try looking for batches from other countries that speak the same language as you, and watch your list grow.
Thank You for Your Contributions!
Many benefits can come from connecting to family history—greater resiliency, improved self-esteem, and new and deeper family connections—so we know just how incredible a gift you’re making possible for others by taking a few minutes to review a name.
The Your Impact experience is still in the early stages of its release, so now and then you might notice an adjustment in the way information is presented. Still, we hope many will be excited at the opportunity to see this much detail about what happens after you help improve historical records—something that hasn’t previously been available. If you’ve never reviewed a name before, now is a great time to Get Involved!
The names you review today might not get added to the Family Tree tomorrow, but sooner or later, they’re going to have an inspiring impact on someone else. Thank you for all you do in contributing to making records searchable and building the Family Tree for people everywhere to discover their ancestors!
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