We have been working on upgrades to our website and wanted to let you know about some of these changes.
1. We have added a fund raising goal for this year to the main page with a thermometer to let you know how we are doing with those goals. We also added a brief description of what those funds we raise are used for. So please check out the main page for that information.
2. Part of our fund raising efforts involve adding new donation buttons to our pages that allow you to go in and send donations electronically using Paypal and credit cards. Another piece of our fundraising is using Amazon Smile which does not cost you a penny, as Amazon donates to our organization a percentage of your purchase price every quarter. All you need to do is add our organization as your charity of choice under the Amazon Smile program in your account setting. As we get these donations we will be updating the thermometer mentioned above. Make sure you choose Gilmer County Historical Society in WV as there is also one in GA, so the funds come to the correct organization.
3. Other ways we raise funds are through memberships, selling books, and handmade craft items. We are in the process of getting our online store up and running and the first item to go online will be allowing people to pay their membership dues to the historical society thru the online store. With a payment for a member in good standing we have added a members only page which is password protected and only available for paid and lifetime members of the historical society. This page will contain our quarterly newsletters as well as a free scanned PDF document. We welcome other historical societies to apply for a complementary membership to our site as well.
The first document we are loading for paid members is the historical society’s Bicentennial Biographies book written in 1976. We normally sell this in our gift shop at the museum in, but have sold out of all paper copies at the moment; we’ll have more of those available, as well. This book is basically full of information about area residents and is spectacular for genealogy research. It was the precursor to the Gilmer County History book, which is extremely popular
If you have paid your dues you will receive the password to this page. The password will change on January 1st of each year and all paid and lifetime members will receive it then.
4. We have some things to work out before we can finalize opening the online store so please be patient while we make those transitions. Once we are ready, we will be moving some items, like the books we have for sale, from the main page to the online store page. If you notice any broken links or pages not working properly, or anything that is just difficult to navigate, please let us know. We value your input and we can’t fix what we don’t know is broken!