Preserving your club's history is a valuable asset for future generations of Altrusans. Our archives are the written record of the service a club provided for their community as well as the past leadership of a club.
Each Altrusa club needs an archiving plan. The District Nine Clubrunner program is set up to be the perfect location for many of these documents. "Read More" to find out how to archive your club history.
Preserve Your Club’s History
by Debbie Mabry
District Nine 2021-23 Membership Chair
Several months ago, I was looking through articles from old copies of the International Altrusan for research for an “Inspiration” for the International Convention. As I was reading through the many pages of stories of projects and programs from 80 to 100 years ago, I was overcome with a sense of thankfulness that I was able to go to these documents and learn about our history. Without these old issues being properly archived, much of this history would probably have been lost. Our club’s history is also a valuable asset to our future generations of Altrusans and needs to also be properly archived.
An archive is an accumulation of historical records in any media. They are collections of documents selected for permanent preservation because of their value as evidence, or documents that tell our story for generations to come. Archiving for our clubs involves three components: What, Where and Who.
WHAT records are important for clubs to keep (archive) for future retrieval? The National Council for Non-Profits suggest clubs archive the following:
- The club charter document
- Club Articles of incorporation and substantiating documents
- Minutes of the board, club and foundation meetings – this is the official record of your club and foundation actions
- Audit reports or tax returns, if available
Additionally, the Membership Acceleration Learning team suggests club archive:
- Annual President’s reports – these usually give a very good overview of the club year
- Yearbooks – a record of who was a member of the club in any given year.
- Fundraising information – general reference materials for future years.
- Files on your ASTRA club or a new club building project, if applicable.
- Club photographs of events and leaders – historical value
- Personal Altrusa scrapbooks – historical value
WHERE should a club keep their archives? Clubs are keeping their records in libraries, storage rooms as well as member’s homes. Regardless of where they are being kept, they need to be carefully stored and managed to protect and preserve.
Sometimes collections are kept in locations such as local archives, museums, libraries, universities, schools or businesses. The Archives for Altrusa International are housed both physically and electronically at the library at Ball State University and are available for all member’s use. The archives for District Nine have been held in the library Archives at Texas Women’s University in Denton for many years.
To decide where your club should keep their archives, check with your local library to see if they offer this service to non-profit or community service groups. They may have a specific system of storage that you will need to follow. It is important to organize the content in something like “banker’s boxes” with the contents on both the inside and outside of the box.
There will also be archiving abilities on the new Clubrunner program for any information that can be digitally stored. Digitally stored information can also easily be kept in multiple locations and may be able to be accessed electronically by members. Stay tuned for a workshop on how archiving can be done by your club on the Clubrunner system.
WHO in your club should be responsible for archiving your records? There is not any position on the board or in the club that has this responsibility. If your club has not previously archived any of your information, this might need to be an ad hoc committee to make an archiving plan of action to get started. If your club is already archiving, perhaps the board can designate one of two board positions to be responsible to make sure the materials are put in the archives at the close of each year, or to digitalize the information for the club website.
It is also important to share what is in your archives with the club members by a brief report each year, or even a program presentation on your club Archives.
To upload your Club’s archives, go to Member Area/Administration/Documents. Folders are setup for each Committee and Club of District Nine. |
To access the Altrusa International Archives at Ball State University, visit https://archivessearch.bsu.edu/repositories/7/resources/3285 |