Donate Organizational and Business Papers

Organizations--businesses, churches, charities, social clubs, and many other types of organizations--have been an integral part of life in America since the late colonial period.  Historians and genealogists prize their records.  If you have custody of non-current organizational records, don't throw them out without checking to see if a historical repository might be interested in them.  Please consider donating your Maryland-related organizational or business papers to the Maryland Historical Society. 

The Society of American Archivists has developed an excellent guide to donating organizational papers.  It is available at:

http://www.archivists.org/publications/donating-orgrecs.asp

If there are papers you would like to donate, please contact David Angerhofer at (410) 685-3750, ext. 378, or special_collections@mdhs.org.  If we are not the right repository for your collection, we will try to help you find an appropriate institution.

It would be great if you would donate some money along with your papers.  A donation of $25 to $50 per box of materials you give us would help us purchase archival, acid-free folders and boxes for them, ensuring they survive for years to come.  Document boxes--typically 2 or 3 are needed per bankers' box of donated material--can cost from $3-6 each, depending on the quantity ordered.  Acid-free folders can cost from 10-95 cents each, depending on the quantity ordered.  So any amount you could give us would be a great help.