Donate to the DGS

Bequest in a Will or Trust

One way to give to the Dallas Genealogical Society is to remember us in your will or trust. You may leave a certain percentage or a specific dollar amount.

Beneficiary Designations

Consider naming the Dallas Genealogical Society as a beneficiary to receive assets such as retirement plans, annuities, and life insurance policies. You simply fill out a form that is entirely separate from your will—which makes this approach an easy way to give.

Not only is it an easy way to give, but it’s also flexible—you aren’t locked into the choices you make today. You can review and adjust beneficiary designations anytime you want.

IRA Distributions (Qualified Charitable Distributions)

If you are 70½ years old or older, you can take advantage of a simple way to benefit the Dallas Genealogical Society and receive tax benefits in return. You can give up to $100,000 from your IRA directly to a qualified charity such as ours without having to pay income taxes on the money.

Stocks, Securities, Mutual Funds

Donating stock and mutual fund shares are wonderful ways to help the Dallas Genealogical Society. Making a gift of securities is simple and offers a number of valuable financial benefits:

• You can donate appreciated stocks, bonds or mutual funds
• The total value of the stock upon transfer is tax-deductible
• There is no obligation to pay any capital gains taxes on the appreciation

Contact us if you would like to donate stock or mutual fund shares: We will gladly help you make the necessary arrangements.

Advanced Giving Ideas

• Each monthly general meeting (September through May) includes an educational presentation focused on genealogy, history or a related topic. These meetings are free and open to the general public.
• We also have several special interest groups that meet on a variety of topics throughout the month. These meetings are also free and open to the general public.
• We host three seminars throughout the year featuring nationally known speakers who are experts in their respective areas. While there is a fee associated with these events we attempt to keep the cost low and the value to participants high.
• DGS members are widely recognized for their knowledge and make frequent presentations to local groups, area societies and at Regional and National conferences.
• We host an annual North Texas Society Summit. This is a unique opportunity for genealogical society leaders in the north Texas area to explore our challenges and identify strategies to address them.

We are actively preserving records and information in a variety of areas:

• Researching and documenting burials in area cemeteries has been a priority of our society for many years. Many of these records have been published in books. More recently, we have been making the information available in an online, searchable database that contains more than 36,000 records. Unlike many societies, we make these records freely and completely available to the public at no charge and with no membership requirements.
• Our society has published a high quality Journal under a variety of names for more than 50 years. All of them have been digitized, and most of them are available to the general public on our website and other archival repositories.
• We recently worked with the Portal to Texas History at the University of North Texas to digitize microfilm images of Dallas County Probate Records that were originally digitized by society members in 1977. Society members are currently reviewing every image in each probate case to identify the date range for each case (something that has not previously been indexed) and updating the online metadata in the Portal database.

DGS members have a long and proud history of supporting the Genealogy Section of the Dallas Public Library that dates back to the creation of our society. Countless rolls of microfilm, sheets of microfiche, books and equipment are available to patrons of the library today due to the nearly limitless generosity, enthusiasm and passion of our members.

Our society also led the effort to raising funds for a renovation of the Genealogy Section of the library that was completed in 1997.

As part of our recent 60th anniversary celebration we added up all of the donations DGS members have made over the past 60 years and determined that the total exceeded $786,000. We are now approaching the $1,000,000 benchmark!