NSSAR Announces IT Fundraising Campaign
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — 20 August 2026 — The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (NSSAR) has announced a major fundraising effort to modernize its information technology (IT) systems.
The President General has established a fundraising goal of $3 million to support IT upgrades including records digitization, payments software, national dues billing, paperless applications and related database upgrades.
The Records Digitization Project is needed to preserve the extensive collection of genealogical records maintained at our National Headquarters. We have reached a critical point as the Society’s physical archival storage vault is at capacity at more than three and a half million pages.
Copies of supporting documents can be purchased from the Society; however, locating, reproducing, and delivering paper records is a time-consuming and inefficient process. The Records Digitization Project will help preserve these historically significant materials and prepare us for making these records easier to retrieve and provide to members and researchers.
Standards for scanning, digitization, preservation, and indexing are currently being developed to ensure the records are processed accurately and remain accessible for future generations. The Request for Proposal (RFP) for the digitization project will be released to vendors in August 2026.
The Records Digitization Project is an important initial component for the Paperless Application Process currently under development. The paperless application process will propel us into the future, decrease the mailing expenses for chapters and state societies, help decrease pended applications for missing signatures and incorrect payments, and help decrease genealogy processing time.
The development of a comprehensive payment strategy for NSSAR to enable a Point of Sale (POS) systems for the museum, continue the NSSAR store, as well as the development of the online payment platform would also provide the ability to collect application fees, dues, reinstatements, sale of digital records, etc with the potential to disperse money not just to the National Society; but also enrolled State Societies and their Chapters.
All financial transactions will flow directly into the new accounting system making our finance department more efficient. This new system will be required for the national dues billing, paperless application software and all other revenue streams. The national dues billing system will begin by only collecting national, state and chapter dues. This will help decrease our drops and increase our overall membership.
There are many other projects needed to modernize our IT systems and processes and these all require funding. We encourage our members, state societies, chapters, genealogists, historians, and supporters of historic preservation to contribute to this important undertaking.
Contributions may be made through the SAR website. Donors should visit SAR.org, click the blue Donate button, and select IT Special Purpose Fund from the drop-down menu. Join the SAR now in support of this important project to make our processes more efficient.
