Can we break $50,000?

Okay… here’s the deal.

There’s going to be this walk, see, here in San Antonio, Texas, in less than 24 hours.

Every dollar donated to sponsor a walker in this special Preserve the Pensions campaign right now gets quadrupled.

First, every dollar is matched by the Federation of Genealogical Societies, so a contribution of $25 becomes $50.

Then, that amount gets matched by Ancestry, so that same original $25 grows to $100.

So what’s this for and why does it matter?

Millions of pages of fragile documents with immense genealogical significance are in grave danger of deterioration: they are the records of War of 1812 pension applications held by the National Archives.

These particular records — documenting more than 180,000 pension files for War of 1812 soldiers and their families — are among the most heavily requested documents at the National Archives and, because of their use, their age and their fragile nature, they really need to be digitized to protect them and keep them available forever.

The Preserve the Pensions effort will not only pay for the digitization, but because of the crowdsourcing these records will be online, free to the public, forever.

Now… this week at the Federation of Genealogical Societies 2014 conference in San Antonio, FGS is trying something a little different: the entire genealogical community has been invited to sponsor one of four people in a walk from the convention center to the Alamo early on Saturday morning.

FGS President D. Joshua Taylor, his Genealogy Road Show colleague Kenyatta Berry, FGS conference chair Ed Donakey of Family Search and The Legal Genealogist are all giving up sleep and getting up at oh-dark-thirty Saturday morning to represent this effort by our community, and every walker is being sponsored by contributions from genealogists.

As of last night, the amount pledged to support one of the four walkers in the Preserve the Pensions fun walk at FGS 2014 in San Antonio was a little more than $10,815.

With the matching funds, that means more than $43,000 to digitize the records of War of 1812 pensions.

Now… the fun walk takes place at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday, August 30th.

Can we do it?

Can we raise another roughly $1,700 by tomorrow morning?

If we can ask our friends, our colleagues, our societies, to dig just a little bit deeper…

All anyone here in San Antonio needs to do is head to the exhibit hall, booth 606,608, and contribute there. If you’re at home, you can do it online. Go to this page and after filling in your info, scroll down to “Sponsor someone for the San Antonio Fun Walk” and choose your victim … um… walker to sponsor. Or click on the image above — it’ll take you to the donation page.

Can we…?

Can we break $50,000?

Just one more push…