Do you ever use Wikipedia for your Hertfordshire Research?

If you visit Genealogy in Hertfordshire regularly you will know that I frequently include links to the Wikipedia web site - and if you use Wikipedia you may have found some of the 200+ links from Wikipedia to my site.. 

I started the Genealogy in Hertfordshire web site at about the same time that Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia and originally Wikipedia contained very little about Hertfordshire - but with teams of enthusiastic helpers it now contains an enormous amount of information about Hertfordshire towns and villages as they are in the 21st century - and also much valuable historical information. However there is a problem, as the following message from Jimmy Wales indicated.

To all our readers in the UK,

We will get straight to the point: Today we ask you to help Wikipedia. To maintain our independence, we will never run ads. We depend on donations averaging about £10. Only a tiny portion of our readers give. If everyone reading this gave £2, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of a coffee is all we need. When I made Wikipedia a non-profit, people warned me I’d regret it. Over a decade later, it’s the only top ten site run by a non-profit and a community of volunteers. Has it crossed my mind how much we could have made if it had ads? Sure. But it wouldn’t be the same. We wouldn’t be able to trust it. Most people ignore my messages. But I hope you’ll think about how useful it is to have unlimited access to reliable, neutral information. Please help keep Wikipedia online and growing. Thank you. — Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder

I know exactly how Jimmy is feeling - as Genealogy in Hertfordshire has always been a non-profit site, with no adverts, and it also asks people who find the site useful to make donations.

The big difference is that the donations to Wikipedia are to pay the expenses of running what is a very large web site used millions of times a day, and it needs money to keep the site going. Donations to Genealogy in Hertfordshire all go to a Hertfordshire Mental Heath project in memory of my daughjters Lucy and Belinda. The basic computer costs of running the site are independently covered because it is one of a number of community projects run by HertsWeb while the costs of building the reference library of books, post cards, CDs, subscriptions, etc. used for answering questions, etc., all come out of my personal pension.

Donate to Wikipedia

Support the Mentally Ill in Hertfordshire

The big similarity is both sites have large numbers of visitors who greatly value the information they contain and expect the sites to continue for free for ever. May I suggest that if you have never made a donation to support Wikipedia, or to support Genealogy in Hertfordshire's nominated charity, now is the time to do it.    

How "Genealogy in Hertordshire" is raising money for the mentally ill of Hertfordshire

Lucy (1964-1985)

The Genealogy in Hertfordshire web site is a very popular one which provides a free online service and raises money for the mentally ill in Hertfordshire in memory of my daughters Lucy and Belinda. The software and computer that support the site is showing its age. In planning the site's future it is appropriate to ask how effective it has been in raising money for charity and so I have been looking at the relevant statistics.

Belinda (1966-2001)

In the first nine month of 2016 the site had just over 1 million visits but 90% are the typical quick in/out visits, suggested by search engines like google, where many visitors sees the page and decides to move on in less than a minute.

I have decided that only serious visitors matter - and to be serious a visit needs to trigger at least 6 page requests and/or stay connected for more than 5 minutes. Over nine months nearly 27,000 visitors have made more than 6 page requests (about 100 a day) and about 4 visitors a day are sufficiently interested in exploring the site to make more than 100 page requests. In total over 100,000 visitors spent more than 5 minutes on the site and nearly 10,000 have spent more than a hour exploring the site. In addition (using a different statistical package) over 50,000 accesses to this Newletter blog average out at about 200 a day.

The Hertfordshire Mind Network

So with all this activity how successful has the site been at raising money for charity. In fact donations this year are far lower than previously and the total to date is only £111. Spread over the 100,000 serious visitors this works out at the very ungenerous 0.1 penny per visit. If one widens the calculation every £1 donation "costs" about 10 hours of my time (including support activities where the answer does not appear directly online) and at least £10 expenditure (from my pension) goes on computer resources, subscriptions, and ebay purchases to support the library of pictures and books that support the web site. With this level of collective dis-interest I wonder if it is worth continuing the effort.

Donate Here

If you have found this site and my help and advice useful please say thank you, and cheer me up,  by making an online donation to the Herts Mind Network to help the mentally ill of Hertfordshire in time for Christmas.

Christmas Challenge 2014 - Rules

This year I am setting a "quiz" with a difference. The trick is that I don't know the answers to the questions and the prizes all go to this site's chosen charity - the Herts Mind Network. The more people do to find the answers the more the charity benefits!

Each day between now and the New Year I will be posting one (or sometimes two) pictures showing people - and in each case the aim is to uncover as much of the story behind the card as possible. (In fact all the pictures are already on line and can be seen in advance here)

For each face where someone can give a definite name I will personally donate £5 (£2 if you can name someone who was there - but cannot identify them). £5 will be donated for each regimental cap badge recognized. When not already known £5 will be given for locations and dates. Relevant information relating to the subject may also attract a reward, at my discretion.

Donate here

While the closing date is the end of the year I will consider donations for good answers received any time in 2015.

And of course if you want to make a donation yourself - because you like the challenge, or have found this site useful over the just click on the donation box on the right.  I could end up donating several hundred pounds if all the questions are answered - so it would be nice if all the readers of this message could, together, exceed this amount.

Where your donations go - The Herts Mind Network

The Honeymooners entertaining the audience at the end of the Herts Mind Network AGM

Herts Mind Network

Last night I attended the AGM of the Herts Mind Network at Watford and was very impressed by recent improvements. I first got involved with the committee of what was then Mind in Dacorum in 1991, at a time when all there was were five brief "drop in" sessions a week run by volunteers in Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead - and the National Health Service was planning to close the long stay hospitals. To enable us to cope with the influx of new clients we decided the only way to expand was to invest our small reserve on employing a part time coordinator and telling the NHS we would cater for the extra workload until the money ran out - or we got a grant! It worked - and not only did we get a grant  for a "drop in" supervisor but we also got a grant to run a one-to-one befriending scheme and employed Julie. Since then there has been a steady improvement in the services offered, and the organisation has expanded, by merger with other Mind Groups, and hopefully later this year it will be in a position to deliver services over the whole county.

Since becoming Herts Mind Network, with Julie as CEO, and Fran (one of Julie's first befriending volunteers) as Chair, the organisation has expanded and there are now Well-being Centres in Bishops Stortford, Hemel Hempstead, South Oxhey, Waltham Cross, Ware and Watford - and a wide range of counselling and other services are offered tailored to local needs. An important part of the success has been peer support and 70% of the staff have life experiences of mental illness. One of the great successes recently as been in the field of social enterprise - getting people back to work. For instance one group delivers high quality grounds maintenance services to public, private and community sector organisations, whilst providing paid employment for individuals who have faced barriers to work through experience of mental and/or emotional distress.

Donate Here

While the group's income now includes over £1,000,000 in grants to provide competitively priced services, there is still a need to raise money in other ways (such as by donations to this web site) to help develop and provide much needed additional services which are not covered by grants. In addition to money many people also donate their time, as volunteers. At a time when demand for services is growing and money (including charitable giving) is harder to get, every little helps. So a big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped by making a donation as a result of using this web site.

Herts Mind Network AGM - Watford 4th June

Herts Mind Network

This web site raises money for the Herts Mind Network, which provides community based support for people with mental health problems in Hertfordshire. Last year their annual report (to September 2011) said:

Although funding was cut, HMN maintained its services by looking at alternative ways of providing those services and as a result were able meet those funding cuts.

The HMN Board closely monitors the finances of HMN and is a standing item on the monthly Board meetings. 2011/12 will be a difficult year although we believe there will be plenty of opportunities for HMN to tender either on its own or in partnership with other organisations to maintain and enhance its current level of service delivery.

The AGM will consider the report for 2012/13 - which has been a difficult time for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be questions about the impact of benefit claim changes on people who are too ill to work out what is happening for themselves. In addition many more people are having difficulties because of the economic situation - and some are becoming mentally ill because of the extra stress coping with life on an uncertain income.Clearly the charity is planning to meet the extra demand and their web site is currently recruiting staff to support the mentally ill who are having difficulties managing their budgets. 

Donate Here

If you have found this site useful, and have not yet made a donation, please do so now, as at the AGM I don't want to have to report that so far this year we are over £300 behind target. 

I will report on what happens at the AGM.