Giving Tuesday: $1.7 million from volunteers

Stories Behind the Stars relies on contributions to succeed.

These contributions overwhelmingly are not gifts of money, but gifts of time and talents.

Stories Behind the Stars volunteers have so far written about 21,000 stories of the fallen. On average it takes 2-3 hours or more to research and write a story, so volunteers have contributed around 60,000 hours. The nonprofit coalition Independent Sector values the time of volunteers at $28.54 per hour.

Our volunteers have therefore provided $1.7 million of volunteer time.

Thanks a million!

We are also thankful for dollar donations that help us with hard costs. Earlier this year, donations helped us cover the cost of our VPN and website.

For Giving Tuesday we are raising funds to cover the cost of Network For Good, our customer relationship management (CRM) communication platform. It is used to (1) keep track of our volunteers in a database, (2) send out group emails, and (3) collect donations that qualify for a tax deduction. The annual cost of $3,000 is due next week. That comes down to less than $10 a day and it is well worth it. We couldn’t hire a fast food worker at that price for one hour.

We know that not everyone that follows this project on Facebook and elsewhere is currently writing stories, but may still want to help support this project in other ways. Follow this link to make a tax deductible donation.

Thanks everyone for doing your part to remember each and everyone of the US WWII fallen.