CURRENT VOLUNTEER NUMBERS

Welcome aboard all new volunteers; we are really glad to have you. We
currently have 4420 volunteers across the globe. During the month of
December we welcomed 117 new volunteers. Forty-nine volunteers were
removed due to the newsletter bouncing back to us (user unknown,
mailbox full December and January, and hosts unknown); staff removed 7
for being non-responsive or having bad e-mail addresses; 44 members
decided to leave the project voluntarily. The staff doesn't ask too
much from the volunteers; just keep us posted on any changes you may
have by going to http://www.raogk.org/change.html instead of writing
to us directly. Also, as always, please be sure to acknowledge receipt
of a request, whether you can fulfill the request or not.

This newsletter is sent out for two reasons, the only way to keep in
touch with ALL the volunteers letting everyone know what might be new
on the site, etc. The second reason, it is a way of finding out whose
address is no longer valid (as you can tell from the numbers above,
this could be quite a few).

Probably we could add a third reason. When folks sign up for the site,
and receive no requests they tend to forget they are volunteers for
RAOGK. This newsletter serves as a reminder of your volunteerism as
well.

FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

It is really hard to believe that this site has been around five
years. March is our anniversary month, and we went online in March
1999. We've had growing pains along with the joys and sorrows. But all
in all I think it is the best site going for those who are researching
their roots and need that help that only can be obtained at a local
level. The volunteers of RAOGK are amazing in their caring and
willingness to take time away from their own research for others.


KUDOs

The following volunteers were found on the Thank You
(http://www.raogk.org/guestbook/) page for the month of February:
Blanket thank yous to the Vols of MA and CT, Donna (CA), Elaine Smith,
Janet Jewell, Jim McNamara, Judy Dukes, Kay Lynch, Leona Henderson,
Linda Neal, Louise Baker, Melba Shipp, Patti Leland-Hanson, Richard
Scott, Robert W. Williams, Sheila Davidson, Susan Snyder, George
Burgey, Teresa (CA), Jackie Rudnick, Brenda Wiesner, Simon Plumb,
Elaine Smith, Martha (CA), Walt Sammis, Alison Maston, Harold Stout,
Gary Maize, JJ, Don Bush, Pam Miller, Brenda Weisner, Betty R. Crook,
Charlene Leon.

It is always nice to see your name in print. I am sure that all of you
are doing a fantastic job and many of our requesters do not know about
this way of thanking you as well. Maybe next month will see the list
of names triple.

Congratulations to all.


POWER OUTAGES

We have had our share of them this past month. Two in a period of 8
days. You may have tried to get to the site on Saturday (Feb. 21,
early AM) and again on Saturday (Feb. 28, early AM), only to come away
disappointed. Luckily our outages are in the early morning (central
standard time) and that we have a good electrical company that had men
on the problem within 10 minutes.


NEW ADDITION TO PAGES

If you have been to any of the regular site pages (main page, FAQ
pages, Award pages, and other similar pages), you may have seen the
addition of ads being displayed somewhere on those pages (usually at
the top).

The decision to put ads on RAOGK pages was not an easy one to make.
Ads we've seen on some web pages smack of commercialism, plus there
was a problem of no control of what was being used on your pages. The
people at Google came up with a program where they "spider" your site
and determine what type of ads are appropriate for displaying, and try
to only send ads that relate to what your site is all about. They also
give those that sign up for their program the ability to disallow
advertisements that may appear that are unappropriate. So when you
visit one of the pages that displays these ads, please look at them
and if you see an advertisement that just doesn't seem appropriate,
please let us know (raogk-admin@raogk.org).

Although the RAOGK Admin and her husband run their own web hosting
service and host RAOGK themselves, the site still needs to pull its
own weight, or at least some of it. These ads seem to be the least
intrusive of all the options available to us to bring in revenue.


TAKING INVENTORY

Besides your listing being displayed on our site, your e-mail address
is also added to a database. This database notes the date you
volunteered and changed your address. It also contains dates when an
e-mail address was removed from the site (the date and the reason for
removal). Since additions, corrections and removals are all done by
humans, both on the site and the database, errors do occur. It was
decided that a comparison needed to be made of those that are listed
on the site pages to those e-mail addresses still listed as active in
the database.

As you may guess we've caught quite a few discrepancies and have tried
to make the correct adjustments. So if you find you are receiving this
newsletter, but had asked to be removed from the site in the past,
please visit the change form (http://www.raogk.org/change.html) and
fill it in (so we will have a record of your request).

We are hoping that bringing these two forms of recording information
into sync will improve the quality of the listing of volunteers. Those
that have asked to be removed, but were never removed, may be a source
of volunteers not replying to the requests they receive.

Until next month,

RAOGK Staff