HELP SAVE ROOTSWEB

On 17 October it was announced that a private equity company, Spectrum Equity Investors, purchased a majority interest in Generation Network, which owns Ancestry.com, which supports RootsWeb.

RootsWeb was born as a volunteer non-profit. They welcomed but did not require contributions. Some years ago Ancestry.com offered to support RootsWeb, which then stopped accepting contributions. RootsWeb operations (except for the host servers) remained essentially voluntary, with the content provided by members. The benefit to Ancestry was that the information supplied by RootsWeb users (RootsWeb World Connect becomes part of Ancestry's World Family Tree), and RootsWeb's use in getting people interested in genealogy and hence buying Ancestry.com membership. RootsWeb users benefit with the free pages, lists and boards.

Private equity groups operate with one objective: maximum profit. If they can make more money by destroying a company and selling the parts, they will. And there are many examples of companies destroyed because they cannot make 20% increases in profits every year.

I find it difficult to believe that a private equity group would see the benefit of supporting a volunteer operation like RootsWeb, which collects little money. They will either fold it into Ancestry.com completely (no access without joining at a rate of $120 a year that will go up substantially every year) or dump it.

Action needs to be taken - starting with an action committee - to plan the return of RootsWeb to its roots as a non-profit. The old model would probably not work any more, but there are lot of bright NGO people with other models that might work. Some sort of operating agreement with FamilySearch

last update 24 October 2007