A web site such as the Kent OPC can only survive and remain active with three essential ingredients:  dedicated volunteers, record sources for our volunteers to transcribe, and financial resources to meet the monthly and yearly costs associated with the activity of the web site.  If you wish to volunteer either as an OPC or as a casual contributor I would direct you to the Volunteer page for further information.  This page is intended to deal primarily with the last two of our three essential ingredients - record sources and financial resources.

Financial requirements to keep an OPC project operational

The Kent OPC project is largely self-funding.  But, many costs must be met in order to keep this web site active:  URL registration, initial server set-up fees, monthly web storage for the web site, and annual hosting fees.  In addition, fees are routinely incurred by an independent OPC or by the Kent OPC project administrator to obtain records for transcription whether those records are purchased or rented from an archive or independent source.  If you feel you can help us defray some of these costs in any way we would be most grateful.

Donations for Record Sources

If you feel you do not have sufficient time to transcribe records or access is difficult for you, a financial contribution towards the cost of purchasing microform records would be most welcome.  The Kent OPC project would then obtain the requisite microforms for a parish of your preference and arrange to have the record transcribed on your behalf.  If your parish of choice has an OPC the opportunity would be given to that OPC to transcribe the record.  If that OPC is unable to complete the transcription then we will arrange for an independent transcriber to complete the transcription.  In either case, credit would be given to you as donor/supporter of the particular record page.  Credit would also be given to the transcriber of the record.

Sponsor a Parish

You may wish to sponsor a parish.  In this case, your financial contribution would be used to defray the monthly and yearly costs associated with the posting of the parish pages related to the parish you wish to sponsor.  In this regard, please note that parishes with a great many transcripts and/or photographs, occupy a larger amount of web space and, naturally, require a greater financial commitment to keep active.  The costs associated with any one parish also fluctuate, usually increasing, as new record pages and photographs are added.  If you wish to sponsor a particular parish, please write to me, Susan Young, at administrator@kent-opc.org setting out your preferences for contribution.  I can then project the costs associated with that parish and advise you accordingly.  You will be given full credit as the sponsor for that parish during the term of your active participation as a sponsor.

Web Site Maintenance Donations

You may wish to only provide a one-time financial contribution towards the costs of maintenance of the Kent OPC web site.  Any contribution would be most gratefully received and credit would be given to you for your contribution on our list of Acknowledgements, which appears at the bottom of the Introduction page.  Please email me with your details.

Gifts of Reference Material

The Kent OPC web site is designed to be a platform through which to share transcribed information for a particular parish even if no OPC has taken up responsibility for that parish.  Accordingly, any donations of photographs, articles, original source material and general historical information about any Kent parish will be very welcome.  I am certain that, even if a particular parish has an OPC, any donation of additional material would be most welcomed by that OPC.   Credit would be given to you as donor of the particular record on the record transcription page.  If the source is to be used only for lookups, credit will be given to you as donor of the particular record on our list of Acknowledgements, which appears at the bottom of the Introduction page.  Please email me with your details.

Thank you for taking the time to visit our web site and thank you very much for choosing to support this exciting project.  Your contributions are an integral part in the overall ongoing success of the Kent OPC project.

Susan D. Young,
County Administrator, Kent OPC