Support
You can support the Moravian Archives by making a financial donation, volunteering your time, or by entrusting your collections to the care of the Archives.
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Friends of the Archives
The Friends of the Archives provide critical support for our day-to-day operating expenses so that we can invest in our collections and continue to make our inspiring history available. Our annual Friends’ campaign usually provides 25 percent of our operating budget.
Why support the Moravian Archives?
Your donation enables us
- To preserve the collections kept at the Moravian Archives
- To expand our collections by purchasing books, manuscripts and other artifacts
- To digitize our holdings in order to give greater access
- To organize and catalog our holdings
- To host lectures, exhibits, tours, workshops, and classes
- To provide research assistance to anyone interested in our collections
Your donation is an investment in history. Thanks to your support we are the primary resource center for Moravian history in North America.
Everyone is invited to become a Friend of the Moravian Archives by making a contribution to the annual giving program.
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DonateDonate
Thank you for supporting the Moravian Archives! Your donation is an investment in our history and we will put your money to work.
You can make your donation safely online.
We recommend the online giving portal of the Moravian Ministries Foundation for secure credit card processing. All processing fees are paid by the Moravian Ministries Foundation.
You can also make your donation through Paypal, a trusted website for online payments and charitable giving.
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FundsSpecial Funds at the Moravian Archives
The Hamilton Book Fund
The Hamilton Book Fund provides funding to purchase books for the library of the Moravian Archives.
The library of the Moravian Archives began in 1751 as the Gemeinbibliothek or Congregational Library, one of the oldest communal libraries in the country. We collect any publication relating to the Moravian Church worldwide. Over the years the Hamilton Fund has made it possible to purchase hundreds of books. Rt. Rev. Kenneth Hamilton (1893-1975) was archivist at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem from 1958 until 1963.
Our library collection is cataloged on WorldCat and is accessible to researchers in our reading room.
The Rev. Vernon H. Nelson Memorial Fund
The Vernon Nelson Fund provides grants to researchers as a contribution toward their travel and accommodation expenses while conducting scholarly research at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, PA. The fund was established in June of 2011 by the family of late archivist, Rev. Vernon H. Nelson (1933-2010), who served as archivist of the Moravian Church, Northern Province, for more than forty years. This fund is a wonderful way to honor his memory and to promote scholarly research on Moravian topics.
For more information about the grants, click here.
The Restoration Fund
The Restoration Fund provides funding to preserve fragile items in our collections: maps, books, manuscripts, paintings, etc. This fund helps preserve valuable historical documents and artifacts that would otherwise have been lost or seriously en-dangered. In recent years we were able to preserve several church registers, a manuscript history of Lititz, Pa., and several oil paintings.
The Digitization Fund
In 2018 the Moravian Archives began to systematically digitize its holdings. Thanks to a bequest of Nomi Budelier and a grant from the R.K. Laros Foundation a professional book and manuscript scanner was purchased. We are now able to produce professional scans of most material in our collections.
Collections are systematically digitized and the digital content is uploaded to our online finding aid. Through digitization we are making our holdings widely accessible to an international audience. For more information on our digitization program, click here.