2025 Annual Appeal
for Donations
to Support
our Mission and Activities

We invite you to join our 2025 Annual Appeal, as the Research Group rounds out the extraordinarily successful 2024 Anniversary Year with its theme of Bridges (see below), and prepares for the future.

In 2025 the Research Group will mark:

• 26 years as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey
• 36 years as an international scholarly organization founded in Cambridge, England, as part of a major research project at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College.

Cahors (Lot), France, Pont Valentré. View of the western part of the bridge from southeast. Photograph (24 September 2024) by Benjamin Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Now, moving into a new quarter-century as a nonprofit educational corporation, we seek your help to continue with our work, maintain our organizational operations, and advance with our activities and their planning.  As a nonprofit educational organization “Without Members”, we must turn to donations from individuals and institutions, supplemented by grants, where available, and by the pro-bono contributions which power most of what we can do.

As an organization with no employees, and no paid fund-raisers, we must depend upon our own time and efforts, with advisers, to identify the needs of the organization as we prepare its activities, which are accomplished on our own or in association with other organizations, institutions, and initiatives. Likewise, we prepare and circulate the appeals for specific purposes and goals which funding and other contributions could make possible.

Without the polish, performance, and expense of professional fund-raising functions, we speak from the heart as we encourage you to accompany us on the quest for aid for our 2025 Annual Appeal. Because our endowment is slender, we have to turn instead to donations for the annual expenses of the corporation and for aspects of the various activities and publications. In this way, you can have the confidence of knowing that your donations can have a direct impact in sustaining and fostering the RGME from day to day and year to year.

The 2025 Appeal Letter

The signed 2025 Appeal Letter gives a collective statement of our needs and goals. It concisely lists our achievements, progress, aims, wishes, and gaps-to-fill in going forward.

The 2025 Appeal Letter is signed by supporters who ask for your help.

Dear Friend of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME),

We write to you to ask for your support for our nonprofit educational corporation for the future.

In 2024, for our Anniversary Year, we undertook a variety of activities in support of our mission.  They included:

• Holding our Spring & Autumn Symposia “Between Past and Future”, including the invited Spring Symposium at Vassar College (hybrid), plus an Anniversary Symposium “Manuscript (HE)ART”, with published booklets
• Hosting Episodes 15-18 of our online presentation series, “The Research Group Speaks”
• Sponsoring and co-sponsoring three sessions at the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)
• Sponsoring an Inaugural RGME Session at the 31st International Medieval Congress at Leeds (IMC)
• Co-sponsoring a pair of webinars for “Medieval Women’s Networks”
• Launching the series of RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts”
• Conducting our 2024 “Between Past and Future” project, funded by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

Your generous donations for our 2024 Annual Appeal, Anniversary Endowment Appeal, and events (totalling $22,000) helped greatly to support our work and on-going projects and to grow our endowment.

In anticipating 2025, in addition to funding such ongoing programs as “The Research Group Speaks”, symposia, conference sessions, workshops, research projects, publications, and invited visits to public and private collections, we have five main goals:

• Expanding our very modest endowment (now up to $4,750) to stabilize our ability to cover ongoing costs
• Building “The Constable Fund” (so far $3,850) for work by the RGME on manuscript and related studies, to honor Giles Constable (†2021), medieval historian, Honorary Trustee, and long-time mentor for our organization
• Augmenting donations (normally about $5,000 in a good year) so as to meet annual operating expenses, which have risen to about $17,000, including urgent needs now for our website hosting and management
• Supporting our overworked, unpaid Director with funded administrative assistance, needed now more than ever

For details, please see https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2025-annual-appeal.

Signed

Adelaide Bennett Hagens, Trustee
Celia Chazelle, Department of History, The College of New Jersey
Jennifer Larson, Advisory Board
David Porreca, Trustee and Department of Classics, University of Waterloo
Anna Siebach–Larsen, Director, Rossell Hope Robbins Library
and Koller–Collins Center  for English Studies, University of Rochester
Mildred Budny, Director and Founder Trustee

For Download Here

We offer the 2025 Annual Appeal Letter for download here:

• 2025 Annual Appeal Letter
  or https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/download/19571/

For background and further information from last year’s ground-breaking work toward 2025 and beyond, please see:

• 2024 Anniversary Appeal Letter + Appendix

Accomplishments and innovations of our 2024 Anniversary Year are cited below.

Also, for your convenience, here is our Donation Form if you wish a printout:

• Donation Form

You might use the form to send checks to the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.  Online methods are listed below.

Would you please help with these aims?

In sum, we seek funding and other forms of assistance (pro bono expertise, goods, etc.) for our work and the pursuit of our mission.

We invite you to join the team!

Ways to Donate Online and Other Ways

Ways to contribute?

There are many ways to help: Funds, Goods, Expertise, Time. All can help our work and mission.

For suggestions, see:

• Contributions & Donations
• Donations

1) Via Mightycause:

• Donate
• Mightycause for RGME 2025 Annual Appeal

2) Via Paypal, Venmo, ApplePay, Pay Later, or Debit or Credit Card:

Photography © Mildred Budny

Please leave your Comments or questions below, Contact Us, or visit

• our FaceBook Page
• our Facebook Group
• our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
• our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
• our LinkedIn Group
• our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and Contributions

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give.  See:

• Contributions and Donations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****