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Establishing a DNA Geographical/Heritage Project |
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Check to see if a DNA geographical/heritage project has already been set-up with any of the commercial DNA testing companies. (Even if a project DOES already exist for the region or ethnicity you desire, it may be possible to establish a separate project with the same company, if the existing project will not meet your goals.) One definite benefit of a geographical/heritage project is the ability to include mitochondrial (mtDNA) results in the project. |
| Currently, there are three companies* that offer DNA geographical/heritage projects: FamilyTreeDNA, DNA Fingerprint, and Relative Genetics. | |
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Research and compare the products, features, and prices that the companies offer to determine which company will best suit your needs. Review each company's existing geographical/heritage projects to form an idea of what will meet your project's goals. Do not hesitate to call or e-mail the company with any questions you may have. |
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When you have determined which company you will be using, inquire as to whether you'll need initial participants to start the project. Some companies are flexible. Contact the company to establish the project. |
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Recruit a Co-Admin, or several, for your project. Co-Admins can handle the project administration duties for you when you are on vacation, incapacitated, or unreachable for any other reason. Co-Admins can also assist by recruiting participants, providing website-building skills, language translation, promoting and endorsing the project, attending conferences, etc. Ideally, potential Co-Admins should be involved with the project and have an interest in the field of genetic genealogy. |
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If your project is established with Family Tree DNA, one of the first things to do, is enter as many surnames into the "Project Profile Page Surnames" fields as possible from the region or ethnicity. FTDNA's search field will return your project's listing as a "hit" for the surname entered, thus allowing them to join your project. |
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If your project is in a geographical locality or ethnicity that does not use English as their primary language, consider providing translated version of your website in the native language. this can be achieved by recruiting someone to translate your website, or linking to a web-based translator such as Babelfish. |
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To keep participants updated and informed on the status of the project, you may wish to create a mailing list or forum for the sharing of information. Examples: The Bahamas DNA Project participates in a Bahamian Genealogy and Culture Yahoo Group, the Azores DNA Project utilizes a Rootsweb mailing list and the Puerto Rican DNA project hosts a forum on y-base.org. |
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Other examples of items to include on your website: research and surname look-ups (see the French Heritage DNA Project for an example), the Puerto Rican DNA Project offers introductory genetics information, in addition to free look-ups in a genealogical database, and the Shetland Islands DNA Project includes chronological historical information. You may also wish to include links to scientific studies that have been done on your ethnic group or country. A source for study abstracts can be found on the National Library of Medicine's Pub Med site. Example: Aleutian Islands abstracts |
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