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EnglishHow to Volunteer for the Illinois Gravestone Photo Project
Updated
The Illinois Gravestone Photo Project (illinoisgravestones.org) is actively seeking volunteers to take and upload gravestone photos for many Illinois counties. To get started, go to the site's Resources section and read the "How Can I Volunteer?" and "Frequently Asked Questions" articles — those pages explain the volunteer role and how to participate. The project's stated mission is to capture digital images of gravestones before inscriptions become unreadable, and volunteers are the primary way that work gets done.
What Volunteering Involves
Based on the project's own description, the volunteer role is a part-time activity built around two tasks:
- Taking photos of gravestones in Illinois cemeteries
- Uploading those photos to the project so they can be archived and made searchable
The site describes this as a "rewarding part-time activity" and notes it is recruiting for many counties, so you are not limited to one specific area. The project frames the work as preserving history: as decades pass, many stones become harder — or impossible — to read, and archiving images helps save those records for researchers.
How to Get Started
- Read the volunteer information. From the site navigation, open the Resources section and select "How Can I Volunteer?" This is the project's own guidance for prospective volunteers.
- Check the FAQ. The "Frequently Asked Questions" article in the same Resources section covers common questions about participating.
- Identify where photos are needed. The project lists top counties by approved photo count, which gives a sense of where coverage is already concentrated. As of the site's last update (9/23/2026), the leading counties were Cook (17,830), DuPage (13,618), Will (9,960), Tazewell (7,222), and Rock Island (6,953) — with the site stating it is seeking volunteers for "many counties."
- Submit your photos. The site's main navigation includes a "Submit a Photo" link, and the homepage has a "Click here to submit a photo" prompt. Use that path once you have images ready.
- Contact the project if you have questions. A "Contact Us" link is available in the site footer for reaching the project directly.
What the Site Tells You About Scale
The project publishes site statistics that help you understand the scope of the archive you would be contributing to:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Approved photos | 105,145 |
| Pending photos | 0 |
| Total | 105,145 |
Measured by approved photos all-time, last updated 9/23/2026. These figures come directly from the site's statistics section.
Practical Notes
- The site does not publish a sign-up form, training schedule, or time commitment on the pages summarized here — the volunteer articles in Resources are the place to look for those details.
- No pricing or payment information appears on the site; nothing here indicates whether any aspect of participation involves cost, so check the volunteer and FAQ pages directly if that matters to you.
- Illinois Gravestone Photo Project is hosted by ClickStart Web Services LLC and is part of the broader GPP Projects network, with each Gravestone Photo Project website independently managed.
If your goal is simply to use the archive rather than build it, the same site offers search by name or location, browsing by cemetery, and browsing by surname. Volunteering is the path to choose when you want to contribute images rather than look them up.