Board Dockets and Minutes (1915–1944)

Near East Relief’s governing boards met in New York from October 1915 until the federal charter expired in 1944, and their minutes record its formal decision-making across that entire span. The volumes in this collection begin with the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief in October 1915 and run through Near East Relief’s congressional incorporation in 1919, the emergency years of the early 1920s, the Conservation Committee deliberations of 1928–1930 that reorganized the work, and the general minutes of the board of trustees through 1944. They document fundraising targets and appropriations, orphanage openings and closings, evacuation decisions, negotiations with U.S. officials and foreign governments, and the personnel who carried out the work.

Read alongside the annual Reports to Congress in the Key Documents collection, the minutes show how a citizens’ committee governed a relief operation that spanned a dozen countries. The final volume runs to the board’s last meeting in 1944, when the congressional charter reached the end of its twenty-five-year term and the trustees voted an orderly liquidation of Near East Relief, its work continuing through the Near East Foundation — the transition set down in Near East Relief Consummated—Near East Foundation Carries On, accessible in the Key Documents collection.

Each entry below opens a bound volume of the complete. The originals are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center within the Near East Foundation records (FA1305).