2026 Year-End Letter from the Alghini Institute for Italian Americans
October 17, 2026
Dear Family and Friends,
As we celebrate Italian American Heritage Month, I've been reflecting on how far we've come this year and how much more we hope to accomplish.
My dad envisioned italianamericans.com as an online home for Italian Americans. He acquired the domain and began developing the site with Frank and me before his death in 2009.
In a mission statement preserved in his archive, he called for sharing Italian culture, heritage and traditions across generations. His plans included biographies and family photographs—a place where people could feel at home regardless of their profession or organizational ties. That vision is part of the foundation of the Alghini Institute’s work today.
Fast forward to the 2024 founding of this nonprofit and a year of researching, planning, and exploring how we could best serve the Italian American community. Now, we’ve devoted 2026 to bringing those ideas to life. What began as a vision for preserving and sharing our heritage is becoming a fast-growing collection of stories, educational resources, and tools that families everywhere can enjoy and contribute to.
I'm proud of what we've accomplished in our first year online, and I'd love to share a few highlights:
- We re-launched ItalianAmericans.com — a free, welcoming place to discover and celebrate Italian American history, culture, traditions, and family heritage.
- We published original research and educational resources, exploring Italian American history, genealogy, immigration, family traditions, and the people whose contributions helped shape America. We've continued adding new articles and stories throughout the year.
- We developed genealogy and family-history resources to help people discover their roots, explore Italian surnames, and learn more about the lives and contributions of Italian Americans.
- We built our Heritage Story Recorder, making it easier for families to capture memories in their own voices. With simple prompts and tools that help organize important details like places and dates, we're making family storytelling accessible to more generations. My cousin Frank Scalise recorded our very first story!
- We welcomed our first guest contributor, Lawrence Venturato, whose essay The Cry of Columbus marked an exciting step toward sharing more voices and perspectives from our community.
- We continued our Phoenix Clean Streets project. Frank and I have been maintaining our adopted stretch of 20th Street in Phoenix through quarterly cleanups, with another planned this October in honor of Italian American Heritage Month.
One of the things I'm most excited about is our growing Digital Piazza. In the Italian tradition, the piazza is where people come together, catch up, tell stories, and share a sense of community. That's what we're hoping to create online.
Our new story recorder is a wonderful example. Everyone has a family story worth remembering. Maybe it's how your grandparents arrived in America, what Sunday dinner was like growing up, or a funny family memory that's been told for generations. Now there's an easy way to record those memories and begin preserving them for the next generation.
You can even explore the first story Frank and I recorded.
I'd love for you to visit, explore, and become part of what we're building. Read a story, share one of your own, invite a family member to make a recording, or tell someone about our work. It's your heritage, too, and there's a place for you here.
As we look ahead, we've set a goal of raising $50,000 through our 2026 Annual Fund. Your support will help us expand our research and educational resources, continue developing our digital archive, improve our storytelling tools, and keep these resources freely available to everyone.
If you're able to make a contribution, of any amount, we'd be grateful. Many employers also offer charitable matching programs that can make your gift go even further.
Most of all, thank you for taking an interest in what we're doing. We've made a wonderful start, and I believe we're building something that can bring families together and keep our Italian American heritage alive for generations to come.
I hope you'll join us.
Warmly,
Christopher Alghini
Founder
Alghini Institute for Italian Americans
ItalianAmericans.com
Family. Tradition. Legacy.
