Old North Church as it looked in 1882Today, American Express announced an additional $10 million in funding for their Partners in Preservation program. Launched in 2006, the program awards grants in cities across the country to keep historical sites open and save the places that matter most to people — like the Old North Church in Boston.

In partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the program engages local communities using a unique competitive voting process, an “American Idol”-style competition, that has helped draw attention to historic preservation in a way that has yielded more donations, more members, more visitors and more media coverage for the participating historic sites.

Through Partners in Preservation, American Express has contributed more than $5 million to support more than 100 historical places in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco and Seattle. The new commitment will expand the program to new cities, such as Atlanta, Dallas, New York, and Washington, DC.

American Express has always been involved in historic preservation. As early as 1983, the company launched a cause-related marketing effort that raised $1.7 million for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. From 1996 to 2005, they contributed worldwide more than $10 million to help preserve historic sites from the World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

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