The Genealogy Co-op is a project of Find My Family, LLC, founded and operated by Andre Bagley, AG®. Based in Grantsville, Utah; serving clients and researchers nationwide.

Credential and role:

Andre Bagley is an Accredited Genealogist (AG®) through the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen℠), credentialed in Swedish research since 2017. He owns and operates Find My Family, LLC out of Grantsville, Utah, where he handles client research projects ranging from US ancestry and Scandinavian genealogy to Colonial British America, English, and Welsh research. He also conducts forensic genealogy work — including heir location and probate-related research where the work has to stand up to sworn declarations and court review.

Firm-scale experience:

Before and alongside running Find My Family, Andre spent eight years working with two established genealogy firms — Price Genealogy and Lineages Genealogy — both as a contracted researcher specializing in Scandinavian work, and as Clerical Director overseeing post-research processing across the firms' research teams. That experience inside a multi-researcher operation shaped his understanding of how firm-scale genealogy actually works: what's gained by having editors, project managers, and shared infrastructure, and what's lost by routing every client through one unified brand. The Co-op draws on both sides of that experience.

Path into the field:

Andre came into professional genealogy through two years (2014-2016) as a full-time FamilySearch Patron Assistant in Salt Lake City — working with researchers and family historians at all levels and learning the records landscape firsthand. He started working as a full-time professional in later 2017. He pursued ICAPGen℠ accreditation during that period and credentialed in 2022. Find My Family LLC was founded the same year.

Other current work:

Outside of genealogy, Andre also serves as a Digital Reporter for civil litigation proceedings through Filevine, working as a commissioned notary public to capture and certify legal testimony. The work overlaps with his forensic-genealogy practice in one specific way: both require careful documentation that has to hold up to legal and procedural scrutiny.

The problem the Co-op solves:

Most credentialed practitioners I know are skilled, careful, and underutilized — not because clients don't exist, but because the work of qualifying clients eats the hours that should be billable. The math gets uncomfortable fast. Email triage, expectation-resetting, scope conversations — these are real labor, but they don't appear on any invoice. Solo practitioners with steady inbound interest often end up with effective hourly rates meaningfully lower than what they actually charge, because so much of their week is spent on work that doesn't bill.

What firms solve and what they don't:

The firm model solves this by centralizing intake — editors and project managers handle the qualification work so researchers can focus on research. That's a real solution, and it's how firms can charge higher per-hour rates: the rate funds the infrastructure. But the firm model also requires a unified brand, conformity to shared methodologies, and accepting that the firm owns the client relationship. For credentialed practitioners who built their practice around their own standards, their own client relationships, and their own autonomy, the firm model trades one problem for another.

The Co-op's design choice:

The Genealogy Co-op is built around a different design choice: handle the top-of-funnel qualification work as a shared service, but leave everything downstream — the research, the client relationship, the invoicing, the methodology — with the individual practitioner. The Co-op is a fractional research director on the practitioner side, an editorial filter on the client side. It never takes a percentage of project revenue; the per-lead fee paid by the client is the entire financial structure. Members can decline matches that don't fit. The Co-op exists to make solo practice more sustainable, not to scale it into a different kind of business.

Why now, why this:

I built the diagnostic calculators that became part of this site for my own practice — to honestly see what landing a client costs, whether my income target was reachable, and what a year of cash flow actually looks like. Once that math was visible, the case for the Co-op was hard to ignore. Most of my credentialed peers are operating with the same math, just without a way to look at it. The Co-op is the operational structure that follows from being honest about the math.

Closing:

If you're a credentialed practitioner thinking about whether the network fits your practice, the FOR GENEALOGISTS page walks through the operational specifics. If you're a prospective client looking for the right researcher for your case, the FOR CLIENTS page describes the intake and matching process.