Milestone anniversaries call for celebration. Ahead of America 250, the Veterans Affairs History Office (VAHO) partnered with the Library of Congress’s Federal Research Division (FRD) to create celebration planning guidance that streamlines event planning for the VA’s milestone anniversaries. Because event planning can vary widely, FRD built a practical resource to ground planning efforts, including a landscape scan, considerations and recommendations, a planning worksheet, a sample timeline, and an example packet of celebration materials.

Prior to the creation of this guidance in 2025, there was no baseline for milestone celebrations across Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospitals: no centralized examples, references, or guidelines. To address this, FRD reviewed past celebrations and best practices across VHA hospitals and comparable organizations in the federal and private sectors (including the Forest Service, National Park Service, GAO, GSA, American Heart Association, and Shriners Hospital for Children). These efforts helped establish a baseline of common events and activities and produced recommendations for implementation.

The FRD team also drew on institutional archives to inform the guidance and provide example materials for future teams to reference. FRD will discuss how VAHO has utilized the guidance to plan milestone celebrations across the VHA and how they expect to use it going forward.

The session will also explore how systematized planning tools can help bridge archives and public audiences by supporting engaging, public-facing events that utilize agency archival and historical records. Following the presentation, the presenters will invite audience questions and discussion on celebration planning and public engagement.