"[1] The original goal was achieved in April 1990 with the publication of the award-winning volume Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women.
The organization’s broader goal was and continues to be achieved by the creation of a traveling photographic exhibit, a speakers’ panel and lecture series, two school workbooks and K-12 curricula found on the NJ women’s history website, a speakers’ bureau, a poster series, a paperback revised and updated edition of Past and Promise, and the development of the nation’s first state-based women’s history website.
[2] Beginning with the support of the Mendham [NJ] Free Public Library, the Project’s growing research, production and publication activities resulted in the incorporation of the Women’s Project of New Jersey as an independent non-profit in July 1985 with a volunteer Board of Trustees that included historians, librarians, writers, a lawyer, an accountant, a publicist, an educational equity specialist, women's studies specialists, and an art historian.
Initial steps included defining the focus and scope of the Project, determining the research methods and how to ensure accuracy, establishing the editorial board, targeting the audience to be as wide as possible, deciding how to organize the volume, discussing funding sources and potential publishers, and identifying subjects for the biographical volume that promoted an understanding of the role of women in the history and culture of New Jersey.
In order to help ensure an appropriate historic perspective, it was decided that potential subjects for the biographical volume had to have been born in or before 1923, the date of the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment, written by New Jerseyan Alice Paul.
[1][6] More than 250 researcher/writers were recruited and trained to complete the extensive research of original documents required as the foundation for writing each biographical entry.
Bibliographic entries at the end of each article and a comprehensive Index provided scholars and general readers with additional tools to expand their understanding of the women examined in the reference volume.
[1] State-based private foundations, state and federal agencies, and corporations provided the majority of the funding for the writers/researchers' honoraria, administrative costs, and special projects.
[9] Upon its publication, the significance of the volume in researching, recording and interpreting for a wide public audience the experiences and achievements of half of the population which had been largely ignored by traditional scholarship was recognized by the widespread review and praise of the volume by The New York Times, the Star-Ledger, the New Jersey Historical Commission Newsletter, New Directions for Women, NJ History, and numerous other regional newspapers and scholarly journals.
The Historical Overviews for the four sections of the volume were written by Carmela Ascolese Karnoutsos (1600-1807), Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford (1808-1865), Delight Wing Dodyk (1866-1920), and Joan N. Burstyn (1921–present).
[2] It presented five themes: law and politics; the economy (agriculture, business, and industry); community life; arts and letters; sports and physical fitness.
Nationally recognized scholars, among whom were Lois Banner, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Nancy F. Cott, and Darlene Clark Hine, presented lectures to promote the study of women's history followed by workshops and a documentary film series.