Records at Risk Grants Programme (United Kingdom)

The programme seeks to safeguard at-risk collections for the nation. Its objective is to provide an additional mechanism to protect records of cultural and research value from premature destruction or prolonged neglect. Its focus is on records and services that are not protected by legislation, such as archives of businesses, charities and private individuals.

Funding Information

• The Records at Risk programme funds interventions of up to £5,000, and all costs should be directly related to the urgent intervention.
• The programme cannot fund:
  • Overheads, full cost recovery or management fees
  • Collections acquisition
  • Costs incurred prior to the date of any award offer from The National Archives

Eligibility Criteria

• The Records at Risk grant programme is open to all eligible archives and heritage organisations in the United Kingdom. They cannot fund organisations based in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or whose collections are held outside of the United Kingdom.
• The programme is open to all public sector bodies, not-for-profit organisations including registered charities, and for-profit organisations including business archives.
• Applicants will need to be a recognised archival custodian. Examples of a recognised custodian include institutional or accredited archive services under the Archives Service Accreditation Scheme, or a member of an appropriate specialist group such as the Community Archives and Heritage Group. However, the applicant organisation does not need to be an Accredited Archive to receive funding; the definition is broader and includes many types of archival organisations.
• In exceptional circumstances, the records creator will be able to receive funding; such organisations must apply in partnership with a recognised archival custodian.
• Where appropriate, archives are encouraged to propose partnership projects and consortium applications are welcome.
• The records themselves must pass the following four eligibility tests:
  • The records face substantial risk concerning their long-term survival through immediate risk, or resulting from a prolonged period of neglect; or in the absence of sufficient information to make informed decisions about their future management and retention
  • There is insufficient funding within the archives service to secure the collection
  • The records have sufficient historic and research significance, and their loss would be detrimental to the future study of the activities of the record-creating organisation, of the locality, or nationally
  • The records are currently held within the United Kingdom.
• The records can be in analogue or digital formats and can be inside or outside of the custody of the records creator or a recognised collecting archive institution.

Assessment Criteria

• It is assessed on the following four criteria:
  • Significance
    • The National Archives is committed to supporting the preservation and use of significant archival collections within the United Kingdom. You should aim to outline why your collection is important, unique and of clear value to your audiences, today and in the future.
    • Significance may be different for different audiences that engage with a collection, and it may be helpful to consider who they are. An academic may have a different goal, when engaging with a collection, than a family historian or community representative.
  • Need
    • You might want to tell them about a particular problem or challenge which you are seeking to address. This might be (for Records at Risk Grants), an immediate issue, such as a physical or organisational threat to a collection: what is the collection’s condition, and is it at risk from mould, pests, damage or obsolescence? What is its environment, for physical or digital storage? Is the organisation holding the collection at risk, from closure or liquidation?
    • It’s important to outline why the grant provides a solution or partial solution to the challenge, and why it is important for the investment to occur now. It may be helpful to include evidence supporting this answer: for example, you could include photographs or supporting letters.
  • Impact
    • They define impact as “the demonstrable contribution that a project makes.” Tell them why your project is going to change things: for you, for your archive service, for your users and audiences, for the archives sector, or for society. They want to understand what difference your proposal will make, and what change will result from the project, and for whom.
    • Ask yourself ‘what will happen?’ What are the short-term, medium-term and long-term changes that the project will bring about, and who will be affected? Is the change physical (new resources, materials or capital), procedural, or cultural?
    • Impact should scale according to the size of the grant being provided: for smaller grants, impact may be personal (new skills or learning), or institutional (such as improved ways of working within your archive service). For larger grants, strong applications will evidence impact beyond their own organisation.
  • Delivery and Management
    • When giving a grant, they need to be confident that it is possible to deliver every project that they fund, within the organisation and with the team you have available. Use this question to fully explain how you intend to carry out the project’s activities, spend its budget and achieve its delivery milestones.

For more information, visit The National Archives.