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Eligibility
The Archives Resilience grant programme is open to all eligible archives organisations with archives (including heritage organisations) and archive networks in the United Kingdom. We 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.
We use the definition of an archive collection as given within the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme:
“Materials created or received by a person, family or organisation, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in them or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order and collective control; permanent records.”
Society of American Archivists
If the archive is not currently accessible for public use, the organisation must have the intention to make the collection freely accessible to the public in the future.
The organisation must employ or have access to professional support from an archivist or similarly qualified professional.
There is no restriction on past applicants applying, however repeat applications are no more likely to receive funding, and you are strongly encouraged to speak to The National Archives’ Grants and Funding Office before submitting a second application for the same project. There are no restrictions on institutions submitting an application for a different project than was previously assessed.
Where appropriate, archives are encouraged to propose partnership projects, and applications from archive networks and consortium applications are particularly welcome in this programme.
Timetable
Resilience Grants run on a biannual programme, with the application period opened twice per year.
The schedule for 2024-2025 is as follows:
Round 1
Opens: 17th June 2024
Closes: 12th July 2024
Panel Meeting: w/b 12th August 2024
Round 2
Opens: 25th November 2024
Closes: 10th January 2025
Panel Meeting: w/b 3rd February 2025
Finance and budgeting
As part of their application, organisations will be asked to submit a full budget for their project. The maximum award of funding for any grant will be £20,000.
The programme cannot fund:
- Overheads, full cost recovery or management fees
- Collections acquisition
- Costs incurred prior to the date of any award offer from us.
However, most other cost categories are eligible – our intention is to support the resilience-building activity that you have identified as a priority, as flexibly as possible.
The grant may not be used for the following purposes: payments that support activity intended to influence Parliament, Government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action.
Assessment process
Resilience Grants have a one-stage application process, completed through an online application form.
When submitting your application, you are asked to include a completed copy of the Archives Sector Resilience Indicator:
Applications will be assessed against the following criteria:
- Need
- Impact
- Delivery and management
- Knowledge sharing
See our Assessment Criteria for Further Guidance:
Resilience Grants – Assessment Criteria
Each application will be scored numerically against the criteria above, according to the following scale:
| Score | Rating |
| 1 | Poor |
| 2 | Low |
| 3 | Good |
| 4 | Excellent |
| 5 | Outstanding |
Applications are assessed by a panel of archival and heritage experts, selected from within and outside of The National Archives, and including representatives from the British Records Association and the Business Archives Council. The current panel is:
- Victoria Northwood – Representative of the British Records Association
- Richard Wiltshire – Representative of the Business Archives Council
- Philip Gale – Head of Standards and Improvement, The National Archives
-
Michael Appleby – Information Manager, The National Archives
-
Mandy Goldsmith-Umney – Head of Strategic Compliance, The National Archives
- Martin Gill – Digitisation Estimating Officer, The National Archives
When submitting your application, you are asked to include a completed copy of the Archives Sector Resilience Indicator. By submitting your Archives Service Resilience Indicator, you are consenting to your responses being used, in an anonymised and aggregated fashion, by The National Archives for analysis purposes. No individual or individual organisation will be identifiable within these analyses, and the indicator will not be used for monitoring or assessing any individual archive, except for the purposes of this application. The National Archives will share the results of any analysis with all applicants who have kindly submitted their data.
We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes providing support, in the form of reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us. You must contact us as early as possible in the application process. We recommend contacting us at least 15 working days before the competition closing date, to ensure that we can provide you with the most suitable support possible. You can contact us by emailing archivegrants@nationalarchives.gov.uk.