Apply for a Cataloguing Grant

About Cataloguing Grants

Programme context

Archives Revealed is the only grant programme in the UK dedicated to the unlocking of archival collections. The programme is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives. The goal of Archives Revealed is to ensure that significant archive collections, representing the lives and perspective of all people across the UK, are made accessible to the public for research and enjoyment.

The Cataloguing Grants programme provides grants of up to £50,000 for the cataloguing of archive collections, with at least 20% of each award reserved for public engagement activities.

Cataloguing is the process of writing detailed descriptions of the records that you are managing and how they relate to each other. It enables the records to be searched for and interacted with, using descriptions and titles within catalogues allowing individuals to find specific items of interest. Cataloguing can:

• give you greater intellectual control over collections, creating accurate descriptions and understanding the content and potential of what you hold
• allow you to identify preservation/conservation needs
• widen access to descriptions and awareness of the collections themselves
• enable you to contribute data to archive networks
• provide a foundation for engagement with new and existing audiences.

For further information on cataloguing, you can find detailed guidance below, as well as information on projects that have previously been awarded funding.

Funded Cataloguing Grants

Find out more about projects that have been awarded Cataloguing Grants.

Success rates

As part of our commitment to being open and supportive throughout this programme, we want to share that the current success rate for Cataloguing Grant funding applications is 34%.

We want to reassure potential applicants that success rates shouldn’t put you off reaching out or getting involved. Every application brings you into the programme, giving you access to our training opportunities, our wider networks, and the expertise of our team. If you’re thinking about applying, we warmly encourage you to get in touch. Our aim is to support you wherever you are in your journey - whether that’s developing a strong application or finding the right pathway forward.

Further resources on access, participation and engagement can be found on The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s website – you may wish to consult guidance on interpretation, inclusion and the Heritage Fund’s investment principle on inclusion, access and participation.

Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants funds projects lasting for up to two years from the date of award. The grant usually pays for a trained, professional archivist to work with the collection, as well as now providing funding for public engagement activities. The fund can be used for complementary activities in the cataloguing process, such as the provision of storage materials, however, this should not be the focus of the application.

Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants offer funding of up to £50,000 for archive services to create catalogues of their archival collections. At least 20% of each grant value awarded is required to be spent on engagement activities with the public. The grant will fund projects lasting up to two years.

The aims of the Cataloguing Grant programme are to:

• Increase access to previously unavailable archive material.
• Increase engagement with archive collections by a wider audience.
• Enable deeper use of archive material to further understanding of collections.
• Increase confidence and skills of archivists to enable them to successfully secure income to fund archive development.

The Cataloguing Grant programme runs twice per year, usually opening in the autumn and spring. It has a single-stage application process.

The programme is highly competitive: we typically receive 80 to 100 applications and will award around 15 grants in each grant-making round. Please ensure that you read the instructions below before applying for funding. Should you have any questions then you can contact the Archives Revealed team by email.

How to apply

Eligibility

This programme can fund most organisations with an archival collection including deposited collections, which are able to provide access to the collection for the public in the UK for at least ten years following the grant’s completion.

We recommend that organisations consult with qualified archivists when preparing their application, so that they are informed about the project and can provide informed answers to the questions. If awarded funding, grantees must have access to professional archival expertise from a qualified archivist or heritage professional with equivalent experience, to ensure adherence to archive professional standards and support recruited staff, including newly-recruited archivists, in the delivery and management of the project. Applications that are not able to clearly show the involvement of archive / heritage professionals are highly unlikely to receive funding and may be deemed ineligible.

Archives Revealed can fund any eligible organisations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The funded collection must also be held in these countries. We cannot fund organisations based in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, or organisations whose collections are held outside of the UK.

If your project will take place in Wales, you must include the Welsh language in all aspects of your work. You must tell us in your application how you will promote and support the Welsh language and reflect the bilingual nature of Wales.

Archives are rich sources of information and Archives Revealed does not make a distinction between physical or digital (or mixed) collections. An archive collection is one that holds unique records, which can be of local, national and international importance and are often themed by place or thematic area of interest. To find out more about what an archive collection is, please see our information on what archives are.

For the purposes of Archives Revealed, we use the definition of an archive collection as given within the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme:

We would encourage any archive to work towards Archives Service Accreditation, which can be used to demonstrate the strength of an archive service within an application – however it is not mandatory to be an accredited archive to apply to the scheme.

While usually thought of as handwritten or typed documents on paper, archives also commonly include: printed documents, photographs, digital objects (such as e-mail, databases etc), audio/visual material, sketches, drawings, maps and plans. This list is not exhaustive and may include more unusual items, such as the knotted cords used for record keeping by Andean cultures or a variety of types of object.

Funded organisations must make their collections accessible to people outside of their organisation for at least ten years, following the conclusion of the grant-funded project. We can fund organisations with owned or deposited collections, provided that they can provide a commitment from the depositor that the collection will not be withdrawn from public access or sold within ten years of the project end date. We will reclaim funding, where this condition is not met.

There are no restrictions on past applicants applying, however our data shows that reapplications are no more likely to receive funding than first-time applications. There is no restriction on institutions submitting an application for a different collection than that previously assessed.

You do not need to have completed a Scoping Grant to apply for a Cataloguing Grant.

We welcome partnership and consortium bids, provided that the lead organisation satisfies all of the criteria above. Institutions may submit multiple bids in the same round, particularly where they are part of networks or consortia; however, given the competitiveness of this funding programme, we recommend that applicants focus only on the most significant collections, which are of highest priority for their organisation.

Institutions may apply to Archives Revealed if they already have funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, but should not apply directly to the Heritage Fund and to Archives Revealed with the same project.

Should you have any questions about the eligibility of your collection for an Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grant, please contact the team by email.

What the programme can fund

Applicants will be asked to submit a full budget for their project. The maximum award of funding for any grant will be £50,000. At least 20% of your grant award must be allocated to engagement activities using the catalogued collection.

Staffing

Archives Revealed will fund the additional staff costs required to deliver your project. This can include employing new project staff, or backfilling existing staff allocated to the project.

The project needs to be managed and substantially carried out by appropriately qualified staff. Volunteers, secondments, apprenticeships, internships and staff exchanges may be eligible to fulfil supporting roles, and we welcome eg volunteer- or community-led approaches to cataloguing – but we do not support projects that are managed and led solely by volunteers.

We ask that archives use the most recent Archives and Records Association (ARA) payscales wherever qualified archivists are employed. If your organisation’s payscales differ from the recommendations provided by ARA please contact the Archives Revealed team before submitting your application.

Non-staff costs

Complementary materials such as packaging costs, or complementary costs such as travel and subsistence, or materials for public engagement activities, can be included in your budget request.

Match funding

The programme can supply up to 100% of project costs; however we strongly encourage applicants to contribute from their own resources or other funding sources (eg other grant funders). This could be in the form of a cash contribution, confirmed funding from external sources, or an in-kind contribution. Match funding can increase an application’s chances of funding success.

Please note that applicants cannot apply separately to Archives Revealed and directly to The National Lottery Heritage Fund for the same project, or use funding from Archives Revealed to match-fund a National Lottery Heritage Fund application.

Other costs

Archives Revealed cannot fund:

• the conservation of archives
• the cataloguing of non-archive collections.

We reserve the right to offer conditional or partial funding of a project.

Overheads and indirect costs

The programme does not support full economic cost recovery or overheads. It cannot be used to fund costs incurred prior to the grant being awarded and/or for the development of a funding application.

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.

Accessibility and reasonable adjustments

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.

Application deadlines

The next round of Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants will open on 31 August 2026.

Plan your application

We ask that all applications be submitted via our online form. You can download a Word document version of the form to help you prepare.

Submit your application

Assessment criteria

Scoring system

Each application will be scored numerically against a set of criteria, according to the following scale:

Applications are assessed by an independent Expert Panel.

The criteria information provided below is not intended to be exhaustive. An outstanding answer may not cover all of the points mentioned, and/or may cover other points as appropriate to the applicant and their project.

1. Significance

Archives Revealed 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.

The prompts below may help you to think about why and how your collection is significant, but you do not need to cover all of them – you should focus your answer on your collection’s areas of strength:

1. Provenance: who created, collected and has used the collection.
2. Rarity: whether the collection is unique or unusual, and if it is a particularly fine example of a collection of its type.
3. Condition and Completeness: whether the collection is intact and in good condition, and if its condition can tell us anything about its history, ownership or use.
4. Historical, Cultural or Scientific Meaning: how the collection tells the story of particular people, groups, organisations, events, places, beliefs, or practices; whether it has special historic or cultural interest for an audience, region or community; whether and how it could be used for academic research; and whether it enriches or fills in gaps in other collections, at your organisation or elsewhere.
5. Sensory and Emotional Impact: whether the collection has strong visual/sensory impact, or evokes a strong personal or cultural response; and whether the language, format, technique, design or style reflect outstanding creativity or innovation.
6. Marketing and Entrepreneurialism: whether the collection could support marketing, income generation or profile-raising for your organisation or community.
7. Engagement, Access and Inclusion: whether cataloguing the collection would enable the archive service to reach a specific audience group, or to engage with a new or wider audience.

Please ensure that the focus of your response is on the collection that you are intending to work with. The significance of the wider collections in your archive can be important, but your main focus should be on the collection that you are applying for.

2. Need and priority for cataloguing

Archives Revealed is a funding programme motivated by an understanding that there is a significant backlog of collections held by archives, heritage institutions and other groups that is inaccessible or under-exploited because it is uncatalogued. The programme cannot address the whole of the backlog and must be selective in making awards to projects deemed the most significant with the potential to engage the interest of the UK public.

Therefore, we would like to understand why you have chosen the particular collection(s) to apply for funding to catalogue, above other collections you may hold. If you are applying to catalogue your entire archive holding, we would still want to understand the process you have followed in selecting it for application.

Your answer should be clear and detailed, evidencing planning and forethought about the selection of your collection.

If your organisation has a collections information policy, or guidance around accessions to your collection this should be for your first point of reference in describing why you have prioritised the chosen collection. Questions you may wish to consider when describing the prioritisation could include:

• What is known about the contents of the collection, and how does it relate to other collections you hold and with your own organisation’s priorities now and in the future?
• Any previous work to describe the collection, the state of existing description and what this has told you about what is required to create an effective full catalogue.
• The existing and anticipated demand by users, this would ideally be complemented with some statistical evidence for example number of enquiries you have received in the past or use of analogous collections. It would also be useful to consider whether the collection could attract new audiences and who you anticipate these could be.
• The condition, completeness and complexity of the collection. Archives Revealed’s projects have a fixed maximum budget and duration: proposals for cataloguing should be realistic and you may need to prioritise only a portion of the collection or adopt a particular level of cataloguing should it be very large or complex.

Various methodologies exist for the prioritisation of uncatalogued archive materials. If you have an established prioritisation approach, please explain this. One prioritisation methodology, Logjam, was created in 2003. The National Archives is currently exploring its continued usability and refinement – applicants’ first port of call should be their own collections management processes, where these are already in place.

3. Cataloguing approach and improvement to access

To ensure that the grants that we award are delivered with an understanding of technical good practice in the sector, we ask applicants to explain their technical approach to cataloguing, and the standards to be applied throughout the project’s delivery. Our panels are made up of professional experts, however, we expect that you clearly explain your approach and how it will impact the project’s delivery. Please do not use acronyms or abbreviated text.

We have published guidance on technical good practice in our advice webpages: Cataloguing archive collections – Archives sector (nationalarchives.gov.uk). These may be helpful in preparing your response; there are also numerous other resources available online, including the Archives and Records Association’s best practice guidelines and toolkits. You may wish to make reference to further specific standards, if the collection is film/AV or born-digital, eg the Digital Preservation Coalition's guidance on Born digital archive cataloguing and description.

Please describe the approach you will be taking to catalogue the collection, and how this will improve access to the material. Please include information about your chosen method and level of cataloguing, standards and best practice guidance being followed, your proposed cataloguing system, work on sorting and arranging the collection, and the proposal for storage and packaging.

Throughout your response, please describe how your approach will lead to improved access to the collection.

The following prompt questions may be helpful in writing your answer:

• Method and Level of Description: Are you adopting a particular methodology for cataloguing, and why have you chosen it? What level will you catalogue the collection to? Why is this level of description and method the right choice for your collection? Are you trying anything that is new or different compared to normal, and if so, why – and what impact do you think this will have?
• Standards: What cataloguing, indexing or other standards you are adopting to undertake the cataloguing project? How will you ensure that these standards will be adhered to? For example, will your project be delivered in accord with ISAD (G) and/or any other standards (both internal to your organisation and sectoral)?
• Systems: What system (eg software system) are you using to catalogue your collection?
• Sorting and arrangement: Has the collection already been sorted and arranged? If not, please describe any necessary preparatory work.
• Storage and Packaging: Will there be any improvements to how the collection is packaged and stored? Will there be any location changes for the collection once catalogued, and why?
• Access: How will you make the newly catalogued collection accessible? Will the project enable access that was previously not possible? Is there anything new and innovative that you will be doing to maximise access to the collection?

All grantees are required to make their collection available on The National Archives’ catalogue, Discovery. While this can be mentioned in an application, it should not be the only way in which you will make your collection accessible.

4. Audiences, engagement, and impact

We define impact as “the demonstrable contribution that a project makes.” Tell us what changes that having a catalogue will bring to you, for your archive service, your staff, for the archive sector or for wider society. Use this section to detail and describe how you will use the 20% of funding (minimum) for audience engagement, who your audiences are (both existing and potentially new audiences), and what will change for them as a result of the project. We want to understand what differences your proposal will make, what changes you anticipate happening and who will be affected.

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?

Impacts can be felt on a personal level: you and your team may learn new skills and practices, or it can affect the whole institution, for example in improving the ways of working with the archive service. It can also be societal, in enabling access to “hidden” knowledge, helping people learn from the past and bring innovation to the future. Impacts can also be institutional: a Cataloguing Grant can raise the profile of an archive service, and improve ways of working at an institution; and they can be far wider, with impacts beyond the organisation.

It is important to consider how the grant will have an impact beyond its own duration, and create a sustainable legacy of change: is this project part of a longer-term strategic plan, and how does it align with other activities or the future direction of the organisation?

Archives Revealed requires applicants to ringfence at least 20% of the total grant value for engagement activities. We wish to support organisations to ensure that everyone has opportunities to learn, develop new skills and explore heritage, regardless of background or personal circumstance. The costs of staff can be included in this 20% ringfencing.

Here, we would like to understand what and how you propose to engage audiences with your collection during and/or after the cataloguing process. Archives Revealed understands each organisation, and their respective audiences and circumstances, are different. We are seeking proposals that show a developed understanding of the audience for the collection and how best to encourage their participation, during and after the project.

For the purposes of Archives Revealed’s funding, the programme defines engagement activities as anything that will enable the public to engage with the collection. This can include digitisation activities, however, you will need to be clear in your application how digitisation will be used to enable access. Digitised materials must be openly licensed in line with The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s digital good practice guidance.

The users of archives can be diverse, with audiences having different motivations and needs from your service. You are best placed to understand who your audiences are, and who they could be: it might be helpful to explain the change you want to bring about, in how existing users interact with your service and collections, and/or in how you reach new audiences. You may wish to provide demographic or other data about your potential audiences in this section.

Some ideas you may wish to consider when developing your application:

• Is there the potential to involve users in the cataloguing process, for example, are there volunteering opportunities? If the project will have a steering group, who will be represented on it and how will they reflect the users of the archive?
• Who are your audiences, both existing and new? Do you have any data to support this? For example, do you collect statistics on current users of the archives or have access to demographic data on underrepresented users of your archive that you would like to engage with? Are your proposed activities appropriate for these audiences and how can you evidence that they are?
• Sustainability of engagement work: whilst a new website or a one-off display may have many merits in attracting audiences, how do you plan to maintain that in the future without Archives Revealed funding?
• What has worked for others? Are there other comparable archives and/ or heritage services that have done successful engagement activities that you could learn from? What’s the most memorable interaction you’ve ever had with heritage and how can you replicate that for others? Sometimes they can be unexpected, and this can require creative thinking.
• Is your proposal inclusive, and have you considered accessibility of your archive when planning? Will all people be able to interact and benefit from the project or are there physical or other barriers to engagement that you will need to plan for? Alternatively, if the collection is not appropriate for all audiences, for example, if it contains upsetting or graphic materials not suitable for younger audiences, how will you manage this and ensure the well-being of your communities?
• How is the collection best presented and shared with audiences? There is a huge benefit to being able to physically engage with records, but this also brings challenges. Archives Revealed can fund digitisation and does not make a distinction between online and in-person engagement, although we would like to understand why your approach best suits the needs of your audiences. Digitised materials must be openly licensed in line with The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s digital good practice guidance.

Impacts and engagement can take many different forms, and every project will have a different response: but a strong answer will always clearly outline what outcomes it is seeking to create, and how it plans to engage with beneficiaries and audiences, inside and outside of the archive service which is applying. It will be possible to know whether this has been successful by the end of the project’s activities.

Feasibility, delivery, and management

When awarding a grant, we need to be confident that you are able to deliver every aspect of your project, that you have the correct infrastructure, approach to project management and that your organisation and team have considered, planned and resourced the project in order to facilitate and encourage excellence in cataloguing.

Please do refer to the guidance section on eligible and ineligible costs, as well as matched funding recommendations above, when putting together your budget and workplan. Proposals including ineligible costs may be rejected from consideration. The National Archives reserves the right to offer conditional or partial funding of a project. We require that at least 20% of the grant’s value be allocated to public engagement activities.

Use this section to fully explain how you intend to carry out the project’s activities, spend its budget and achieve its delivery milestones. We would also like to see that you have considered the environment and the impacts of your project.

We would like to understand in detail what you are proposing to do, who will deliver the project, what skills they have and why these are appropriate. Please tell us who has overall responsibility for the project, and who else is involved. Will you be working with a professional archivist? What types of posts do you need, how are they paid and contracted? (We ask that salaries are budgeted with reference to the Archive and Records association salary guidance).

Are new staff being hired, or are you using existing staff; if so, how are their existing responsibilities being covered? Are you using volunteers, and how will they be managed and supported? What role(s) will the volunteers have on the project, for example will they be assisting the cataloguer or guiding the project by membership of a leadership or steering group?

Please provide a rationale for any non-staff expenditure that you need to deliver your project, and how you plan to procure any resources you need, if you don’t have access to them already. Please ensure that your costings are as accurate as possible, if helpful you can include quotes and other evidence of costing as supporting documents.

If your project involves multiple institutions, tell us how the relationship between the partners will be managed and governed, and how work will be divided and structured.

Tell us how you are going to manage your project, to ensure that it keeps on track – you may wish to attach a Gantt Chart or similar project planning tool, particularly for larger projects. We will ask you to outline at least three key milestones that need to be achieved to ensure your project’s success.

Finally, you will want to think about the risks that your project faces, and what mitigations you will be putting in place to address them.

Terms and conditions

Feedback and reapplication

Applications will be scored by the Archives Revealed team against the assessment criteria. The team will then prepare case papers summarising applications. The scores, case papers and applications will be considered by an independent Expert Panel who will make the final funding decisions.

Feedback on your application will be communicated to you upon request following the funding decision, and there may be the opportunity to discuss your application with a member of the Archives Revealed team and/or other experts at The National Archives.

Archives Revealed’s decision regarding any application is final, and no appeal process is in place: it is the lead applicant’s responsibility to make sure that all of the information provided in the application is correct, their proposal meets the eligibility criteria, and all sections of the application are complete. Any points you wish to make should be made clearly and concisely in the application form.

There are no restrictions on past applicants applying, however our data shows that reapplications are no more likely to receive funding than first-time applications. Before asking the panel to consider a collection for the second time, you should discuss your proposed project with the Archives Revealed team.

If you are awarded funding, the Archives Revealed Team will contact you with a Grant Funding Agreement, which should be signed by an appropriate member of your organisation. In general, 50% of the grant’s value will be paid to you up front, with the remaining 50% being paid upon approval of the final report, except in circumstances where the Archives Revealed Team, in consultation with the grantee, deems that an alternative payment structure is necessary for the successful delivery of the funded activities.

Grant conditions

All grantees will be required to comply with the Code of Conduct for Recipients of Government General Grants and all relevant legislation, as well as the monitoring and evaluation conditions outlined above. Further conditions may be outlined within the Grant Funding Agreement.

Your organisation must agree to follow a whistleblowing process to report if the dignity, safety, security and well-being of end users is not met.

All grantees are also required to behave ethically, following GOV.UK's Seven Principles of Public Life and making sustainable choices to reduce your project’s impact on the environment.

All grantees will be required to make their catalogues available through The National Archives online catalogue, Discovery. Guidance and training will be provided by the Archives Revealed team on how and when to do so during your project.

As a partnership programme supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, grantees will also be required to follow the Heritage Fund’s acknowledgement guidance, procurement good practice guidance, and digital good practice guidance. Further information on how to acknowledge Archives Revealed and its four funders will be provided to grantees when a grant offer is made.

Reporting, evaluation and knowledge dissemination

Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants require reporting on progress for the full project duration and, in order to understand the impact of projects, for three years following the grant’s completion. This means you will be required to submit reports for five years (up to two years during project delivery and three years following completion). Applicants should be aware of and able to commit to this timeframe before submitting an application.

Every applicant will be required to provide a project budget and a minimum of three delivery milestones, within their application. If funded, every project must provide The National Archives with a progress update on these delivery milestones, including an indication of any delivery risks or issues. Grantees will be expected to report at six-monthly intervals during the project’s implementation, then annually for three years following the award.

Grantees will be expected to take steps to address delivery issues or delays if they arise and to inform The National Archives as part of their regular reporting. It is possible that the Archives Revealed team may visit your project, during or after your grant (we will not visit applicants as part of the assessment process).

Grantees will also be required to provide an end-of-project report, summarising progress made against delivery milestones and a final project expenditure statement, based on actual expenditure. If final expenditure falls below the amount agreed in the Grant Funding Agreement, Archives Revealed may ask grantees to return any unspent funds at the end of the project. All grantees must ensure accurate financial accounting: spot checks and audits may be required of grantees. Archives Revealed will not cover the cost of any project spend above what has been agreed in the Grant Funding Agreement.

Grantees will also be required to demonstrate the benefits and key performance indicators (KPIs) that the programme is seeking to realise. Successful applicants will be required to provide evidence against these measures. While benefit and KPI reporting is compulsory for all applicants, performance against these indicators is for the purpose of measuring the impact of the funding programme only, and does not affect eligibility for the grant.

Evaluation of Archives Revealed will be carried out by an independent evaluator contracted by the programme team, who will be responsible for defining, assessing and (where appropriate) gathering data on behalf of the programme. Grantees should be prepared to engage regularly with and provide information to the evaluation team, as they build this evidence base – which we envision will also be useful for grantees’ own advocacy.

Archives Revealed seeks to build the skills and capacities of the whole of the archive sector, and to learn from the experiences of our grantees. Funded projects will be encouraged to contribute to knowledge creation and dissemination activities, including potentially writing case studies, participating in impact seminars and supporting the archive community through knowledge sharing and mentoring.

Our approach to monitoring and evaluation is informed by our vision: through our grant-making, we want to build evidence for investment in archives, celebrate grantees’ success, and advocate for the archives sector, while keeping our reporting requirements as flexible and accessible as possible.

Contact us

Should you have any questions about applying for a Cataloguing Grant, including about eligibility or reasonable adjustments, please email the Archives Revealed team.