Apply for a Scoping Grant

About Scoping 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 Scoping Grants programme provides grants of £3,000 for the scoping of archival collections, that are assessed to be of public interest. A Scoping Grant funds an independent consultant to conduct a collection assessment (scoping) report, which should be complete within a year from the grant award date.

Scoping of a collection provides an overview report – it is not a substitute or replacement for a full item-by-item catalogue, but can be amongst the first steps needed to successfully manage and create access to your collection. The Scoping Grant report is envisioned to be a document that you will be able to use strategically, to plan next steps in the management of your collection and advocate internally and externally for support for your project.

You may be interested in applying for a Scoping Grant if the following statements apply to your collection:

• You have a collection that you believe has the potential to be of public benefit.
• You are unsure of the most effective way to target your resources, to realise the potential impact of your collection.
• You will be able to ensure free public access to the collection in the future – either directly or in collaboration with another organisation.
• You would like to develop a plan to move towards a cataloguing project or would like to scope the potential of the collection for a cataloguing project.
• You are keen to understand how your collection might be used to engage with new or existing audiences for your archives.

Each Scoping Grant usually funds six days of consultancy, with three days spent with the collection and three on report-writing and revisions. Archives Revealed recognises that there is significant diversity in the nature, collections and needs of organisations applying for a Scoping Grant – therefore we encourage all grantees to discuss their specific circumstances with shortlisted consultants, before starting a project. Usually, a Scoping Grant report will contain at least the following information about the management and development of your collection:

1. an overview of the current status of the collection;
2. analysis of its overall condition, significance, existing and potential use, levels of access, and existing documentation;
3. a conclusion, with recommendations about next steps and development goals for the service.

Further details on the typical contents of a scoping report are outlined in About the Scoping Report.

The aims of the Scoping Grant programme are:

• To enable grantees to develop a better understanding of the content of their collection;
• To enable grantees to strategically prioritise the development of their collection;
• To enable grantees to advocate for the development of their service;
• To enable grantees to prepare an effective case for support when applying for funding.
• To enable grantees to plan for better access, audience development and engagement.

The Archives Revealed team will be available to support grantees in selecting and working with consultants. The Archives Revealed team maintains a list of independent expert consultants, and when an applicant is awarded a Scoping Grant, they will be given the opportunity to have their project offered to consultants on this list, and to be connected to interested consultants who will advise of their availability and how the project matches their skills, specialisms and geographic proximity. Grantees will be provided with guidance sheets on selecting and contracting a consultant, and on preparing your collection for assessment, when being awarded a grant.

Funded Scoping Grants

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

About the scoping report

The structure and content of the report will be focused on meeting the needs of the archive that has been awarded a Scoping Grant, and will be agreed before starting between the consultant and the archive service. However, we expect that organisations applying for Scoping Grants are likely to require guidance and advice on a number of key areas, including:

Overview of collection

An overview of the collection in its existing state. This might cover extent (measured in cubic meters or GB/TB), storage, provenance, ownership, management, skills available in the organisation, and extent of commitment of financial resource to the collection in question. This could also cover the extent of appraisal and sorting that has taken place on the collection to date.

Condition

Top-level analysis of the condition of the collection, or more detailed analysis if a qualified conservator forms part of the scoping team.

Access

Analysis of the extent to which the collection is physically accessible, or digitally accessible.

Appraisal

Assessment of whether further appraisal needs to take place on the collection, to refine the content and streamline required storage.

Arrangement

Analysis of the arrangement of the collection and whether any re-arrangement is needed.

Documentation/cataloguing

Information about any listing, cataloguing, associated metadata or other documentation that is available, and an assessment of the standard of those lists, catalogues, metadata or documentation.

Use/potential research

An analysis of the significance of the content of the collection, and an analysis of the potential for use, research or engagement opportunities with the collections.

Potential for public engagement

An assessment of the collection’s potential for public engagement, including its prospective audiences, their requirements, and recommendations for potential methods of engagement, participation and outreach centred upon the scoped collection.

Next steps and recommendations

Recommendations detailing what might be an appropriate goal for the collection, and next steps for how an organisation might achieve that goal. This could also cover recommendations for other funding opportunities they can explore, to implement some of those recommendations – such as Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants.

Cataloguing Grants

Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants provide funding of up to £50,000 for the cataloguing of significant archive collections held in the UK.

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 Scoping Grant funding applications is 31%.

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.

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.

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 used within the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme:

It is not mandatory to be an accredited archive to apply for a Scoping Grant.

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.

Archives Revealed can fund any eligible organisation in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The funded collection must also be held in these nations. 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.

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.

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

What the programme can fund

Archives Revealed Scoping Grants provide funding for a consultant to produce a report.

The grant funding is solely for the purpose of producing the report. Each award value is £3,000, compensating both time (up to £2,400 for six days’ work at £400 per day) and reasonable expenses (up to £600) incurred by the consultant in delivering the report. Funds that are unspent at the end of a Scoping Grant will need to be returned to the Archives Revealed programme.

The sums above are exclusive of any VAT charged by consultants.

If for any reason expenses are anticipated to be higher than £600 per project, for example when an archive service is located in a remote area, then please contact the Archives Revealed team in advance of submitting your application via email.

Please note that grant funds will be paid to the applicant organisation, not to the consultant directly (this is different from Scoping Grants awarded before September 2024). Grantees should be prepared to contract consultants themselves, and any procurement should follow The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s guidance.

The rates paid to consultants are in accord with those set by the Archives and Records Association Salary Recommendations Pay Review Group and its guidance for freelancer rates.

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.

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 Scoping Grants will be open for applications on 7 September 2026.

Applications for Scoping Grants open four times a year, usually at three-month intervals. Dates for all future rounds are listed below:

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 a panel of archival and heritage experts, from across The National Archives.

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

Tell us why your project is needed, and why it is needed now.

Please use this section to detail why you are applying for a Scoping Grant and what you believe the benefits of having a Scoping Grant and improving the understanding of your collection may be.

Here you will want to consider the circumstances that have led to your applying for funding: does the project align with your organisation’s strategic vision or goals, are there important dates such as anniversaries coming up, or has there been a change in circumstances that means that now is the right time for you and your organisation to consider the management and future of your archive collection?

We would also like to you to consider the potential results of having a scoping report conducted. What changes will receiving a grant inspire? Will you change the way you manage the collection? Are there challenges in the collections management historically that a scoping report could impact? For example, has it been cared for in appropriate ways before?

We would also like you to consider changes beyond the collection itself: what changes will a scoping report have on those who engage with the collection, whether it be the staff who manage the collections, volunteers who assist with the collection, or the wider organisation?

Scoping reports can an advocacy tool: they will detail recommended actions and next steps in your collection’s management. Do you hope to use the report for advocacy purposes, whether internal advocacy within your organisation, or external advocacy in, for example, applying for follow-on funding for the collection?

It is important to outline why a Scoping Grant provides a solution, or partial solution to challenges you are experiencing now and in the longer term. Each archive-holding organisation and collection will have different needs, and this is the opportunity to explain your own circumstances to the panel.

3. Audiences, engagement, and impact

We define impact as “the demonstrable contribution that a project makes.” Tell us 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. We 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?

It is also important to consider the impact that your project will have on users of your archive. 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 should consider who the audience is for the collection; whether people who do not currently engage with archive services might be interested in the collection; and how you might ultimately reach these people.

You will want to outline how you intend to engage with audiences outside of your institution: do you have plans or partnerships in place, to engage with (for example) your local community, researchers, schools or higher education?

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?

Impact 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.

Terms and conditions

Feedback and reapplication

The panel will score applications against the assessment criteria and discuss them before making awards. 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.

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.

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

The Archives Revealed Scoping Grant funds a report on your collection. This report will be the final output of the grant. Applicants will be asked to submit the final, approved report to the Archives Revealed team, and once it is completed, they will also be asked for feedback on the consultants delivering the report.

Grantees will be required to contribute to the programme’s knowledge and learning outputs, and we would encourage grantees to consider sharing their experience through case studies, contributions to the Archives Revealed training programmes and/or impact seminars on the outcomes of the grant. Where images are used, you will need to ensure that you have the relevant permissions from those depicted.

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.

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 Scoping Grant, including about eligibility or reasonable adjustments, please email the Archives Revealed team.