Apply for an Engagement Grant

About Engagement Grants

Programme context

As part of our leadership role for the archives sector in England and Wales, and to deliver the Government’s vision for archives, we provide grants for skills, innovation and engagement in the archives sector.

Our approach to our leadership role is a collaborative one: supporting partnerships and working to encourage a sustainable and innovative sector. We want to prepare the archives sector for the future in an uncertain world. We will invest in:

• the skills of the archives sector workforce
• research to lead innovation in technology and archival practice
• engagement to connect archives with changing societies in places across England and Wales

Each year we look for applications that are accessible, inspiring and inclusive for audiences. Projects can be based at your archive service or involve outreach work with your collections.

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 Engagement Grant applications is 17%.

We recognise that these figures may feel discouraging. However, we want to reassure potential applicants that a low success rate 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.

Previous themes

Theme for 2025–2026

The Engagement Grant theme for the 2025–26 application round was ‘Belonging’. By collecting records relating to our shared past and present, archives play an important role in helping people feel a sense of belonging.

Archives can help people understand how they belong to communities around them now as well as how they are part of collective histories, continuing traditions, sharing similar experiences and building on the progress of those who came before them. Archives can foster a sense of belonging in various contexts, from helping a whole community or town feel a joint sense of pride in their place through to helping individuals to feel at home within a group, organisation or country.

We asked applicants to consider their collections and devise creative ways to use these records to engage with new and existing audiences, exploring ideas relating to ‘Belonging’.

Theme for 2024–2025

The Engagement Grant theme for the 2024–25 application round was ‘Community’. We asked applicants to consider their collections, and how they could use them to engage with new and existing audiences and in new and creative ways, to explore ideas relating to ‘Community’. Whether that be communities formed around place, practice, interest or circumstance, we wanted to see applications that reflected the way in which communities connected and united us, and did so in a way that is inclusive of all.

Archives have an important and unique role in bringing people closer together to explore stories of people, places and events that have defined our shared history.

Theme for 2023–2024

Applications to the first round of Engagement Grants were based on the idea and concept of ‘Place’.

Funded Engagement Grants

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

How to apply

Eligibility

Engagement Grants are open to archivists and heritage professionals working with archival collections in England or Wales. These grants cannot fund organisations based in Scotland, Northern Ireland, 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. Funding is not available to private individuals.

We use the definition of an archive collection as given within the Archive Service Accreditation Scheme:

Where appropriate, archives are encouraged to propose partnership projects and consortium applications are particularly welcome in this programme.

Repeat applications are not possible for this programme. However, the panel will endeavour to provide feedback that enables positive solutions and clear next steps upon request. There are no restrictions on institutions submitting an application for a different project.

What the programme can fund

Eligible costs for the programme include (but are not limited to) exhibitions, events, online or digital engagement, materials, staff time, travel and subsistence, and materials or software as needed to deliver the project.

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
• The core work of an archive service

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. 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.

Application deadlines

The Engagement Grant programme is currently closed and will reopen at a later date.

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 archive and engagement experts from 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: 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?

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. Please read the question carefully, to ensure that you are focusing your answer on the relevant areas of focus.

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 may wish 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.

2: Delivery and Management

When giving a grant, we need to be confident that it is possible to deliver every project that we 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.

We would like to understand in detail what you are proposing to do, who will deliver the project and what skills they have. 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, and how are they paid? (You may wish to refer to the Archives and Records Association (ARA) salary recommendations). 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?

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.

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. In most grant programmes, we will ask you to outline at least three key milestones that need to be achieved to ensure your project’s success.

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

3. Knowledge Sharing

The National Archives has a leadership role for supporting the archive sector in England and across the UK, and often, we do this by knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing refers to the ways in which understanding, experiences and learning and resources generated by our grant programmes are disseminated.

There are many more archives in the sector than we can provide funding to: therefore, we would like to understand, as part of your proposal, how you intend to disseminate the knowledge generated, both internally to your organisation and externally to your audiences and the wider archives sector.

There are numerous ways to share knowledge, which can be formal and informal. If your project is going to generate materials, such as guidance papers, toolkits or research publications, you may want to consider who the audiences are, what opportunities there are to share the materials, and how you can amplify their impact. You may wish to present at academic conferences, events or workshops. There are also more informal knowledge sharing activities, such as social media. Video or visual content may make your dissemination more accessible.

Networks are an important way of sharing knowledge and outputs: you will score highly on this question if you want to work with others, to collaborate on shared challenges or share results. There are many opportunities to form or participate in networks of common practice, and use these as a means to share learnings.

The National Archives will also offer opportunities for knowledge sharing, through learning outcome reporting, and events such as webinars. Please focus your response on activities delivered in addition to the standard grant requirements.

Terms and conditions

Feedback and reapplication

The panel will score against the assessment criteria and provide feedback. You will be given the opportunity to discuss your application with a member of The National Archives’ Grants and Funding team, upon request.

The National Archives’ 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. Applications that are deemed ineligible will be excluded from consideration. Any points you wish to make should be made clearly and concisely in the application form.

Repeat applications are not possible for this programme. However, the panel will endeavour to provide constructive feedback that enables positive solutions and clear next steps, upon request. There are no restrictions on institutions submitting an application for a different project.

Grant conditions

If you are awarded funding, The National Archives’ Grants and Funding team will contact you with a Grant Funding Agreement, which should be signed by an appropriate member of your organisation. For grants of a value lower then £20,000, 100% of the grant’s value will be paid to you up front, except in circumstances where The National Archives, in consultation with the grantee, deems that an alternative payment structure is necessary for the successful delivery of the funded activities. For grants of and over £20,000 in value, payments will usually be made in two instalments, at the start and end of your projects.

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 in the previous sections. Further conditions may be outlined within the Grant Funding Agreement.

Reporting, evaluation and knowledge dissemination

Awarded grantees will be required to report on the progress and outcomes of the grant. More detail on monitoring and reporting will be available following the award of the grant.

Grantees will also be required to demonstrate the benefits and key performance indicators (KPIs) that the competition is seeking to realise. Successful applicants will be required to provide evidence against these measures at regular intervals throughout the project, including at the project launch and close. The measures against which applicants will be required to report, and the reporting intervals, will be agreed at award stage. Whilst 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.

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 an Engagement Grant, including about eligibility and reasonable adjustments, please email the Grants and Funding team.