The Archive Lottery Advisory Service is jointly sponsored by The National Archives and The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) under the aegis of the National Council on Archives. The Archive Lottery Adviser supports record offices, and other bodies holding archives, throughout the UK in making applications for lottery funding. Anyone developing a project using archives can use the service.
This support includes:
- Information on current lottery trends, programmes and eligibility criteria
- Assistance with project planning and the application process
- Advice on fundraising strategies and seeking partnership funding
- Application reviews prior to submission
- Talks and presentations to interested groups
- Training events, including workshops
The role of the Archive Lottery Adviser is to help make the decision to submit a bid for funding, and the application process, itself a less daunting and onerous task. Previous users of the service have confirmed that it can be very helpful to have someone outside their own organisation, and independent from the lottery distributors, to consult about a variety of issues or concerns, to ask questions or simply to seek encouragement or confirmation of the best way forward.
It is often difficult to know where to begin. The Archive Lottery Adviser is there to help you identify and explore some of the areas you will need to address when contemplating an application for lottery funding. These include:
- Clearly identifying the need for the project
- Clearly demonstrating your organisation's ability to meet that need
- Breaking down and prioritising key tasks
- Assigning responsibility for tasks and setting a project application timetable
- Identifying and minimising risks within your application
- Assigning responsibility for co-ordination and compilation of the bid
'I doubt whether any single item of expenditure by the archives profession has ever been so worthwhile'
