What keeps community archives alive?

Enthusiasm is the lifeblood of community archives.  But they also need volunteers, users and funding.

Volunteers

It’s hard to produce ‘typical’ figures, but many archives are run by between one and four volunteers and an equally large number is run by over ten volunteers.

This is what one survey respondent, a community archive project called My Brighton and Hove, had to say about the benefits of volunteering:

“While the chance to do something creative is the main motivating factor for many volunteers, they often also have an altruistic element. They routinely cite wanting to do something for the town where they live as one of their reasons for becoming involved in the project.”

User numbers

A typical range for user numbers is between one hundred and five hundred.  Our research suggests an average of about 250 users, including online users.

Funding

Funding was received from a range of sources but most often HLF, particularly through the Awards for All programme.

The majority of HLF awards were under £5000, five were between £5000 and £50,000 and two were over £100,000.

Donations are often small amounts from £20 to a few hundred pounds.  Subscriptions may be lucrative for the relatively few archives that use them.