On 13 May 2026, the British Academy hosted a one-day event on ‘Charity Archives and Records Now’. Organised by Georgina Brewis and Angela Ellis Paine as part of this British Academy Research Project (ARP), ‘Archiving the Mixed Economy of Welfare’ in partnership with Kathryn Preston from The National Archives (TNA), the day explored new directions in research, policy and practice on voluntary sector archives. Paul Beard presented findings from his AHRC-funded collaborative doctoral research which, for the first time, provides robust evidence about the current state of voluntary sector archives in England. Supervised as a partnership between TNA’s sector development team and academics at UCL, completion of the study was a key objective of the Charity Archives Development plan, a strategic initiative launched in 2022 to improve the preservation, visibility and long-term sustainability of charity archives across England.

Paul Beard’s research questions the extent to which voluntary sector records should be seen as at ‘risk’, concluding that there has been considerable progress in this area since the 1990s and that many charities are now leading the way in innovative archival and record keeping practice. However, the research also shows there is a strong appetite for further support and guidance – and he identifies four key policy challenges:  

1. In England, there is a complicated and confusing legal and regulatory framework that is unclear on what the record-keeping expectations for charities are.
2. There are considerable inequalities in terms of access to records due to few legal protections outside of the Data Protection Act 2018.
3. The guidance and advice available to charities differs between public agencies, infrastructural bodies, and professional associations. In some cases, published guidance and advice documents are contradictory.
4. There is limited capacity in charities to improve or implement professionalised record-keeping.

The ARP invited a panel of leaders from both the archives sector and voluntary sector to respond to these challenges. Head of Guidance at the Charity Commission, Mazeda Alam, highlighted some of ways in which poor recordkeeping might land a case on her desk, before acknowledging that there was value in shifting from a focus on compliance to one which values archives as strategic assets for charities. Indeed, Islamic Relief archivist Daniella Gonzalez made a strong case for seeing archives as assets and drew on her own experience to show how an organisational archive can support current priorities, including in marketing, fundraising and policy work. Jay Kennedy from voluntary sector infrastructure body Directory of Social Change confirmed the importance of record keeping as part of good governance – noting a demand for simple guidance such as its new note on Minute Taking. TNA’s Chief Executive Saul Nassé welcomed Paul’s recommendations and committed to increased support via existing initiatives including the Charity Archive Development plan and the 2026 government vision for the archives sector, Archives at the Heart of Society.

The day also included three interactive workshops. Simon Wilson and Kevin Bolton ran a well-attended session exploring ‘How to manage digital records?’ drawing on their recently-published guidance Digital Record Keeping in the Voluntary Sector. British Red Cross Archivist Stephen Noble led a discussion on how to make the most of a charity’s institutional archive. Georgina Brewis and Angela Ellis Paine ran an interactive role play exercise about interdisciplinary research using charity records based on their ESRC-funded project ‘Discourses of Voluntary Action’ – now published open-access in the short book Transformational Moments in Social Welfare – What Role for Voluntary Action?

The archival scholar Anna Sexton opened the final panel by explaining the key tenets of person-centred approaches to records and records management archiving, noting how charities such as the Care Leavers’ Association, Coram and Family Action have been leading the way in this significant new field of practice and scholarship. This was reinforced by the head of Barnardo’s archive ‘Making Connections’ Megan Parker, who argued that records can be important tools for social justice, before recommending that the audience watch the BBC TV series ‘Alma is Not Normal’ for an insight into the impact receiving records might have on individual care leavers. From a research perspective, Joanne Hogarth Raineau highlighted that researchers too can experience trauma from working with difficult archival material and proposed that greater attention was paid to this topic. Philip Milnes-Smith presented an archives sector perspective on person-centered approaches, noting how archives services needed to remain aware of the potential power imbalance with donors and depositors. Whose records are we getting? Who is still going unrecorded?

Now in its 12^th year, the ARP ‘Archiving the Mixed Economy of Welfare’ is a long term infrastructure project that works to promotes the preservation and use of the archives and records of charities and voluntary organisations. The ‘Charity Archives and Records Now’ event presents a moment to celebrate the many positive developments in this field. It also offers the chance to renew the commitment to collaborative work that can truly ensure that the voluntary sector and the historical achievements captured in its archives and records represent ‘a proud part of our national identity’ in the words of the Civil Society Covenant (Department of Culture, Media & Sport, October 2025).