"Getting my records has lled in blanks as I had lived a life of non-existence, I had nothing of my past, nothing was there, it was empty.’ (Brewis, 2017)." Voluntary sector archives are at risk’ has been one of the key rallying cries of the Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives (CVSA) ) since its launch in October 2012. CVSA sought to bring together archivists, custodians, academics, researchers, and those with an experience of working in the voluntary sector to help not only raise awareness of the importance of voluntary sector archives but also explore methods to help better ensure their continued survival, preservation and access. The Campaign highlighted the importance of these archives for supporting a range of activities including supporting good governance and regulatory compliance within third sector organisations; supporting the preservation of institutional corporate memory and identity; and for research. The Campaign also highlighted the wider role these archives can play in supporting institutional engagement with wider society and the importance of such records in helping to preserve the wider societal cultural heritage, and for individual access to such records to support their own human and citizen rights. For many, this was a needed intervention on issues of voluntary sector archives as “there is still a long way to go before all voluntary organisations are convinced not only of the value of records to the current mission, but also of the value of making these accessible to researcher.” (Brewis, 2012)

Here at the University of East London (UEL) ) we have been working with the archives of voluntary sector organisations since the inception of our archive service back in November 2002. This has involved working both in collaboration with ongoing voluntary sector organisations to help support their recordkeeping functions by providing a home for their archival collections whilst also taking on responsibility for archival collections from organisations which sadly no longer exist. From our growing archival collections from refugee/migration voluntary organisations with the archives of the Refugee Council and related organisations to supporting British Olympic history through the archive of the British Olympic Association, the archives of voluntary organisation are vital to the inclusion of the voice of voluntary action.

This has been reinforced through the attendance at a recent conference hosted by the British Academy on “Voluntary organisations’ archives and records: Why do they matter?” organised by colleagues from the Digitising the Mixed Economy of Welfare in Britain project. This conference brought together voluntary sector professionals, researchers, academics and archivists to discuss the importance of and the key issues around the preservation and access to voluntary sector archives. The conference sought to explore the role of voluntary sector organisations in the mixed economy of welfare in Britain and to seek to digitise key archival documents to make them accessible through an online portal.

The conference highlighted several key questions in relation to the archives of voluntary sector organisations. These included the impact and challenges of austerity on voluntary sector archives; how can archives of voluntary sector organisations be utilised to support the current work of the organisation; and how can the records of small and non- traditional organisations be preserved for the future? (Wilkins, 2019). From a personal perspective, we have had experience of the challenges of looking to preserve the records of organisations involved in the provision of services within the refugee and migration sphere, and it is through articles like this one and conferences on these topics that we hope to raise awareness of the importance of these archives. It was a question I discussed with a colleague over lunch break, whilst many of those who attended the conference were already aware of the issues surrounding voluntary sector archives, how do we as archival professionals and researchers, reach out and engage with those voluntary sector organisations that were not in attendance or for whom the importance and relevance of the records they may have had yet to be fully realised or understood.

Through the projects and conferences mentioned in this article, several key pointers for voluntary sector organisations have been highlighted in relation to their records. Firstly, what does the voluntary sector organisation know about its archives? Does the voluntary sector organisation have an archive or a collection of records that could become an archive? What information do the records contain and are they well looked after, or gathering dust in a cupboard or basement? Does the institution know what to do with these records?

What are the barriers and challenges that organisations face with the managing of their records? This could cover issues of funding, staff resources; a focus on front- line service provision or a general lack of awareness around the importance of these records. Two of the biggest challenges to voluntary sector organisations in recent years followed the impact of austerity measures following the nancial crisis of 2007-8 and the impact of government policy around the new Big Society ideology introduced by the Conservative government of David Cameron, which “envisaged a recalibration of the relationship between the state and the voluntary sector.” (‘Political discourses’, 2017). This recalibration would see the voluntary sector organisations take on more responsibility for social welfare provision as state run public services were reduced whilst at the same time experiencing cuts to their own budgets, deal with increasing demand for their services and having to compete with pro t-making companies for a share of any funding that was available. This led many social welfare organisations subsequently becoming nancially dependent on government funding for their continued survival, leading to restructuring or mergers in some cases or some voluntary sector organisations being forced to fold altogether. With more recent changes to the provision of welfare services in the UK, with changes to both the funding and provisioning of welfare services, “the boundaries between the state and the voluntary sector are being renegotiated , to the extent that some have called it 'a revolutionary moment.'” (olie7999, 2019)

What are the opportunities? Information located with archives of voluntary sector organisations can be used to stimulate discussion and help inform the current work of the organisation; create new publicity and outreach materials as well as supporting the organisation’s corporate identity. Archives can also be used to help demonstrate an organisation’s impact over time on a theme or community as well as their ongoing commitment to their chosen mission. Voluntary sector archives can also be used to support institutional governance and legal responsibilities.

“Above all, records are a vital asset for an organisation: they demonstrate decision- making and good governance; provide crucial evidence of past successes, learning and impact; capture an organisation’s identity; and they can be used to demonstrate why an organisation should be valued. In a climate where trust, reputation and risk are increasingly pertinent issues, archives hold a wealth of material which organisations can use to confront present-day challenges.” (Clements, 2017)

The importance and value of the records held by voluntary sector organisations have the power to enable access to a range of narratives and points of view, different perspectives, and the opportunity to allow different voices to be heard within the archive.

Everyone has a voice and archives can be the vehicle on which these voices can be documented, preserved and made available as a corpus of materials on which future histories can be written and different communities to be heard and listened, too. However, part of the CVSA campaign has been to encourage voluntary sector organisations to enable access to their collections for study and research. As Brewis argues, there is often “a range of practice from organisations which ignore or refuse requests for access with varying degrees of politeness to those that welcome you with open arms and let you sit unsupervised with the charity’s papers, free to copy, remove, deface or pour coffee all over the institutional record.” (2012).

Archives have a vital role to play in terms of supporting both human and citizen rights, a place where both the “of cial” narratives but also counter-narratives produced through activism and civic society engagement can be stored, documented and made accessible. Archives at their very heart are a collection of stories, narratives which have been developed either by organisations or individuals in the course their daily lives and work. Voluntary sector archives can help provide a counter- narrative to both of cial and media discourses we are sold on a daily basis, voluntary sector and community archives should be reactive to documenting the voices of the everyman, the activist on the street, the community organisation, the charity, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) and of course local communities, plural as any community is made up of a myriad of different voices. Archives can be representative of individual and collective memory, the history of the present that we want to preserve for the future generations, to tell the future of our struggles today and our hopes for the future. Without our active engagement, these counter-narratives to those presented by governments and the media will be lost. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project on the Discourses of Voluntary Action will attempt to explore some of these issues through the examination of “discourses and narratives on the place of the voluntary sector in welfare service provision in the 1940’s and 2010s.” (‘Voluntary sector discourses’, 2017). This project will look to examine political, public and of cial discourses at two key points in the history of welfare provision in Britain and looking to tease out the relationships and interplays between the of cial, voluntary and personal narrative of welfare provision.