Donors and Archives: A Guidebook for Successful Programs

Aaron D. Purcell

shk 2015 · Rowman & Littlefield

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Donor work and fundraising is essential for any vibrant archival program. Without new collections and new funding, archives programs can stagnate, and their operations can become vulnerable to economic downturns. Archivists spend a lot of time managing collections, other archivists, and researchers in their reading rooms, but often not enough time considering the stuff that makes up their collections, where that stuff comes from, and how that stuff—and the sources of that stuff—can be valuable tools for advocacy, promotion, and fundraising for their archival programs.

Donors and Archives: A Guidebook for Successful Programs reviews the complex landscape of donor work, archival donations, and institutional fundraising for today’s archivists. It provides practical approaches to enhance donor relations for all types of archival programs, such as academic, government, private, and corporate archives. The book covers the planning, the process, and the partners needed for successful donations and donor programs.

Arranged into four sections, the book offers practical advice and best practices in a number of areas including: how donations work, who donates to archives, how to prepare for donors, how to evaluate and manage the stuff from potential donors, how to work with an institution’s development office, what are the obligations and expectations of archivists and donors, how to develop donor strategies, how to work with friends and supporters of the archives program, what happens after the donation is complete, and what is the overall value of donors to archival programs.

Donors and Archives: A Guidebook for Successful Programs highlights the importance of development and fundraising for archives, while focusing on the donor and potential donor. Their interest, their support, their enthusiasm, and their stuff are vital to the success of archival programs. Archivists involved in donor work and fundraising will find the practical advice and best practices in this book applicable, replicable, timely, and valuable.

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Aaron D. Purcell is professor and director of special collections at Virginia Tech. He frequently works with donors, potential donors, alumni, development officers, and fundraisers to acquire new collections and funding for his archival program. Purcell earned his PhD in history from the University of Tennessee, his master’s of library science from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his master’s degree in history from the University of Louisville. He previously served as university archivist at the University of Tennessee, and he also worked at the National Archives and the National Library of Medicine.

Purcell is an active scholar, writing in the fields of history and archives. In early 2012, he published Academic Archives: Managing the Next Generation of College and University Archives, Records, and Special Collections. He has written articles on archival topics for journals such as the American Archivist, Archival Outlook, IMJ, and the Journal of Archival Organization.