Tuesday 2 April 2013

Payments and Donations Online

One unexpected Easter blessing has been the setting up of an online donations page for Westminster Diocesan Archives. Many thanks to the diocesan IT department and web developers who have helped set this up.

Unlike many archives in the UK, we receive no public money or external funding. Our running costs are supported entirely by the diocese and any donations that wellwishers are generous enough to make. We run on a tiny budget and any donations are a great help to ensure that we can stay open and free to researchers.

WDA Donations Page

We do charge for some services -photography (self service and orders) and paid research for those who are unable to visit in person. We are going to trial using the new donation system as a way of paying for these online. It will still be possible to pay by cash or cheque but this should make things much easier for our users from abroad.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a look at our policies and charges for paid research and photography to make sure that they'll still work with the new system and that the charges are fair. Once this is done, they'll be up on the website.