Core funding

The Museum is a 362-day-a-year operation, keeping 4 exhibition galleries and a major library open to the public. Our 40 staff look after some 200,000 visitors a year, answer thousands of historical enquiries, care for the many hundreds of thousands of items in the Museum’s collections and engage with thousands of children and adults for formal and informal learning. Altogether, this costs in the order of £1.5 million each year.

The Navy’s Contribution
The Royal Navy is fully committed to preserving and promoting its heritage, recognising that heritage contributes to public understanding of the role of the Navy - past, present and future.  To this end, the Navy makes an annual grant-in-aid to the National Museum, which in turn distributes this central funding to its constituent branches.  This Museum's share is approximately £1 million pa, representing about three-quarters of the Museum’s income.

Other income
Most of the balance comes from ticket sales, in the region of £280,000 pa. Other sources of income include the profits from the Trading Company and the return on a small investment portfolio.

Self Help
With both MOD funding and visitor income under pressure in recent years, the Museum has been developing new income streams, based on its physical and intellectual assets. In addition to fundraising, these have included

* Special events, such as our Trafalgar Night Dinners and special interest weekends devoted to, for instance, Nelson, the works of Patrick O’Brian and D-Day

* Corporate hire of our galleries (click here for further information)

* Fees for commercial exploitation of the collections, eg reproduction fees and filming