Council of State Archivists (CoSA) Receives Funding to 

Update Emergency Preparedness Training

January 26, 2026 – With $150,000 in funding from the Mellon Foundation, Council of State Archivist’s Executive Director Joy Banks announced that the association will undertake a thorough review and update of its groundbreaking Intergovernmental Preparedness for Essential Records (IPER) education and training program. Rooted in the devastation of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, IPER was originally funded by FEMA with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) serving as a major partner to CoSA to create and implement a unified emergency and disaster preparedness training program for state and territorial government archives and records management centers. Key components of the original program included in-person training, online courses with instructor-led webinars, and related resource materials. Since IPER’s inception, however, states and territorial government archives have done much work on disaster response, adapting federal methodologies to respond according to regional needs.

The current project will be the first complete revision of IPER content and formats since its inception more than 15 years ago. The goal is to create an IPER curriculum that prioritizes electronic records preservation, introduces cyber security elements, and better prepares government archives and records management centers for future disasters.

In explaining the project’s process, Banks said, “The nature of disaster response requires inter-governmental agency collaboration. We’re excited to see how our project plan connects our members with other key state/territory departments to consider this update.” As part of the proposed work, each revised course will be piloted to further strengthen content and delivery mechanisms before being released publicly. The final project goal involves implementing a plan for continuous improvement and sustainability of the curricula through active maintenance and user feedback.

“Redevelopment of IPER is a major milestone for CoSA,” Banks said. “We have long wanted to do this but knew the scope was outside our usual resources and volunteer community capacity. This grant support lets us tackle critical care for this seminal curriculum.”

Those interested in supporting this work by serving as project consultant for the IPER Curriculum should review the call for proposals currently available on CoSA’s website.

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About CoSA

The Council of State Archivists (CoSA) is a nonprofit membership organization of the state and territorial government archives in the fifty states, five territories, and District of Columbia. Through collaborative research, education, and advocacy, CoSA provides leadership that strengthens and supports state and territorial archives in their work to preserve and provide access to government records. CoSA facilitates networking, information sharing, and project collaboration among its member organizations to help state and territorial government archives with their responsibilities for protecting the rights and historical documents of the American people. Learn more at statearchivists.org.

About the Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty and empowerment that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and guided by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.