10 more funders share data to the 360Giving Standard highlighting diversity of support for open grantmaking

Since the end of September, 10 more grantmakers have joined the #greatergrantsdata movement by publishing their data to the 360Giving Standard, taking the total value of UK grants now openly available to almost £11bn.

An additional £215m worth of grants data has been shared by a diverse range of funders including local councils, a community foundation, a corporate foundation, two large and well established grantmakers – the Henry Smith Charity and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation – as well as a smaller funder the Tuixen Foundation and a housing trust.

These funders are sharing their information with the common aim of raising the bar on grantmaking for everyone and to improve their own transparency.

Helen Robinson, Community Grants Officer at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is working to inspire social change through research, policy and practice, says: “We are very pleased to join the 360Giving initiative. We see this as a great opportunity to help build a better picture of what funding opportunities are available in York, both for funders and potential applicants.”

Katherine Pitt, Commissioning Officer at Southwark Council that has released data on more than £4.5m worth of grants, says: “We want to be as open and transparent as possible about the grants we give to our local voluntary and community sector. 360Giving has given us an easy way to do so. Getting our data published was much more straightforward than we expected. We hope that other grant givers in Southwark will do likewise, so the picture will be complete.”

Jon Hill, Transparency & Open Data Officer at Barnet Council that has started by publishing around £200k worth of grants, says: “London Borough of Barnet wants to be at the forefront of local government Open Data and Transparency. Engaging with third party organisations and developers who want to work with our data is an integral part of sustaining this. We are very grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with 360Giving in order to add value to our data and contribute to creating a valuable tool for more effective grantmaking.”

Birmingham City Council is sharing three years’ worth of data totalling more than £35m, for grants made between April 2014 and March 2017.

London Councils, that represents London’s 32 borough councils and the City of London, is a cross-party organisation that works on behalf of all of its member authorities regardless of political persuasion. It makes grants to fund voluntary action in the capital through a joint scheme that currently has four priorities – homelessness, sexual and domestic violence, tackling poverty and supporting London’s voluntary and community organisations. Details of 13 of these grants made in February 2017 worth more than £24m have now been published.

Alongside local authority money we are also seeing other local funders wanting to share where they are making a difference.

The Co-operative Group, which gives to local causes through its Local Community Fund, has now published more than £9.5m worth of data representing the first 4,000 grants it has made from the fund.
“We want to be open about where our members’ money is going and let others see the projects that Co-op members have supported. This is our first step into open data publishing and shows our commitment to co-operative values and principles. Together with the work that 360Giving does, we hope to encourage co-operation between grant awarding bodies,” says David Luckin, Community Insight & Propositions Lead.

Also providing community support, Wiltshire Community Foundation, the seventh community foundation to publish to the 360Giving Standard, is now sharing information on more than £1.6m of grants awarded between 2015 and 2017.

Trafford Housing Trust, an independent profit for purpose housing company providing around 9,000 affordable homes within the Trafford area of Manchester, has published information on more than 500 grants made between April 2014 and October 2017 worth more than £2m.

One of the UK’s biggest funders by levels of grantmaking, the Henry Smith Charity, has now published more than £131m worth of data on nearly 3,000 grants made between January 2012 and March 2017. The charity’s ambition is to bring about lasting change to people’s lives helping them to benefit from and contribute to society. In 2016, it gave £28m to organisations that work with people to reduce social and economic disadvantage.

The Tuixen Foundation is also working to provide opportunities for disadvantaged people to fulfil their potential. It has published data on grants worth more than £6.3m made between 2010 and September 2017.

The total number of funders publishing their grantmaking data to the 360Giving Standard is now 62. If you would like to join them in pursuit of building the bigger picture of grantmaking in the UK email Katherine Duerden, Partnerships and Engagement Manager via support@threesixtygiving.org.