360Giving is turning eight!
As we reach another milestone, we’re taking a look at just a few of our achievements, in a pivotal year for us and our mission.
This has been a transformative year for 360Giving. An ambitious new 2022-25 strategy was implemented: ‘Unleashing the Impact of Grants Data’, marking a step-change for the charity. We have built on the momentum from previous years, and have worked to shift funders from sharing data to using it, creating a transformation in data culture and practice.
We now have 257 funders sharing data on over 860,000 grants worth over £213 billion, with over 35,000 people a year accessing and using this data.
Alongside this shift in strategy, we’ve also seen a lot of change internally. We welcomed Fozia Irfan as our new Chair of Trustees to guide us through this new approach, alongside several new Trustees and staff members.
As we take in such a transformative year, here’s just a few examples of what we’ve been particularly proud of in this new phase of our work.
New more proactive and strategic analysis
Since our last birthday we have published three new substantial analysis reports – alongside some reports commissioned by individual funders for their own use.
June 2023: UK Grantmaking 2021-22: A snapshot
March 2023: Voluntary Sector Infrastructure Funding
August 2022: Specialist Legal Advice Funding
These reports and the roundtables which followed supported an increased understanding of the picture, leading to more informed grantmaking and greater collaboration between funders, as well as demonstrating the importance and impact of the shared data.
We are expanding our work in this area and are able to provide analysis and research as a commissioned service.
Updates to the 360Giving Data Standard and Tools
Grants to Individuals
When we first developed the 360Giving Data Standard, it was designed to only describe grants to organisations. But over the past two years, we began engaging the sector on how we could make it possible for them to also share data on grants to individuals. Following a wide-ranging consultation, and taking care to ensure the anonymity of recipients, this year we updated the Standard to support grants to individuals and made them visible across our tools.
Read more about our grants to individuals work in our blog
Regranting
We made a second major update to the 360Giving Data Standard by allowing funders to identify grants intended for onward distribution, or “regranting”. These are grants which are provided to an organisation to then redistribute to others, and can be an important part of pooling funds or directing them to those with the greatest expertise. Users can now seepecify these grant labelled as for regrantings in our GrantNav and 360Insights tools, further expanding their picture of UK grantmaking.
Location Scope
We also updated the Standard to support inclusion of new Location Scope categories, that allow funders to describe the geographical scope of the funded work ie the where the activities happen or people supported are rather than just where the recipient charity is based. The categories were developed through discussions with funders, research and an open consultation. We will promote their use alongside other campaigns to improve the quality of geographic data in the 360Giving dataset.
Read our guidance on how to publish Location Scope
Making the data easier to access and use
We’ve continued to improve the accessibility and usability of the data in our tools, with significant updates to make it easier to understand organisations and locations in GrantNav. In September, we developed a Cost of Living Grants Tracker which pulls and visualises data published by funders about their grants made in response to the crisis. We also soft-launched a widgets builder which allows funders to embed their 360Giving data into their own websites, enabling users to access the information directly, which will be available for all publishers soon.
Inclusion
Neurodiversity Inclusivity Confidence Award
Another highlight this year includes achieving the Neurodiversity Inclusivity Confidence Award, as part of our commitment to inclusivity. We chose to focus on neurodiversity for the period of the strategy, as this was an area where we felt we could make the greatest impact in relation to our work. We implemented improvements to the accessibility of our services and shared learning with funders to support the inclusion of neurodivergent individuals within their organisations, which was warmly received.
Inclusive Data
We have continued to build on our previous work in supporting the development of the DEI Data Standard with training, workshops and guidance on this, including on the collection of identity data and sensitive data, and its use. We have provided support and guidance to our own publishers and to other sector initiatives, and developed our own training in this area including popular workshops on intersectional data analysis.
We will shortly be launching a mechanism for grantees to request corrections to data published about them to help to address some of the current imbalance of power in open data models.
More information on the DEI Data Standard and guidance for practice is available on the Funders Collaborative Hub.
Thank you
Finally, we’d like to take a moment to offer our much-deserved appreciation to everyone whose support has made it possible for us to continue our work these past eight years. This includes all of the 257 funders who share their data using the 360Giving Data Standard, our Trustees and Stewardship Committee whose vision and experience guides our work, and our invaluable partners, funders and supporters who keep us going. Thank you all for helping to achieve our mission of improving UK grantmaking for the benefit of communities across the country.
If you’d like to find out more about our year, take a look at our 2022-23 Annual Report.
To find out what we’ll be up to over the next year, keep an eye on our site or find all the latest from 360Giving through our newsletter and Twitter!