New Publisher: Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland

The Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland inspires and supports giving that strengthens communities and enriches local life. It has built an endowment of nearly £75 million and has awarded more than £100 million in grants.

It has now published grants awarded between April 2015 and March 2016 – a total of 1284 worth £6,871,922 – using the 360Giving Open Data Standard, which are now available to explore in the GrantNav platform.

The Foundation’s Director of Partnerships Adam Lopardo says: “We aim to be transparent and show how resources are being used. We already publish a basic list of grants we make every year but expanding the amount of data and publishing it alongside others, we believe creates a powerful tool for other funders and grantees to use. It has also made us think about data we don’t capture, what we lose out by not capturing that data and we are looking at how we might capture it going forward.

“Publishing our data presents a learning opportunity. We already connect people who want to make a difference with organisations who can make a difference here in the North East, but in a world where it’s harder for local causes to be seen, heard and funded, we want to champion them as widely as possible. Through our partnerships programme we want to connect groups in the North East to relevant funders from across the UK and vice versa. Being part of and promoting 360Giving and the GrantNav tool helps us see who else is supporting the sector in the North East and they can see us.

“It helps grantees find and better understand funders who might support their work. Funders in turn can find out who else has funded the groups who are making applications to them. Hopefully the result will be more successful applications from groups and more informed grantmaking by us and other funders.

I found the process to be absolutely fantastic and 360Giving were very patient considering many of the questions I asked were actually available on the 360Giving guidance! It means that when we publish the next set of data it should be very simple to do.”