Activity report – pipeline, firming up the 360giving data model and a registry

It’s been a while since I wrote here – we have been very busy working with grant makers to help foundations publish to the 360 data standard and, as part of that process understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the technical bits.  We’ve done a lot, mainly behind the scenes and there’s still lots to do.  It’s been great to receive such a strongly positive response as we talk to people about 360giving.

We have strengthened our core team with generous support from NESTA both in cash and kind, Indigo Trust and in kind from Dulverton.  This has allowed us to anchor the project securely and put a proper structure around it.

We now have a good pipeline of of grant makers publishing to the 360 standard, people who are preparing to do so and people who are interested.  We have 14 grant makers actively publishing in the 360 standard, varying from small family foundations to major charitable institutions.  One group of foundations is publishing grants in near real time from their in house database.  And we have roughly the same amount again in the pipeline.

Now we have grant makers publishing, we need somewhere to put the links to the data being published – known as a registry. We have engaged Practical Participation to map out a path to deliver a registry, which we shall populate and launch shortly, hopefully in early March.  When we do that we shall write more about the pipeline.

The early work with grant makers has thrown up some fascinating issues with the bare bones technical standard.  Practical Participation is also working on this to produce a more robust data model.  You can follow some of the work on the registry and data standard here.