Topics

Explore stories about open grants data, data analysis and practical tips, and updates from us 360Giving

  • Holding ourselves to account

    Guest post by Paul Streets, CEO of Lloyds Bank Foundation, following his keynote talk at the launch of 360Insights in March 2019 Data is central to our work. We use it to canvas the confidential views of those we fund on how we’re doing; understand what’s going on in their ‘world’; inform our policy and […]

  • Creating a data culture in community foundations

    Guest post by Dirk Slater, FabRiders – a strategic social change consultancy Over the past eight months we’ve been developing a network of Data Champions working in community foundations across the UK. The initiative is a collaboration between 360Giving, FabRiders and UK Community Foundations. In April 2019 we held a workshop focusing on how to strengthen […]

  • A Forest of Funders

    Exploring the landscape of UK grant funders through a handmade data visualisation Last year we held a ​competition​ to celebrate ​how open grants data can be visualised. In the latest in our series about the winners, Dr Cath Sleeman takes us through her physical data visualisation. A Forest of Funders won the Special Judges Award. This […]

  • Making data simple and powerful for user-led organisations

    Last year we held a competition to celebrate how open grants data can be visualised. In this latest in a series of interviews with the competition winners, Victòria Oliveres answers questions about her From Funder to User data visualisation. The judging panel awarded Victòria second prize, saying that her visualisation was a beautiful combination of […]

  • Identifying who is being funded

    Back in 2018 we focused some of our labs work on organisational identifiers – the important numbers that help us to differentiate between organisations. We wrote a bit about identifiers and why they are important here and here. Our work last year focussed on how many of the grantmakers publishing to the 360Giving Standard are […]

  • Metadata: explaining the data

    Guest post by Rob Redpath, Open Data Services Co-operative. ODSC works closely with the 360Giving team, providing tools and support for publishers and users of 360Giving data. If you want to find data that is published in the 360Giving Standard, you can go to the 360Giving Registry. To understand which files are relevant to you, […]

  • Government sets the Standard with 360Giving

    The UK Government’s Open Standards Board has selected the 360Giving Data Standard for use by central government departments and their agencies when disclosing grant giving data. Jeni Tennison, CEO of the Open Data Institute said “It is great to see that the 360Giving Standard has been approved as an official government standard for the open […]

  • Winning at visualisation and improving society

    Last year we held a Challenge Fund competition to celebrate how open grants data can be visualised. In this first of a series of interviews with the competition winners, top prize winner Xavi Giménez answers questions about his Grantmaking Themes visualisation. The judging panel awarded first prize to Xavi’s work as it allows users to […]

  • Grantmakers combine to get insights on their data

    Thank you to the 70 grantmakers and partners who came along on Monday 4th March 2019 to get their hands on our new grants data visualisation platform 360Insights for the first time. There was such a positive energy in the room! Our founder and Chair Fran Perrin opened the afternoon by celebrating how far 360Giving […]

  • How to make the most of 360Insights

    Thank you for using 360Insights. This post will help you learn how to use the platform and make the most of it in your work. What does the tool do? We took the seven most frequent questions we get from grantmakers about their funding and answered them with their own 360Giving data and other data […]

  • 100 reasons to share grants data

    Guest blog by Ian Hanham of the Nuffield Foundation The Nuffield Foundation is delighted to become the 100th funder to sign up to 360Giving. We fund research, analysis and student programmes that advance educational opportunity and social well-being across the United Kingdom. Good data used in innovative ways is central to so many of the […]

  • Learnings from creating a data champions network

    Communities are complex and getting a clear understanding of them is a journey Guest post by Dirk Slater, FabRiders – a strategic social change consultancy FabRiders’ capacity building work has focused on researching data literacy, designing social learning experiences and co-creating knowledge assets with communities and networks. For 360Giving & the UK Community Foundations (UKCF) we […]

  • See your grantmaking in new ways

    For the first time, organisations wanting to address social issues can easily combine and visualise data to get deep insights into their grantmaking. Coinciding with Open Data Day tomorrow, we have launched a free online platform called 360Insights. Using 360Insights, grantmakers who openly share their grants data to our Standard can quickly see information on […]

  • Open data in London

    In this joint blog, first published as London Plus’s launch blog post, Manny Hothi, Director of Policy at Trust for London, and Rachel Rank, CEO of 360Giving, outline the work our organisations are doing to open up data about London, making it easier for civil society, researchers and policymakers to access information about poverty, inequality and funding […]

  • Using Your Data: Office Hours

    UPDATE MARCH 2023: We now offer 1-1 Data Support calls instead of Office Hours. Please use this link to book a 1-1 Data Support call.  Always wanted to use 360Giving data but don’t know where to start? Trying to understand how to use data in your day to day work? We are here to help! […]

  • Securing a data-informed future

    We are delighted to announce that more funders are coming together to support a more data-informed sector, with grants to support 360Giving’s work in 2019 and beyond. In awarding a £20,000 grant for 2019, Pears Foundation’s Sir Trevor Pears CMG said “As passionate believers in the importance and value of philanthropy, we are delighted to […]

  • Why unknown unknowns can be valuable

    Guest blog post by Martin Brookes of Brookes Impact Partnership Just after the United States entered the second world war in 1941, Winston Churchill visited US President Roosevelt and stayed in the White House. During the visit, Roosevelt went into his guest’s room just after Churchill had stepped out of the bath naked. According to […]

  • Telling tales with data

    We usually associate data as numbers. Scary words like average, mean and percentages are thrown into the air. Numbers are important to us, but the human brain cannot easily grasp large numbers and we are bombarded by figures and ‘facts’. To bring clarity and meaning to what we find in data and why it’s important, […]

  • Getting your head around the distribution of funding

    Guest post by Kimberley Anscombe of Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI).  Nearly 100 grantmakers are now publishing their funding as open data via 360Giving, making it possible to get a richer, fuller picture of the funding landscape across the UK. And for individual funders, publishing data in a standardised format makes it easier for them […]