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360Giving creates free funding database featuring £8 billion of grants

Howard Lake

Howard Lake | 5 October 2016 | News

Fundraisers and grantmakers can now search for free a large funding database that lists over £8 billion of grants. 360Giving, the charity that supports organisations to publish their grants data in an open and standardised way, has made this combined funding data available for free as open data.
GrantNav can be searched by fundraisers or indeed anyone at no charge. It has been developed to help charities save time and money by making more informed and targeted applications.
You can search by sector, region or funder.
It is also designed to help funders make better decisions. They can use the database to compare and contrast the grants made by other organisations, and find out more about who is funding whom.
360Giving puts grants data in a standard spreadsheet form and then publishes it openly where others can find it. Users can search the database or download the data to analyse and use themselves. It also shares its data and workings on open source respository GitHub.

Open data funding source

The creation of an open data source for funding information isn’t new. Open Charities has been demonstrating the potential for several years. But this is on a bigger scale, involving more funders, and with appropriate funding itself, plus support from funders.
Setting the development of the service in the context of a time of austerity and increased financial pressure on charities, Fran Perrin, Founder and Chair of 360Giving said:

“360Giving was founded to give greater visibility to where and how funders spend their money, making it easier to identify shared opportunities and challenges, and work together.”

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Participating UK grantmakers

At launch over £8 billion of grants is detailed in the data. UK grantmakers who have shared their data with the site include major funders such as:

In addition, some local and government grantmakers are sharing their data, including:

360Giving is inviting other grantmakers to share their data so it can make GrantNav more comprehensive.
Caroline Mason, Chief Executive of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation said:

“We are proud to support the development of the GrantNav search tool and open up our data so it can be shared and compared more easily. This new tool makes it possible, for the first time, to explore our grants in context with other grantmakers and to build a fuller understanding of the UK funding ecology and where our funds can make the most impact.”

360Giving received early support from innovation charity Nesta. Geoff Mulgan, Nesta’s Chief Executive, said:

“We’re very excited to see the progress 360Giving has made since Nesta incubated it in 2014. GrantNav opens up thousands of grants worth billions, and makes grant-giving more accountable and easier to interrogate and analyse – another great example of the power of open data standards.”

Reactions to the launch of GrantNav

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Howard Lake

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.

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