The Wellcome Trust publishes £6bn worth of grants data in 360Giving Standard
Melanie May | 10 April 2018 | News
The Wellcome Trust has published data on the £6billion worth of grants it has made since October 2005 in the open, standard format developed by 360Giving.
The release of the data by The Wellcome Trust supports 360Giving’s campaign to open up UK grants data and make grantmaking more informed and effective. It means that for the first time, the data can be easily seen alongside other major funders of research such as Gatsby, The Wolfson Foundation and the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, helping to build a bigger picture of science funding across the UK.
360Giving launched two years ago, and 75 funding organisations are now sharing their data using the 360Giving Standard, representing over £24bn of grants made to all corners of the UK. They also include the Big Lottery Fund, BBC Children in Need, Comic Relief, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Nesta, and Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The Standard is also in use by central government departments and at a local level including several community foundations, local authorities and housing associations. All the data can be accessed via GrantNav.
Alyson Fox, Head of Grants Management at Wellcome said:
“Our funding supports over 14,000 people in 70 countries, and over the next five years we aim to spend £5bn to improve health for all. We always want to be open about who and what we fund, and have made our grants data available on our website for several years. By sharing this richer and more standardised dataset with 360Giving we want to help people see our funding alongside other organisations and get a better picture of the overall funding landscape.”
Fran Perrin, Founder and Director of 360Giving said:
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“This major release of data brings 360Giving closer to its ‘moonshot’ ambition for 80% of UK grants to be made openly available by 2020. The Wellcome Trust is the UK’s largest independent grant funder, so we are pleased that it is on board with the greater grants data movement.
“By adopting the 360Giving Standard as many grantmakers are now doing, Wellcome’s data can be more easily shared and used alongside that of other funders. More open, comparable data will improve the sector’s ability to make informed, evidence-based funding decisions and ultimately bolster the impact of UK grantmaking.”
360Giving launched GrantNav in 2016 with data on over £8bn of grants. Last month saw it press the government to make good on its promise to publish more data on its grants expenditure.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.