Open Data

‘By pooling grantmaking data from our organisation with that of other major grantmakers, we can begin to use the intelligence generated to make more informed decisions about who and how to fund’ – Alex Van Vliet, Lloyds Bank Foundation.

Publishing open grants data will enable you to:

• Easily compare your grantmaking with others’, identifying similarities and differences
• Receive more targeted applications
• Join a growing movement of progressive grantmakers who want to make their grantmaking more effective and strategic

Find out more about publishing your data.

Using open grants data helps you to:

• Develop a bird’s eye view of who is giving what to whom across the giving sector
• Identify geographic and sector ‘cold spots’ – so funding can be more targeted
• Quickly identify new organisations to approach that you would otherwise not be aware of
• Dramatically cut down on the amount of time spent researching grantees from scratch

Find out more about using open grants data.

Open data is data and content that can be freely used, modified and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is all around us and you probably already use it. For example, the transport app City Mapper uses open data to help you get to where you need to go.

It is critical that the information published by grantmakers can be easily accessed and compared, rather than having to go to individual websites to access data in different formats and with different information provided.

For more information about open data and how it is defined, read the open definitions published by the Open Data Institute and Open Knowledge International.

So far 100 grantmakers have already opened up their data. Will you join them?