Annual report
Annual Report 2021-22
In 2021-22, 360Giving continued to build on previous successes to drive change and transform the picture of UK grantmaking. By March 2022, 225 funders had published data on over 700,000 grants, worth over £170 billion. This significant increase took us to 79% of target UK grants by value, almost reaching the 80% ‘moonshot’ goal set when 360Giving was founded.
This years’ annual report marks the end of our 2019-22 strategy, ‘Unlocking the Power of Grants Data’ and we launched our new 2022-25 strategy, ‘Unleashing the Impact of Grants Data’ which builds on our previous successes, but also marks a step-change for us as an organisation as we look to be more proactive and strategic.
Below we’ve shared some highlights from 2021-22:
Goal 1: Normalise open data sharing
2021-22 saw an 18% increase in the number of funders publishing their grants using the 360Giving Data Standard, with 35 new funders from across sectors committing to sharing open grants data in an open, standardised way. To support more funders to join the open grants movement, we launched new guidance on publishing at the end of 2021, helping to make sharing grants data as straightforward and accessible as possible.
We also started scoping work, which is being implemented in 2022-23, to further improve the ease and efficiency of sharing data by streamlining the publishing process and establishing regular ‘Introduction to publishing’ workshops that any funder can drop-in to.
Goal 2: Improve data quality
360Giving has also been working on making the data as rich, accurate and reliable as possible. We continued to support the implementation of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) extension to the 360Giving Data Standard, a shared approach used by UK funders to record the equity of grantmaking, in who funding is for and who those organisations are led by. We have also explored further options to enhance the 360Giving Data Standard, including research on the best approaches to better record location data on where grants are delivered and regranting data to understand funding flows.
We launched a brand new tool to help improve data quality and understanding of what is included in the data. Our Data Quality Dashboard displays the key qualities of 360Giving data overall to help funders to understand the features of good data quality, and it offers them the ability to compare their data with others. In addition it supports users of 360Giving data to understand the qualities of data and what is available in data being analysed.
Goal 3: Increase data literacy
360Giving has continued to host, present and take part in meetings and events. We successfully delivered Data Champions, our popular peer development programme which brings funders together to learn how to develop and grow a data culture within their organisations. To support further personal development, in partnership with DataKind UK we have set up quarterly meetings for Data Champions Alumni. We held two well-received sessions in 2021-22 on open data-sets and using statistics well, and will continue these in the coming year to provide alumni with the support, tools and information that they need. These sessions will continue throughout 2022-23, and we’re looking forward to maintaining strong relationships with former Data Champions.
We also hosted individual Data Surgeries on how to use GrantNav, using the Flourish data visualisation and Colab Notebooks tools, and on making maps. Open to colleagues across the sector, these sessions were designed to increase understanding in how to interpret grants data, and to encourage people to be more curious when using datasets. We’ve taken part in a number of external events as well, most notably showcasing ‘collaborative coding’ at the #Data4GoodFest in May 2021.
Goal 4: Grow data use and shared learning
In December 2021 we published our ‘UK Covid relief and recovery grants: data analysis’ report. More than simply setting out patterns in grantmaking, it explained how we collected the data, and made recommendations about what more needs to be done to make the data useful for analysis in future. We’re aiming to use the report as a platform and model to share more analysis about what we can understand from open grants data in the years to come.
To encourage engagement in and use of the data, we have upgraded both our GrantNav and 360Insights tools to make them easier-to-use functionally. This has been achieved particularly through improving searches, filters and enhanced features. One of the most exciting upgrades has been the adding of integration between these two tools, allowing the results from one to be displayed in the other.
Our Resource Library has been updated with new submissions so that it continues to be a useful space for people in grantmaking – or people interested in funding – to find helpful tools, guides and datasets that can help with grant data use and analysis.
Archive
Annual Report 2020-21
In a highly unusual year, the pandemic highlighted the importance of data for decision-making and to support collaboration, and we therefore had more interest in our work than ever. We ended the year with over 50% more funders publishing their grants data (190 in total), including – for the first time – every central Government department. We also hit a major milestone, with over £100bn in grants available to explore in 360Giving’s tools.
During this period we prioritised supporting funders responding to the pandemic.This meant that a number of planned projects were delayed and were successfully delivered in 2021-22.
Annual Report 2019-20
2019-20 was a pivotal year for 360Giving and we made good progress on our strategic goals, including reaching a critical mass of 126 funders publishing their grants data, the launch of our Data Champions programme in November 2019, bringing 22 funders together to learn how to build a data culture and the development of the COVID-19 Grants Tracker – a dashboard to track and report on COVID-19 grants.
Please email info@threesixtygiving.org if you would prefer to read any of these reports in a different format.