Join the open grants movement

360Giving guide to publishing for community foundations

In collaboration with UKCF, 360Giving has supported the development of a tool for the Digits2 (D2) system which means that grant information can be extracted from your system ready-formatted to the 360Giving Standard.

Community foundations participating in a pilot were consulted to agree a field specification for the 360Giving data extract file. Hyphen8 has completed development of the D2 data extract tool, and following tests by the pilot group this is now available for any community foundations that wish to become a 360Giving data publisher.

This tool means that the technical aspect of preparing your data has been automated – making the process much easier and quicker. There are some additional practical steps you need to follow when sharing your 360Giving data for the first time, for example the hosting and licensing of the data.

We have developed this guidance to support you through the whole publishing process, with answers to frequently asked questions and links to sources of further advice. You can download the PDF document of this guidance, and also follow links below for the online version.

Is there a charge for publishing 360Giving data? How long will the process take?
All our support to organisations is provided for free of charge; however there will always be some resource required in terms of staff time, especially when releasing your data for the first time. The amount of time it takes can vary depending on your circumstances. The amount of data to be published, and whether the data is clean or requires some additional work to be ready for publication are key factors in determining whether the process will be more or less time consuming.

If you have queries about the 360Giving publishing process and this guidance please contact Katherine Duerden at 360Giving: katherine@threesixtygiving.org.


Three stages of opening up your grants data

1. Plan: What to consider before preparing data

  • Decide what information to share
  • Review data protection and privacy implications

2. Prepare: Formatting your data to the 360Giving Standard

  • Prepare your data using the D2 extract
  • Check data quality and receive feedback

3. Publish: Making your data available for use

  • Choose an open license
  • Prepare a hosting place for your data on your website
  • Publish your data file – and tell 360Giving when it is live