Useful information before you start¶

Who is this guidance for?

Funders that want to publish 360Giving data for the first time.
Existing 360Giving data publishers who want a reminder of the process.
People taking over responsibility for preparing 360Giving data in their organisation.
Anyone who wants to know more about the 360Giving publishing process.

What to expect¶

Guidance for publishers sets out the three key stages in the 360Giving publishing process, and highlights the options available and factors that will inform the choices you make.

These stages apply to all types of funder. However, the approach you take, the support you need, and how long the process will take can all vary, depending on a few factors:

Whether you give grants to organisations, individuals or to both organisations and individuals
The information you collect about your grantmaking
The systems you use to manage the data
How much data you want to publish
Your organisational and technical capacity

The three stages of the publishing process¶

Plan¶

You will identify the scope of the grant information you want to share by looking at the data in your systems, and comparing it with the available 360Giving Data Standard fields.
You can also take inspiration from what other funders have included in their 360Giving data.
Once you have identified the grant information you intend to publish, you should consider the data protection implications of sharing this data, and develop appropriate policies so you can do so responsibly.

Fill out the Publisher Registration Form to receive your 360Giving Publisher prefix.
You will decide what file format to use for publishing your grant information.
Using the correct data formatting and headings you will transform your grants data into 360Giving data.
You will use the 360Giving Data Quality Tool to check if your data is ready to be published.

For many publishers, preparing their data is a manual process that involves exporting information from a grants management system and converting it in a spreadsheet file. However, some grants management systems make it possible to build in some or all of the steps needed to convert the information, so it can be exported directly from the system in 360Giving data format.

Your prepared file of 360Giving data needs to be made available online accompanied with an open license, which provides clear permissions to allow for its use. This step usually involves uploading the file to your website and linking to the file with text referring to the open license.
The final step is to let 360Giving know that your data has been published by submitting the file to the 360Giving Data Registry.
Once your file has been added to the 360Giving Data Registry your grant data will then start to appear in GrantNav, 360Insights and other tools and platforms that use 360Giving data.

Once you have published 360Giving data for the first time, you will decide the frequency of your updates to add more grants.
It is a good idea to document your publishing process as a reminder for when you come to make updates to your data.
You can amend data you have published to correct errors or make updates to reflect changes to your grants. You may also receive requests from grantees to make amendments if any inaccurate or misleading information has been published about their organisation.

360Giving support is free¶

There are no registration fees or costs associated with publishing your grants data in the 360Giving Data Standard. 360Giving support for publishers is provided free of charge.

Preparing 360Giving data does require a commitment of resources from the publisher in terms of staff time, especially when publishing your data for the first time.

There can however be costs related to consultancy or support fees to get a grants management system set up to export 360Giving data.

360Giving Helpdesk¶

Our Helpdesk provides pro-bono support to help funders navigate the steps to publish their grant data using the 360Giving Data Standard. We provide guidance and direct support to help streamline the process as far as possible.

You can contact 360Giving Helpdesk via support@threesixtygiving.org. Visit our website to find out other ways to get support with publishing.

Who publishes 360Giving data¶

Any type of funder can publish their grants data in the 360Giving Data Standard. Over 250 funders share 360Giving data. They range in size from large organisations with many staff to small trustee-run trusts and include family, corporate and community foundations, central, devolved and local governments, lottery distributors and livery companies, as well as benevolent charities and grantmakers to individuals.

The majority of funders sharing 360Giving data make grants to recipients based in the UK, however it is also possible to use the 360Giving Data Standard to share data about international grants.

Although initially designed for sharing data about grants to organisations, an update to the 360Giving Data Standard in 2022 has enabled the publication of grants to individuals.

View our visualisations to find out more about the different types of funders publishing 360Giving data.

Why publish 360Giving data?¶

Find out more about the benefits of publishing 360Giving data.

About grants management systems¶

Funders of all shapes and sizes have become 360Giving data publishers. Many using a wide range of grants management systems but some collect basic data in spreadsheets.

Where and how you collect and store information about your grants has a fundamental impact on the data you will be able to share. This will also influence the practical process taken to format your data to the 360Giving Data Standard.

When you contact 360Giving Helpdesk and fill out our Publisher Registration form we will ask what grants management systems you use. Whatever the answer, there will be useful learning to share from our work supporting over 250 other funders to share their grants data.

Go to the prepare page for further details about the likely impact your grants management system has on your publishing process.

Publishing resources for grants to individuals¶

For funders of grants to individuals, there is a special guide on publishing data responsibly so that the privacy and confidentiality of the recipients is protected. The guidance provides information about key concepts and descriptions of the fields and codelists available for funders of grants to individuals to use, and provides templates to support the preparation of the data.

Read the guide for grants to individuals.

Publishing resources for community foundations¶

For community foundations using the Digits2 grants management system there is special guidance about how to use a built-in 360Giving data extract for publishing 360Giving data.

Read the guide for community foundations using the D2 system.

Key concepts¶

Open data¶

360Giving data is open data, which is defined as follows:

Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose (subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness).

For further information visit the Open Definition website.

360Giving data¶

360Giving data is the term we use to describe any grant information shared in the 360Giving Data Standard. 360Giving data can be viewed in files published by a wide range of funders or explored in online tools built by 360Giving and others.

Publishers and publishing¶

Organisations that share 360Giving data are the owners of the information and when they make the files of data available online as open data, it is called publishing the data. That is why we call the funders that share 360Giving data Publishers.

JSON¶

The 360Giving Data Standard is defined by a JSON Schema, which describes the structure and attributes of the information can be shared. JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation, is a data interchange format commonly used for transmitting data in web applications.

For further information visit the JSON schema website.

What‘s next?¶

Read our guidance about planning your process and deciding what data to share.

Getting further help

This guidance aims to support funders through the 360Giving publishing process. If you can't find the information you need or you have further questions email 360Giving Helpdesk. You can help us improve this guidance by filling out our feedback form.