Updating your 360Giving data¶
Key tasks
- Make a note of your publishing processes as a reminder for next time.
- Decide how frequently to make updates to your 360Giving data.
- Submit any new or updated files of 360Giving data to the Registry.
Overview¶
Many organisations choose to update their data annually, some publish every six months or quarterly, with others doing an update following each grant award round. The aim is to have timely information available - but what ‘timely‘ means will be different for different organisations, depending on circumstances and how often grants are awarded.
Making an update to your 360Giving data will normally follow the same process as publishing data for the first time, but it should be quicker the second time around.
Document your publishing process¶
It is a good idea to write down your internal process for publishing your 360Giving grants data. This will make it easier when you need to make updates to your data, particularly if you intend to update on an annual basis as it can be easy to forget the process when done infrequently.
These notes will also be valuable if someone takes over responsibility for preparing and publishing your 360Giving data.
You may want to make a note of:
- The range of data you are publishing, and where it can be found in your systems or files.
- The practical steps you take to transform the data into 360Giving format - are you exporting data directly from your system, using a conversion tool or another method.
- Any data protection or responsible data checks and changes that need to be made before the data is ready for publishing.
- Who is involved in checking or signing off the data.
- Where your 360Giving files are hosted, and who is responsible for adding files to your website or hosting platform.
How often should you update your data?¶
Minimum good practice is to update data on an annual basis.
The decision about how frequently to make updates is for each publishing organisation to decide and should be informed by your grantmaking cycles and capacity.
Once you have completed the 360Giving publication process for the first time, you will have a better understanding of the amount of time and resources needed. This will help you work out how to fit updating your 360Giving data alongside your other grantmaking and publicity cycles.
How to make updates to your data¶
When you have more grant data to publish you will follow the same steps you used to prepare your first batch of data.
The process to make an update of your data might involve running the same report from the earlier grant data but increasing the latest grant date to cover the current period. This report would include information about grants you‘ve already published and newer grants and will reflect any changes that have been made since you last published your data.
This process is only possible if you do not make changes to your data to get it ready for publication, so that the information in your system matches what is in your 360Giving data file.
If you make changes to your data after exporting it from your system - for example changing description text to make it suitable for publishing openly – then you will need to produce a report to cover only the recently awarded grants and then incorporate the data into the existing file.
Once the data is ready and it has passed the Data Quality Tool checks you can either:
- Add the new grant data into the existing file of published data and re-upload the file to your website. If you can keep the file name and the position of the file the same following an update it will mean the link from the Data Registry to your data will stay the same – so your updates will automatically get picked up in our system.
- Upload a new file alongside your existing file, add a link to the file from your hosting page and let the 360Giving Helpdesk know about the new file.
Letting 360Giving know about updates to your data¶
If you publish a new file of data, or if your existing data file has been updated and the location or name of your data file has changed, you need to submit the changes to the Data Registry using the 360Giving data file submission form.
Remember to remove any old files from your website when making updates.
If your 360Giving data file has a generic name and it is uploaded to a consistent place in your website then any subsequent updates you make to the file will get picked up by the Data Registry automatically because the link to your file will be unchanged. If your 360Giving data file has a consistent link it will not be necessary for you to fill out the 360Giving data submission form each time you make an update.
Read our guidance on good practice in file management for further information about making your file link consistent.
Making changes to your published data¶
You can make changes to your data at any time. This may be to add new grants data or amend details or to fix typos. It might also be to remove grants that were awarded but didn’t go ahead, or to amend grants that have been varied in some way.
For further guidance about making changes to your data to note variations to your grants, see our blog post.
Making amendments to your 360Giving data can be done manually, by taking a copy of your published data file and making the necessary changes. You then save the file and re-upload it to your website, replacing the current file.
Grantee amendments¶
Recipients of grants published in 360Giving data have a mechanism to report issues related to inaccurate or misleading information about their organisations; such as the recipient name or recipient identifiers, description text or location. The mechanism also allows recipients to request the removal of information considered personal or sensitive.
If a recipient organisation raises a valid issue about data you have published using the Grantee Amendment form, the details will be passed on to your organisation by 360Giving.
Publishing organisations are not required to make changes to their 360Giving data following a recipient request, unless there is a data protection infringement. However sharing high-quality and accurate information benefits both funders and recipients by reducing the risk of the information being misunderstood or misused. It is expected that requests to remove personal or sensitive information should be actioned promptly, and in these cases, 360Giving will follow our existing Take Down Policy.
Find out more about the grantee amendments mechanism.
Changing how your name appears in 360Giving tools¶
The name of the funding organisation that appears on GrantNav and 360Insights is mostly derived from the 360Giving data that is published. This means that to update how your name appears you need to update the text in the Funding Org:Name column in your data, and then re-publish the file(s).
The name that appears on the 360Giving Data Registry, and the organisation page for each publisher in GrantNav, is controlled by 360Giving. For any queries about the process to change the name in your data, and to request an amendment to the 360Giving Data Registry please contact the 360Giving Helpdesk via support@threesixtygiving.org.
Taking down published data¶
A fundamental aspect of publishing using the 360Giving Data Standard, and publishing open data in general, is that once the information is released it may be downloaded and used by anyone.
An organisation is free to decide to stop publishing data and/or can remove the data from their website, however the information that has been published may still be held and used by anyone who has already downloaded it.
360Giving has a Take Down Policy for the data linked from our Data Registry and loaded into our tools, so we will remove any published data on request.
What‘s next?¶
Read our introduction the tools that use 360Giving data.
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.