Introduction¶
This guidance aims to provide funders of grants to individuals with what they need to know in order to publish data about their grantmaking using the 360Giving Data Standard.
This guide fits alongside the general Guidance for Publishers, and links to other pages when that information is relevant to funders of grants to individuals.
Not sure where to start? Read Useful information before you start to find out what to expect when publishing 360Giving data.
The guidance is divided into two parts:
Publisher Guidance
This provides an overview of the steps and decisions that need to be taken to publish 360Giving data. Each stage provides information about key concepts and descriptions of the fields and codelists available for funders of grants to individuals to use.
- Plan your process and data
- Data protection
- Prepare and format your data
Data Preparation templates
This provides detailed guidance about the setup and use of templates that have been developed specifically to support funders of grants to individuals to format their grant data as 360Giving data. This guidance is intended to be used when you are ready to take the practical steps to prepare your data. Many of the recommendations and steps needed to ensure data protection outlined in the Publisher Guidance section are put into action in the Data Preparation templates.
- Introduction
- How the template is set up
- Setting up your template
- How to use the template
- Next steps
Getting further help¶
360Giving provides free support for funders to publish their grants. If you have questions about the guidance and templates provided please email 360Giving Helpdesk via support@threesixtygiving.org or book a 1-1 Publisher Support call to discuss your query.
Background¶
When 360Giving developed the Data Standard, it was initially designed and intended for describing grants to organisations, including fields which reference a ‘recipient organisation‘. It is now also possible to provide details of a recipient individual‘ through new fields and codelists developed in collaboration with funders of grants to individuals which were introduced in December 2022.
The templates and guidance focus on the core fields which must be published, alongside recommended fields that it may be useful for publishers of grants to individuals to share. The guidance also explains how to use two new codelists that have been developed specifically for publishing data about grants to individuals.
Why publish information about grants to individuals?¶
360Giving was approached by funders of grants to individuals who were keen to see and better understand their grants in the context of other grants to individuals and other grants to organisations. While there had been previous efforts to collect and share data, these were often one-off, manual processes that didn’t support more collective and systematic use of the data.
Benefits for funders making grants to individuals¶
- Publishing grants to individuals responsibly using the 360Giving Data Standard supports transparency and accountability, allowing funders to meet a norm of expected grantmaking practice. It makes it possible to see these grants alongside grants to organisations in 360Giving tools, especially benefitting place-based funders to have a better understanding of the overall funding landscape in their area.
- The development of new shared categorisations for grant purpose and reason will make it easier to aggregate data between funders of individuals, allowing the data to be analysed effectively and visualised in dashboards.
Benefits to the sector¶
- Making grants to individuals data available in the 360Giving Data Standard, and 360Giving tools such as GrantNav and 360Insights, is important to the funding sector as a whole. Grants to individuals are a missing part of the UK grantmaking picture and this is impacting understanding of the sector.
- This additional information will enable better analysis of trends in grantmaking, especially if there is an increase in this type of giving. It will build a broader picture of grantmaking funded nationally and locally allowing the sector to communicate the collective support being provided to people and communities to key stakeholders and policy makers.
- In some locations, there has been a loss of local infrastructure and there is a higher proportion of grants to individuals, as well as a blurring of the definitions between individuals and groups, with local activists and artists receiving more grants. The missing grants are skewing our understanding of the local funding mix.
What‘s next?¶
Read our publisher guidance for funders of grants to individuals.
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.