This Saturday is international Open Data Day. Open data helps to build the bigger picture of who, where and what is being funded in the UK, and OCF has been a key contributor since 2013.
Open Data Day is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. It is an opportunity to show the benefits of open data and encourage the adoption of open data policies in government, business and civil society.
Oxfordshire Community Foundation is leading the way in the grant-making sector by sharing details of our funding using the open data standard developed by 360Giving. By sharing this data openly, we are making it easier to find and compare grants made across the UK. This means charities can access information about who might fund them, and grant-makers can make more informed decisions.
We started sharing our grants data using the 360Giving Standard in April 2013, and have just published data from our most recent grants round this week. As the information is open data, it means it can be freely used by others, for example to research into funding provided to a particular cause or region. Before being published, funders remove the personal details of any individuals involved in the grant application.
It also means the data can be included in tools and platforms and seen alongside other datasets. The GrantNav platform is a good example of this. It takes all the data being shared in the 360Giving Standard and has an easy-to-use search function, meaning that users can explore and download over £17 billion of funding data all in one place. For the first time, UK funders and charities are able to get a snapshot of funding across the country.
OCF’s Community Impact Analyst Simon Barnard says: “Open data on UK grant-making will help us all see the funding landscape more clearly and collaborate better. It could revolutionise grant-making going forward and we hope other funders, including the network of other UK community foundations, will join us and open up their data.”
Fran Perrin, co-founder and Chair of 360Giving says: “By sharing grants data in an open and comparable way, we can shine a light on grant-making, increasing transparency and improving our understanding of the sector. We are delighted that Oxfordshire Community Foundation is leading the way, and hope that others will follow them in 2018.”
OCF’s data is available on our website here. It can also be seen alongside other funders that are sharing their data openly using the 360Giving Standard on platforms such as GrantNav and Beehive.