Before you start
How to access the data
There are several ways of accessing the 360Giving data. All of these methods are free and the data is published under an open data licence, so it is available for anyone to use. We also provide guidance and support to help you access and use the data.
GrantNav
GrantNav is a free search engine that allows you to search, explore, and download grants data published by funders using the 360Giving Data Standard.
GrantNav lets you use keyword or text searches, meaning you can identify the themes or sectors being funded, and then refine your search in various ways. From your search results, you can click through to see individual grants or organisations, or download the results for further analysis.
Results can be downloaded as a CSV or JSON file to be used outside of GrantNav.
GrantVis
GrantVis is a free visualisation tool to help you understand funding data better. GrantVis combines and visualises grants data, giving an overview of grants by size, date, and location, alongside a profile of recipients. It also allows you to filter based on enhanced information about recipients.
You can visualise the results of your GrantNav search by opening it in GrantVis using the button at the top of the search results. You can also drill into the results of your GrantVis search by opening it in GrantNav using the button at the top of the page.
Note that on grants to individuals and families, more information is available on our Grants to Individuals Dashboard.
360Insights
360Giving produces dashboards, analysis and publications that can help identify trends and put the data in context – helping to achieve our vision of grantmaking becoming more informed, effective and strategic.
For example, UKGrantmaking is the definitive annual publication on grant funding in the UK, providing an interactive platform for understanding the full picture of who makes grants.
You can find our latest grantmaking analysis on 360Insights.
Technical Users
For most people, the best places to access and use 360Giving data are GrantNav and GrantVis. However, it is also possible to access the data in a direct and programmatic way via the 360Giving API or from the Datastore.
The 360Giving API and Datastore are convenient and streamlined ways for technical users, such as developers, researchers, and funders’ technical teams or suppliers, to access grants data published using the 360Giving Data Standard.
API
The 360Giving API makes it easier for developers, researchers, and data scientists to build scripts and applications that analyse, visualise or extend 360Giving data. By using the API you can use the data in your software, create platforms and tools displaying the data, incorporate the data into your own database, and more.
For example, as a researcher, you could summarise and analyse statistics about grants given by funders; or as a funder, you could create an automatically updating map of the locations of your grant recipients.
The API is an HTTP/JSON API, with endpoints to access grants data and summary data about an organisation.
Datastore
For users with complex data needs, it is possible to directly access the Datastore and run queries on it. Potential uses of the Datastore include:
- Creating a filtered dataset as raw data for a research project.
- Producing a bespoke dataset that can be regularly imported into a database powering a web app.
The Datastore is designed to facilitate one-off or repeating data transfers covering a large part of the 360Giving data. It does not include a general-purpose API and does not support API-style individual access to the data.
Access is usually through a Google Colab Python notebook, where we can supply database credentials to run SQL queries against the PostgreSQL database that holds the data.
Find out more about datastore access.
The best access method will vary depending on your needs. For most scenarios, GrantNav and GrantVis will be the most useful tools. For more complex needs, please book a free 1-1 Data Support call and we can discuss the best option for you.