Guide to location data

Why is location data important?

Location data helps users to understand where organisations are based or activities are happening, which helps to build a more complete picture of where funding is going geographically.

Finding out where in the UK grants go is a key question that 360Giving data can be used to answer, but this is only possible when good quality and consistent location data – also known as geodata – is shared.

Location is not one of the ten core fields, so the 360Giving Data Standard does not require geodata to be included. However, location information is so useful that we do recommend including it whenever possible. When data also includes geographic codes, it makes the data more comparable and allows it to be visualised in maps or analysed alongside other datasets, such as the Indices of Multiple Deprivation.

The basics

The 360Giving Data Standard includes a range of ways to describe locations, which are split into four types of fields: recipient, funder and beneficiary location, and location scope.

• Recipient location is where the recipient of a grant is based.
• Funder location is where the funder of a grant is based.
• Beneficiary location is where the funded work is being delivered, or where the people who access the funded work are based.
• Location scope is the geographical scope of the funded work.

Recipient, funder, and beneficiary locations can be shared in the form of place names and geographic codes. Recipient and funder locations can also be shared in the form of an address.

Location scope is shared in the form of codes from a codelist, which is a predefined set of categories with corresponding names and descriptions.

About geographic codes

A geographic code, or geocode, is a unique identifier that represents a location or area. These geocodes allow geographic entities to be distinguished from each other and provide a more consistent way to identify a place than using the location name.

Geocodes are useful in the same way as other identifiers in the 360Giving Data Standard. Whilst a person may be good at recognising that “Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames”, “Kingston” and “London Borough of Kingston” refer to the same place, computers cannot make this connection unless a unique identifier in the form of a geocode is provided.

Geocodes can be used to produce maps showing the distribution of funding geographically and allow grants data to be analysed alongside official statistics, such as the Indices of Multiple Deprivation.

Whenever possible, geocodes should be shared by funders publishing 360Giving data, along with the name of the area.

Types of geographic codes

• Country codes – two-letter country codes taken from ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 codelist. For example, the code for the United Kingdom is GB, the code for Spain is ES.
• ONS codes – nine-character codes managed by the Office for National Statistics which describe a wide range of geographical areas in the UK, including the four nations of the UK, regions in England, local authority areas, electoral wards and Census output areas.
• Postal Codes — full or partial postal codes associated with a UK postal address, or the equivalent codes used in other countries.
• Latitude and Longitude – coordinates that indicate a point on the globe, using the World Geodetic System.

About Location scope codes

Location scope codes are drawn from a codelist developed and managed by 360Giving, which provides a short name, description and code for each Location scope value. These codes allow funders to share consistent information about the geographical scope relevant to each grant. For example, the code GLS030 can be used to indicate that a grant is intended to have a national impact.

See our Codelist guide for more detailed guidance on what codelists are and how they are used in the 360Giving Data Standard.

Recipient organisation location

Recipient location fields indicate where the grant recipient is based. It could be the location of a main office or branch, whatever is most appropriate for the grant.

Many funders collect address information from applicants during the grants management process, making it straightforward to include recipient location information. Over two-thirds of organisations sharing 360Giving data include this type of information.

Address fields

There are fields which allow for the full postal address of an organisation to be published. However, providing a postcode is sufficient to make the data useful.

Publishing street addresses is not recommended because it does not add to the usefulness of the data, and omitting these details helps to avoid privacy issues if a recipient organisation is registered at a home address or if an organisation is supporting vulnerable people (for example, a refuge).

View the full range of available recipient organisation address fields.

Considering privacy

In populated areas, a postcode is unlikely to identify a specific building, but in rural or less built-up areas, a postcode could be linked to a small number of addresses.

When sharing data about grants awarded to individuals, or small and informal charities or groups whose address may be a home address, it is not appropriate to share any address or postcode data directly.

In these cases, the location information should be converted from postcodes into geocodes at Ward level or higher prior to publishing the data.

See our guidance on converting postcodes into geocodes for more information, and our guidance on data protection for further considerations about privacy and location data.

Recipient location codes

In cases when it isn’t possible or appropriate to publish postal codes, it is possible to publish the recipient location in the form of Office for National Statistics (ONS) geocodes.

When 360Giving data includes recipient location codes at UK Country, English Region, Local Authority, Ward or LSOA level, these will work with the location filtering functions of GrantNav, 360Giving’s search engine for grants data.

The fields used to share recipient location geocodes should be accompanied by fields for the location name whenever possible.

Field name	Description	Example value
Recipient Org:Location:Name	A name for this location.	Barrow-in-Furness
Recipient Org:Location:Geographic Code	A code referring to a geographical area, drawn from an established gazetteer such as the ONS Register of Geographic Codes in the UK. For example, the code for a local authority ward or parliamentary constituency.	E07000027

View the full range of available recipient location fields.

Beneficiary location

Beneficiary location fields are used to describe where the funded work is being delivered or where the people who will access the service or activity are based.

These fields can also be used to describe the geographical scope of a grant programme or funder’s area of operation.

Why is beneficiary location data useful?

Including beneficiary location can provide a more accurate picture of where grants are going geographically, as these fields focus on where the impact of the funding is being directed.

Beneficiary location is especially important in cases where the recipient location is in a different place from the activity being funded. This is common for grants awarded to larger regional or national organisations with head offices based in major cities that deliver services in different places around the country.

Beneficiary location names

The location names could describe any type and size of place: an estate, ward, town or city, local government area, parliamentary constituency, region or country. These values should be relevant to the scope of the grant or funded activity.

Including the location name allows users to understand which places funding is reaching.

Using location names consistently

Ensuring location names are consistent within your own data will make the information clearer and more usable, especially if it is not possible to also publish geocodes alongside the names.

For example, avoid having “Bristol, City of” and “City of Bristol” and “Bristol” or “Tyne & Wear” and “Tyne and Wear” in the same data.

Also, avoid using ambiguous terms such as ‘National’, which in a UK context could be interpreted as meaning any of the four nations or UK-wide. Use the specific country name – England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, or UK to ensure users can interpret your grants data correctly.

Beneficiary location geocodes

Including geocodes that correspond with the beneficiary location names increases the usability of the data by providing a consistent way to identify these places, which makes the data comparable across different funders.

Data with geocodes can be used to produce maps that show the geographic distribution of funding, allowing grants data to be linked with other data sources, such as official statistics. When 360Giving data includes beneficiary location codes at UK Country, English Region, Local Authority, Ward or LSOA level, these will work with the location filtering functions of GrantNav, 360Giving’s search engine for grants data.

The fields used to share beneficiary location geocodes should be accompanied by fields for the location name and geocode type whenever possible.

Field name	Description	Example value
Beneficiary Location:Name	A name for this location.	Barrow-in-Furness
Beneficiary Location:Geographic Code	A code referring to a geographical area, drawn from an established gazetteer such as the ONS Register of Geographic Codes in the UK. For example, the code for a local authority ward or parliamentary constituency.	E07000027

View the full range of available beneficiary location fields.

Challenges with beneficiary location data

Beneficiary location data can provide a more accurate location for where the intended impact of a grant will be, and is therefore more useful when carrying out analysis on where grants go. However, it is also a more challenging type of data to collect and publish.

The types of challenges include:

• This data can be difficult to collect consistently, especially if the size of areas supported by grants varies greatly, from those with a national or regional scope to local or hyperlocal delivery areas.
• A grant could fund activities in an area that crosses local authority or region boundaries or doesn’t relate to any officially defined areas.
• The grant could fund activities being delivered in more than one place.
• The delivery location could be undefined, for example, because the grant is unrestricted, is funding policy work or services that are provided online.

Start by sharing what you can

We recommend that you publish beneficiary location whenever possible if you collect location data that could be shared as beneficiary location.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to beneficiary location, as funders have a diverse range of geographical scopes and priorities.

If you have a geographical focus to your funding, or you are place-based and focused on a defined place (such as a community foundation), you may be collecting useful and detailed geodata which can be shared.

If you are a funder with national programmes or without a geographic focus, you might collect this location data at a high level that indicates the region or country, but does not drill down to smaller areas.

If location isn’t relevant to some or all of your grants, you can indicate this using the ‘Undefined’ code from the Location Scope codelist. Read our guidance on location scope to find out more.

Currently, two-thirds of organisations sharing 360Giving data include beneficiary location name information, but only one-third include beneficiary location codes.

Guide to beneficiary location

Funders have a wide range of reasons for collecting beneficiary location data, and the method and level of detail will depend on the questions the data is needed to answer.

These examples highlight a few of the common approaches and outline the benefits and limitations these can have. Hopefully, they will provide inspiration for funders that don’t currently collect and share beneficiary location information but would like to do so in future.

Project location postcode

Funders can ask applicants to provide a ‘project postcode’ to indicate where the funded work will take place. This postcode might relate to an address or could also be picked from within a wider area. This data can be shared directly as a postal code or converted into a geocode prior to publication.

The advantage of working with postcodes is that these are the most commonly used and understood type of geodata. A postcode can be matched to ONS geocodes and scaled up to a larger area when appropriate. Postcodes are also easy to convert into latitude and longitude coordinates for use in maps.

This approach can be suitable for collecting data about very localised funding or grants aimed at a specific location, such as a building or park. It is less accurate or useful for capturing the location of grants for any activities carried out over a larger area or multiple locations.

Location picklist

On application forms, funders may provide a list of locations – known as a picklist – for applicants to select the place or places where they are delivering their activities.

Grants management systems might have an ‘area of operation’ field with region or country values by default. For funders with a regional or county area of focus, the list of locations might be broken down into the local authority areas. For funders focused on a single city or council area, the list of locations might be at ward level. These place names can be published in 360Giving data on their own or with their corresponding geocodes.

The advantage of working with picklist values is that the data is consistent, and it can be straightforward to match these names with geocodes. This approach can be suitable for a wide range of funders and scaled to work for those funding nationally or locally.

When location is collected at a regional or country level, the data is less usable for mapping, but will still provide useful information for analysing broad trends and showing when the funded activity is in a different place from the recipient location.

When multiple locations are provided for each grant, it is possible to publish these in 360Giving data. See the guidance below for further information on sharing data with multiple beneficiary locations.

Funder or programme area of operation

Funders with a defined area of operation or programmes (with place-specific eligibility criteria) will know the maximum possible location area of a grant, even if specific geodata isn’t being collected.

This type of scope data can be applied to all grants that meet the criteria, providing a useful starting point for publishing location data. When the funder or programme scope is a local authority area, this provides useful data for geographical analysis being carried out at a county, regional or national level.

However, the potential for variation within council areas means data provided at this level or higher cannot be meaningfully compared with statistical data such as Indices of Multiple Deprivation, which are linked to small-area geographies.

Sharing data with multiple beneficiary locations

It is possible to include multiple beneficiary locations for each grant because the 360Giving Data Standard allows for the creation of one-to-many relationships.

Multiple beneficiary location fields could be used to:

• Provide alternative types of geodata for the same location – for example, including the local authority ward and parliamentary constituency area codes, and latitude and longitude coordinates, which are all based on the same project postcode area.
• Describe two or more different locations that are impacted by the funding.
• Represent a bespoke area that does not correspond to any official ONS geocode by using a group of smaller area geocodes.

For publishers using JSON format, sharing data with multiple locations for each grant is straightforward, as the schema is designed to work in this way.

For publishers using spreadsheets, there are a couple of ways to share multiple locations, which we have detailed below.

Including multiple location fields in the main sheet

For publishers who have three or fewer fields of beneficiary location per grant, it will be easiest to include all three within the main grants sheet.

In these cases, the fields or sets of fields are numbered, starting with 0 for the first column.

For example:

Beneficiary Location:0:Name	Beneficiary Location:1:Name	Beneficiary Location:2:Name
Copeland	South Lakeland	Barrow-in-Furness

Including multiple location fields in an additional sheet

With four or more columns of location data, it may become easier to include all the beneficiary location columns in a separate sheet within the file.

Using this method, there should be a row for each location, repeating the grant Identifier for each group of locations associated with the grant. The following example shows two grants which each of which has three Beneficiary Locations:

Identifier	Beneficiary Location:Name	Beneficiary Location:Geographic Code
360G-ExampleFdn-001	Copeland	E07000029
360G-ExampleFdn-001	South Lakeland	E07000031
360G-ExampleFdn-001	Barrow-in-Furness	E07000027
360G-ExampleFdn-002	Carlisle	E07000028
360G-ExampleFdn-002	Allerdale	E07000026
360G-ExampleFdn-002	Eden	E07000030

Location scope

The 360Giving Data Standard allows funders to share a Location scope for each grant, which describes the geographical scope of the funded work.

About the codelist

The codelist includes seven categories and corresponding codes that should be used to describe the geographical scope of the funded work. The codes represent the different scopes a grant can have, from global to local areas. There is also a code to indicate when a grant has an undefined location, for example, because the funded activity is online with no restrictions to who can access it.

The location scopes were designed to align with international geographical divisions, so the codelist can be applied consistently in all contexts. This means that there are areas grouped into a single scope in the codelist that have more sub-divisions in the UK.

Location scope codelist

Code	Title	Description
GLS010	Global	The location scope is global.
GLS020	Supranational	The location scope is a supranational region or continent.
GLS030	National	The activity scope covers a country, as defined by ISO 3166.
GLS040	Subnational region	The activity scope covers a first-level subnational administrative area.
GLS050	Local authority	The activity scope covers a second-level subnational administrative area.
GLS060	Local area	Location scope covers a small area.
GLS099	Undefined	The location scope is undefined.

Explanation of terms

Global

Code to use: GLS010

When to use this code: Grants which have a global scope, meaning the area where the funded work is being delivered, or the people who access the funded work are based all around the world.

Supranational

Code to use: GLS020

When to use this code: Grants which have a scope which is a supranational region or continent, for example, the European Union, North America or Africa.

National

Code to use: GLS030

When to use this code: Grants which have a scope which covers a country, as defined by ISO 3166, for example, the United Kingdom, France or Sierra Leone.

Subnational region

Code to use: GLS040

When to use this code: Grants which have a scope which covers a first-level subnational administrative area, for example, English Regions, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Local authority

Code to use: GLS050

When to use this code: Grants which have a scope which covers a second-level subnational administrative area, for example, Local Authority Districts (England), Principal Areas (Wales), Council Areas (Scotland), Local Government Districts (Northern Ireland), Metropolitan Counties, Non-Metropolitan Counties and Unitary Authorities (England).

Local area

Code to use: GLS060

When to use this code: Grants which have a scope which covers a small area below local authority level, for example, a Ward, MSOA, LSOA, parish, town, village, estate or park.

Undefined

Code to use: GLS099

When to use this code: Grants which have a scope which is undefined, where location is not relevant, for example, for online activities with no geographical focus.

Deciding which code to use

The code descriptions and guidance provide examples of which codes to use to categorise grants’ location scope, focused on the UK context. If the grant you want to categorise could fit into more than one scope – for example, the grant is funding a local pilot and a UK-wide awareness-raising campaign – label using the broadest applicable scope, GLS030 (National).

If the grant is funding activity in multiple areas within a single scope – for example, funding a project operating in two or more English Regions or activities that are England-wide – the location scope would be GLS040 (Subnational region).

If you are unsure which category is appropriate for your grant, contact the 360Giving Helpdesk support@threesixtygiving.org for further guidance.

Guidance on using the codelist

To start including Location scope codes in 360Giving data, add the Location scope field to the file, and then add the relevant code to your grants wherever possible.

Please note: Only codes from the Location scope codelist should be included in the Location scope field. Do not add any other codes or text into this field. Be aware that these codes are case sensitive and should be reproduced exactly as they appear in the codelist.

When it is not possible to provide a Location scope value for a grant, the field must be left blank.

Funding organisation location

In addition to providing location information for recipients and beneficiaries, the location of the funding organisation itself can be included, either using the address or location fields.View the full range of available funding organisation address fields or funding organisation location fields.