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Publisher Guidance

Host your 360Giving data using cloud storage

This step-by-step guidance is designed to help you if you use one of the three most common file-sharing services to host 360Giving data: Google Drive, Dropbox, and SharePoint.

Google Drive

Google provides users with the Google Drive service, offering 15GB of free storage space.

To share a 360Giving data file using Google Drive, it must first be converted to a Google Sheets document.

The process of sharing 360Giving data files through Google Drive is as follows:

1. On your Google Drive, create a new Google Sheets document. Select New > Google Sheets.

2. Import your 360Giving Excel or CSV file into Google Sheets. Select File > Import > Upload, and then select the file from your computer or drag and drop it into the window.

3. If you are using an Excel file, choose ‘Replace Spreadsheet’ and click Import data.

4. If you are using a CSV file, choose ‘Replace Spreadsheet’ as your import option. Choose Separator type as ‘Detect automatically’ and answer ‘Yes’ to ‘Convert text to numbers and dates’ and click ‘Import data’.

5. If they appear in your data, check the Recipient Org:Charity Number and Recipient Org:Company Number columns. Google Sheets often assumes these columns include numbers and incorrectly puts decimal points into them. There is a simple fix: select the whole column (click the column letter) and then use the menu to select Format > Number > Plain text.

6. You can rename the file with your preferred title by going to File > Rename.

7. Share your file so that it is publicly accessible to anyone with the link. Select Share > Get Shareable Link. Select the Link Sharing option ‘Anyone with the link can view’.

8. Copy the file URL, which will resemble the following example with ‘usp=sharing’ at the end:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gyyHFzS60yrMqindaaTNW8kSFa0sOIZAjDIR8sZ5dLA/edit?usp=sharing

9. Change the end of the link to export?format=xlsx, so that it looks like the following example:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gyyHFzS60yrMqindaaTNW8kSFa0sOIZAjDIR8sZ5dLA/export?format=xlsx

10. Copy this newly-formatted link to check your data file one more time using the 360Giving Data Quality Checker.

11. Once you’re ready to publish the data, follow the steps to submit your link to our data tools.

It is best practice to keep your published data in this single Google Sheets document. If another Google Sheets document is created, the link will change, and you’ll need let us know by contacting 360Giving Helpdesk via support@threesixtygiving.org so we can update the new link in the Data Quality Dashboard.

To replace a current Google Sheets document with an updated Excel file of 360Giving data, simply follow Steps 2 and 3. If updating with a CSV file, follow Step 4. This imports the contents of the new Excel or CSV file and replaces all the existing data.

Dropbox

Dropbox offers users a Basic account, which provides 2GB of free storage space.

The process of sharing 360Giving data files through Dropbox is as follows:

1. Upload the file to your Dropbox account, storing it in whatever folder you find useful.

2. Share the file by creating a shared link for view-only access, which means anyone with the link can view the file, but can’t alter it.

3. Copy this link. It will resemble the following example:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ju3b1wne41xbowy/360Giving-dataset.xlsx?dl=0

4. Change the ending of this from ‘dl=0’ to ‘dl=1’, eg:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ju3b1wne41xbowy/360Giving-dataset.xlsx?dl=1

5. Copy this newly-formatted link to check your data file one more time using the 360Giving Data Quality Checker.

6. Once you’re ready to publish the data, follow the steps to submit your link to our data tools.

Be aware that this link can be easily changed (by being deleted and recreated) and may therefore become invalid. If this happens, please let our Helpdesk know by emailing support@threesixtygiving.org the new link to your data file.

SharePoint

SharePoint is available to users of Microsoft 365. The process for publishing a file using SharePoint is as follows:

  1. Navigate to the SharePoint document library where your documents are located.
  2. Select the file and click on the ‘Copy link’ button in the ribbon, and choose ‘Copy the URL’
  3. Add ‘&download=1’ to the end of the URL. It will resemble the following example: https://domain.sharepoint.com/:w:/s/sharingfolder/ECm5WU0-3ohOo2n8-q5GQG4Bar33Prunsg4g9QvAPu3cRQ?e=UPMiz5&download=1
  4. Share the file so anyone can view it without needing a login. If this goes against your internal security settings, you may need to set up a dedicated sharing folder.
  5. Copy this newly-formatted link to check your data file one more time using the 360Giving Data Quality Checker.
  6. Once you’re ready to publish the data, follow the steps to submit your link to our data tools.

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