Funding Type categories
proposal

We propose to introduce shared categories recommended for use in the Funding Type fields. We have heard from users through both formal and informal feedback and requests that they needed more information about the types of funding being given.

The proposed categories will allow grantmakers to share information about whether the funding is capital, unrestricted, for project costs or for something else, in a way that is consistent across different organisations. Once implemented, this change will make the data shared about funding type more useful and usable. It will make the data easier to analyse and use in our tools, especially GrantNav.

What categories are being proposed

These categories are based on an analysis of the existing use of the Funding Type field, as well as desk research into categories used by other stakeholders of data about the grantmaking sector, including the Charity Commission for England and Wales SORP expenditure types, Directory of Social Change funding types, Candid Philanthropy types and Funders for Race Equality Alliance types.

Code	Name	Description
FT01	Unrestricted	No restrictions to funding at all
FT02	Running costs	Restricted to “Core”, revenue, overheads, and other operational costs
FT03	Project costs	Restricted to a particular programme, project or specific items or activities. Includes contribution to related running costs
FT04	Salary costs	Restricted to a salary only with no other running costs
FT10	Capital	Purchase, develop or upgrade assets with a longer lifespan such as equipment, buildings, land, technology platforms
FT11	Capital and running costs	A mixture of assets and running costs
FT20	Regranting	Regranting and delegated funds to be distributed to other organisations or individuals in a mixture of funding types

Why are these categories being proposed?

The 360Giving Data Standard has a set of fields called Funding Type, defined as “Information about the type of funding provided by the grant”.

Currently, only eight funders use the Funding Type field. The fields allow for any value to be included which results in inconsistency in the data, with a mixture of similar but slightly different terms shared, making the data unusable when looked at all together. Many more funders include references to funding type in grant title or description fields, but with a similar variation in the range of terms used.

However, this lack of usable data is contrasted with a growing need for this information.

In UKGrantmaking and our other research, there’s a gap in our understanding of grantmaking picture because of crucial missing information about funding type.
Feedback from the readers of our research and users of the data shows strong interest in analysis of grantmaking by funding type.
Searches for funding types in GrantNav represent one of the most common types of keyword search after funder names, sectors or themes, and place names. There have been hundreds of searches for ‘core’ and ‘capital’.

We want to encourage more sharing of the funding type field, and to support funders to do so in a useful and usable way. We believe developing these shared categories is the best way to achieve this goal.

Using shared categories will:

Provide greater clarity for funders about the purpose and value of the data
Help avoid ambiguity around the use of different terms
Make the data easier to use and analyse
Support inclusion in GrantNav filters or dashboards in the longer-term future

We’ve seen the difference shared categories can make through our co-development of grant purpose and grant reason codelists for grants to individuals, which make it possible to aggregate the data and show collective impact in our Grants to Individuals Dashboard.

We hope that over time, as funders adopt the recommended funding type categories in their data, we’ll be able to develop even richer insights in UKGrantmaking and other analysis of the grants data.

Impact on existing publishers and users of the 360Giving Data Standard

The recommended shared categories are intended for use in the existing 360Giving Data Standard’s Funding Type fields. This means that we won’t need to make any changes to the Standard, and once the categories are agreed, funders will be able to start publishing data using them straight away.

Existing 360Giving data publishers that decide to start using the recommended categories will be able to do so by adding or updating the Funding Type fields and categories in their published grants data.
For data users, as data is published using the new recommended categories, the information will appear in the funding type fields.

When can we expect to see this change rolled out?

Subject to a successful consultation, we aim to roll out guidance and support on using the recommended funding type categories by March 2026.

We’d love to hear from you about whether these categories would be useful. Have your say by completing our consultation form by 5pm on 6 February 2026.

Please also share this consultation with any person or organisation interested in understanding open data on funding type better.

Take part in the funding type consultation