Grants to individuals: list of fields with descriptions

In the 360Giving Data Standard, there are ten pieces of information that must be published for each grant, as well as a number of other recommended fields which help people understand what the grant is for.

What counts as a grant to an individual?

The 360Giving Data Standard can be used to share data about grants to individuals and families, paid as money, in the form of cash or vouchers or goods or services that have been purchased for a specific individual or family. Gifts in kind that do not have a monetary value or benefit to a specific individual or family are not normally suitable for sharing as 360Giving data.

10 core fields

These 10 ‘core fields’ cover the basic who, what, when and how much of each grant. For grants to individuals and families, they are:

Identifier

The unique identifier for this grant. Usually the identifier is constructed using the 360Giving Publisher prefix starting 360G with the unique application or grant reference taken from a grants management system, separated by dashes, for example: 360G-ExampleFunder-123

If you don’t have a unique grant reference to use, or if there are data protection reasons why the unique identifiers cannot be taken from internal systems, they will need to be created instead.

You can create unique identifiers by using sequential numbers, and some publishers also include the year in which the grant was awarded. This helps to group the grants and makes it possible to restart the sequential numbers at the beginning of each year.

Title

A title for this grant activity. The title should be under 140 characters long.

The title text should be generic to avoid the text identifying the recipient. If no suitable grant title text is available, the grant programme title or ‘Grant to Individual Recipient’ could be used instead.

Description

A short description of this grant activity (no character limit). 

The description provides a summary of the purpose of each grant, offering you the opportunity to let users know why you made the award. Searching Title and Description text is one of the main ways that users of 360Giving data identify what is being funded.

Descriptions for grants to individuals should be generic to avoid the text identifying the recipient. If no suitable grant description text is available, text describing the overall grant programme could be used instead.

Amount Awarded

The full amount awarded when the funding decision was made.

This means multi-year grants show the total amount committed, whether the funds have been fully paid out yet or not. The Amount Awarded should only include numbers, without commas or currency symbols such as £.

Currency

Currency is split from the award amount and uses a three-letter code. GBP is used to represent British Pounds.

Award Date

When the decision to award this grant was made. Dates must be in YYYY-MM-DD format.

Typically, the Award Date is the date of the grant panel or trustee board meeting at which the grant was approved. If this information is not available, the first grant payment date can be used instead.

If you don’t have a precise award date available in your systems, use a placeholder date instead. Pick the first or last day of the quarter or financial year in which the award was made.

The Award Date should always be in the past. If an award date is in the future, this may be due to a typo in the date or because the data includes grants that are not yet fully committed (and so not suitable for inclusion in your 360Giving data).

Recipient Ind:Name

The individual recipient of the grant is expected to be anonymous.

This field must not be blank, so we recommend using the generic text ‘Individual Recipient’ to ensure the privacy of the person receiving the funding.

Recipient Ind:Identifier

A globally unique identifier for this grant recipient. 

The Recipient Ind:Identifier should be constructed using your publisher prefix starting 360G, followed by ‘IND’ and a unique number, separated by dashes, for example: 360G-ExampleFunder-IND-0001

If there are data protection reasons why the unique identifiers cannot be taken from your system, they will need to be created instead. 

Funding Org:Name

The funding organisation’s name. 

This does not have to be your registered name; it can be the brand name your organisation prefers to be known by.

If your organisation awards grants on behalf of other funders, the funding organisation’s name appearing in the data would still normally be your name. 

However, the organisation named as the funding organisation in 360Giving data could be the original ‘donor’ funder if you agree on this between the funders involved. Contact the 360Giving Helpdesk if you would like to discuss the options for how to represent these kinds of funding arrangements further.

Funding Org:Identifier

A unique identifier for the funding organisation, as named in the Funding Org:Name field.

This identifier is created in the same way as a recipient identifier, based on the known company or charity number of the funder.

The 360Giving Helpdesk can provide guidance on the correct Funding Org:Identifier to use.

Recommended fields

Apart from the 10 core fields, all other fields in the 360Giving Data Standard are optional. However, 99% of funders share a range of further information, which makes their data more useful and helps users to understand their grantmaking better.

The following fields are recommended, which means you should try to include them in your data whenever possible.

Grant Programme:Title

The name of your grant programme(s).

Grant programme information helps users understand your different areas of focus or types of funding, and see how your grants vary across these areas.

There are also additional grant programme fields that can be used to share a description of the grant programme and link to further information.

Grant duration fields

Funders with recurring or longer-term grants can show this in their data by providing a start and end date of the grant, or the grant duration. It is also possible to share both types of duration information.

The grant duration fields may be less relevant for grants to individuals given for one-off purchases. However, if you fund bursaries or scholarships, the duration might represent the academic year.

Planned Dates:Start Date and Planned Dates:End Date

These fields allow you to show if a grant is for a short period, single or multi-year.

For example, the start date may be the first day of your financial year and the end date the last day of your financial year, if your funding is for a single-year period.

Planned Dates:Duration (months)

The duration of the grant is provided in months. This can default to 12 if funding is for a single-year period. 

Metadata

Metadata is data about your data. It allows people to understand how current it is and where it has come from.

Last Modified

This shows users when you last updated the information about your grant. Last Modified uses date-time format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ.

Data Source

This shows users who published the grants data. This should be a link to the website of the organisation publishing the 360Giving data.

Meta sheet

You can also include an extra sheet in your file to include a wider range of metadata about your file – a title, description, when the file was first published, about your organisation and include extra context or disclaimers.

Beneficiary location

The beneficiary location fields describe where the funded work is being delivered, the people supported by the funding are located, or they are sometimes used to describe the scope of a funder’s area of operation/benefit.

For grants to individuals, typically this will be where the person or family receiving the grant lives.

Beneficiary Location:Name

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

Beneficiary Location:Geographical Code

This is a code referring to a geographical area, usually drawn from the ONS Register of Geographic Codes in the UK, at Ward or Local Authority level.

Data protection considerations for grants to individuals

The beneficiary location fields can be used to share useful information about the location of the individual grant recipients while protecting privacy. 

The location data is shared in the form of place names and geocodes, but address and postcode data are not allowed in these fields. This means the data can be analysed geographically and used in maps, but cannot be used to identify an individual recipient’s specific location or home address.

It is recommended that location information be published at Ward area level, as this allows for a useful breakdown of grants by location, but does not allow for individuals to be identified.

Grants to individuals codelists

There are three recommended fields designed to support our understanding of grants to individuals:

• To Individuals Details:Primary Grant Reason
• To Individuals Details:Secondary Grant Reason
• To Individuals Details:Grant Purpose

The fields are designed for use with two codelists that have been developed to support the publication of information about why the grant was awarded (Grant to Individuals Reason) and what the funding will be spent on (Grant to Individuals Purpose).

We recommend that all funders of grants to individuals use these codelists in their 360Giving data, alongside the text included in the Title and Description fields. This vital information will allow your data to be analysed and compared with other funders of grants to individuals in the Grants to Individuals Dashboard and UKGrantmaking analysis.

Primary and Secondary Grant Reason

The codelist ‘Grant to Individuals Reason’ includes categories that specify the reason the grant was awarded to the individual recipient.

• The codes from this codelist must be published in two fields, To Individuals Details:Primary Grant Reason and To Individuals Details:Secondary Grant Reason.
• Each field can only be included once with a single code per grant. If there is only a primary reason, the secondary reason field can be left blank.

Code	Title	Description
GTIR010	Financial Hardship	Low income, debt, poverty
GTIR020	Disability	Physical, mental or learning disability, difficulty or difference
GTIR030	Health/Condition	Limiting health condition(s) or illness(es), substance misuse, of individual or family members
GTIR040	Mental Health	Mental health condition(s) or illness(es), wellbeing, of individual or family members
GTIR050	Family breakup	Breakdown of family cohesion/stability, estrangement, single parent
GTIR060	Violence or abuse	Domestic violence or abuse, fleeing other violence, neglect
GTIR070	Livelihood	Loss of job or source of income, underemployment, zero hours contracts, reduced hours or income, time out of work for caregiving, sustaining business/livelihood
GTIR080	Homelessness	Homeless or poorly or vulnerably housed
GTIR090	Marginalised	No recourse to public funds, care leavers, people in or leaving the criminal justice system, other marginalised or vulnerable people or people with barriers to access
GTIR100	Emergency/crisis event	Need driven by an incident such as death of a family member or disaster such as housing flood, fire etc, victim of crime
GTIR110	Development opportunity	Skills development, scholarships, artist development, exceptional talent, sporting talent
GTIR120	Social action	Supporting a community or cause not solely driven by the needs of the individual receiving the grant, campaigns, community development

Grant Purpose

The codelist Grant to Individuals Purpose includes categories to specify the purpose of the grant, in terms of what the funding will be used for.

• The codes from this codelist must be published in the field To Individuals Details:Grant Purpose.
• Funders may choose one or more of the categories to describe the purpose of the grant. When multiple codes are included, these must be separated by a semi-colon.
• It is recommended that a maximum of three categories are used.

Code	Title	Description
GTIP010	Unrestricted	Unspecified, unrestricted or general support
GTIP020	Furniture and appliances	Furniture, garden and outdoor play equipment, white goods, home appliances
GTIP030	Equipment and home adaptations	Safety equipment, specialist equipment, baby equipment, toys, home adaptations, mobility aids
GTIP040	Devices and digital access	Computers, phones, mobile devices, technology / digital access
GTIP050	Utilities	Energy, water, telephone, TV/entertainment licences, broadband costs – including set-up and meter installation
GTIP060	Other housing related costs	Deposits, rent, mortgage contributions, council tax, arrears, decoration, removal costs, deep cleans
GTIP070	Food and essential items	Food, toiletries, nappies, cleaning products, all essential living costs
GTIP080	Clothing	School uniforms, children’s clothing, workwear, essential clothing
GTIP090	Debt	Credit card debits, non housing-related debts, bankruptcy
GTIP100	Travel and transport	Travel or transport costs including public transport, petrol and repairs
GTIP110	Holiday and activity costs	Family activities, school trips, holidays, sport activities, social activities, breaks for carers
GTIP120	Health, care and wellbeing services	Medical, childcare costs, therapy, dental work, physiotherapy, addiction recovery support, domiciliary/residential care costs, temporary accommodation for patients and carers
GTIP130	Education and training	Tuition, boarding school fees, university fees, books/resources and essential course costs, scholarships, fellowships, PhDs, support for exceptional talent, personal/professional development, sports coaching/development, capacity building
GTIP140	Employment and work	Employment support, business start-up costs, apprenticeships, social enterprise, work ready support
GTIP150	Creative activities	Freelance art and cultural projects and activities, musical instruments
GTIP160	Community projects	Social action, community projects, campaigns and activism
GTIP170	Exceptional costs	Funeral costs, crisis funding, legal fees, benefits applications and time pending benefits receipt

Why use the grants to individuals codelists?

In 360Giving data, the Title and Description fields are usually the main ways that publishers can provide the details of what has been funded, and this is supported by additional information about the Recipient Organisation. But for data shared about grants to individuals, this text must be generic to avoid the information being used to identify individuals and protect their privacy and confidentiality. This means the information that can be shared in these fields about grants to individuals will be less useful than that which can be shared by funders of grants for organisations and projects.

In order to mitigate against this issue, two new codelists have been developed in collaboration with members of ACO and refined through consultation with funders of grants to individuals.

When different funders use the same codelist in their data, it:

• Makes it easier to see the collective impact and analyse trends over time
• Allows individual funders to compare their grantmaking with peers
• Enables the development of dashboards and  tools to combine and visualise the data

How to use the shared codelists in 360Giving data

The codelists have been developed to be relevant to funders of grants to individuals, so the categories will be applicable to the broadest range of grants possible.

To be useful and usable, the lists have been kept relatively short, with categories at a high level. This means these codelists do not have the granular breakdown of categories that some funders may have in their own grants management systems.

For some funders, particular programmes or all their grants may all fall under the same categories. Even at this high level, there is a benefit to different funders using the shared codelists whenever possible.

The process of adopting the codelists may involve mapping the shared codelists against existing internal categorisations, or could require manual labelling of grants.

• For funders that have their own consistent internal categories, it will be possible to map these to the Grant to Individuals Reason or Grant to Individuals Purpose codelists.
• For funders who don’t have internal categories, the relevant code for each grant may have to be added manually.

Our Data Preparation Templates for grants to individuals have been set up to help you use the codelists in your grants data.

The 360Giving Helpdesk can provide additional guidance on using these codelists in your 360Giving data, and provide tailored support on how to map any internal categories or make decisions about manually labelling your grants.