Grants to organisations: 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.

10 core fields

These 10 ‘core fields’ cover the basic who, what, when and how much of each grant. For grants to organisations, 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.

If you fund projects and these have a title, use this text. If you don’t have titles for your grants, you can use programme titles, information about the funding type or create a title using the recipient organisation name, for example, ‘Grant to [Recipient name]’

Description

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

The description provides a summary of the purpose of each grant, giving 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.

The ideal description:

• Is one or two sentences long, but it could be longer if the text is available.
• Includes clear and unambiguous words that help users understand the type of activities, communities or places being supported by the funding.

If no suitable summary text is available, descriptions may use a short project title or can be generated by joining together any other available information, such as communities or people supported, sector or programme area, or type of funding.

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 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 Org:Name

This can be the grant recipient’s name as recorded in your systems, it does not have to be the official registered name of an organisation.

However, be aware of using acronyms or abbreviations that could make it harder for users to know who has been funded, especially when the organisation cannot be identified using a charity, company or other official registration number.

How names are displayed in 360Giving tools

As one organisation can have lots of different variations of their name, GrantNav maintains consistent names using official sources (such as UK charity and company registers) on page titles and filters, which group grants from multiple funders together.

Recipient Org:Identifier

There are two parts to every Recipient Org:Identifier

• A list code: a prefix that describes the list the identifier is taken from.
• An identifier taken from that list.

There are many different kinds of organisations that give, receive or benefit from grants.

Not all organisations have an official registration number to use. For example, small unregistered groups may not have one. When there is no official registration number for a recipient, you must provide an internal identifier instead. Do this by combining your publisher prefix with the organisation’s account record reference from your database, if available.

If no account record reference is available or there are security or privacy reasons that prevent sharing this information in open data, an internal identifier can be created using the recipient’s name.

How organisation identifiers are used in 360Giving tools

Some organisations have more than one official registration number: they might be a charity and a company, or a charity and an educational establishment. If different funders have identified the same organisation using different official registration numbers, GrantNav is sometimes able to match them together and group all the grants associated into a single view, where official data matching those Org IDs is available.

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 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 understand their grantmaking better.

The following fields are recommended, which means you should consider including them in your data whenever possible.

Recipient Org:Charity Number

Charity numbers are so important for analysing grantmaking in the UK that the 360Giving Data Standard allows for this data to be included separately.

Include the charity number whenever possible, as this will provide the source data for creating the Recipient Org:Identifier.

Recipient Org:Company Number

Company numbers are also important for analysing grantmaking in the UK, so the 360Giving Data Standard allows for this data to be included separately too.

Including the company number whenever appropriate will provide the source data for creating the Recipient Org:Identifier. You do not have to include company numbers for organisations that already have a charity number.

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.

Even if some or all of your grants don’t have a duration, please include the duration fields in your data so that we can understand and analyse your grants to organisations better.

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 who published it.

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, such as a title, description and 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, where 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.

Beneficiary Location:Name

The beneficiary location name can be any type of location, like an estate, town, city, ward, local government area, parliamentary constituency, region or country, depending on what is relevant to the scope of the grant or funded activity.

Beneficiary location name should be accompanied by fields for the equivalent geographical codes whenever possible.

Beneficiary Location:Geographical Code

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

Location scope

Location scope describes the geographical scope of the funded work using a codelist with seven values ranging from the widest (Global) to the smallest scope (Local area).

There is also a code you can use if any of your grants don’t have a defined location, for example, because the funded activity is online with no restrictions on who can access it.

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.

Recipient Org:Postal Code

Recipient location fields indicate where the organisation is based, usually an office address.

If a recipient has more than one office, the recipient location could be the registered office, the head office or a regional office address, whichever is most accurate for the grant in question.

The 360Giving Data Standard has separate fields that make up a full address, however, the postcode information is sufficient to make the data useful.

If the address of an organisation is a private home address, which can be the case for grassroots or informal groups and small registered charities, this information should not be included in 360Giving data in full. 

Recipient Org:Location:Name and Recipient Org:Location:Geographic Code

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 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