360Giving has launched a new strategy and said it aims to reach more funders and improve data sharing.
The platform, which was founded in 2015 to boost transparency around funding, has unveiled its new three-year strategy with four goals: to normalise open data sharing, to improve data quality, to increase data literacy and to grow data use and shared learning.
It will develop a host of resources pertaining to these goals, such as offering pro bono technical advice to organisation, workshops, peer networks and dashboards to show shared information in the sector.
It comes following the end of the organisation’s first three-year strategy, which was made up of three goals: to support organisations to publish data, to help people understand data, and to support decision making and learning across the sector.
The strategy document said that 360Giving had made good progress in supporting organisations to publish data but that helping people understand data was “hindered by data quality and low data literacy”. It added that they had “underestimated the effort required to get [funders] to refresh their data,” and this this “learning has helped shape this new 3-year strategy”.
The strategy said: “We are now at a tipping point where publishing open grants data is becoming the norm; but funders need to become more data-informed and improve the quality of the information they share if we are going to create the lasting change we want to see. This is what our new strategy focuses on.”
Fran Perrin, founder and chair of 360Giving added: “Given our progress over the past three years, enough data is now being shared that we can shift up to using it at scale. I’m excited about the next three years.
“With 100 funders sharing data on £26bn worth of grants, increasing numbers of organisations using the data, the development of new visualisation tools, adoption as a Government Standard and winning a digital impact award, 360Giving has got to a place where it’s creating real and meaningful change.
“For charitable giving to strategically address society’s problems we need to build on this momentum. That’s why we are applying the learning and infrastructure we have developed over the past three years to enable more grantmakers to use the data in their day to day work, and for others to demonstrate its relevance.”
Julia Unwin, who chaired the Independent Inquiry on the Future of Civil Society, said that making data more available is an important step.
She said: “By making information and data more broadly available, it shifts power and deepens accountability. It enables all parts of civil society to work creatively together, and to help rebuild our dented democracy, stitch up the social fabric and take action to prevent further environmental damage.”
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