360Giving are currently running a pilot initiative across Greater Manchester that will make grantmaking in the region more effective for all. 
An estimated £6.1bn of grants were made by UK grantmaking organisations in 2013/14, with £2.2bn coming from government. Within Greater Manchester, the Big Lottery alone has provided over £250m of funding since 2004.
At present, it is not possible to find a complete dataset on all charitable grants provided in the UK. Although charities are required to report their annual accounts to the Charity Commission, this information is locked away in PDFs. Similarly, local authorities must publish details of all grants to voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations, but this information is produced separately and cannot be compared between local authorities, with central government grants or with Charity Commission reporting. This lack of open, comparable information means that it is not possible to assess UK grantmaking as a whole and its collective impact. It also limits the ability to look at shared opportunities and challenges.
This pilot in Greater Manchester aims to address these issues by:
• Bringing different stakeholders working in Greater Manchester together to explore their information needs
• Demonstrating the value of open, comparable data by helping people to publish it in a usable form
• Advocating for increased publication and use of open data by grantmakers supporting activities in Greater Manchester
The open data standard developed by 360Giving provides an easy to use format for consistently describing what funding has been provided, giving a 360 degree view of grantmaking and supporting in-depth analysis of grants, grantees and beneficiaries, both between and across different grantmakers, sectors and regions. In turn, this helps organisations understand their own data better, comply with statutory obligations and be part of the open data revolution that is transforming grantmaking.
Through a series of free workshops 360Giving will introduce and train organisations in the adoption, use and application of the 360Giving Standard, as well as the use of platforms such as Beehive, GrantNav and the Data Quality Tool. This will enable participating organisations to share their data and build the big picture of regional grantmaking.
By bringing grantmakers together and working with them to open up their data, 360Giving will be able to delve deeper and better understand how grant funding is allocated and used in Greater Manchester. This will have multiple benefits such as enabling the strategic allocation of resources and identifying levels of grantmaking activity and funding ‘cold spots’.
This project is relevant to all organisations interested in how grant funding is allocated in Greater Manchester and wants to be able to better coordinate and collaborate with others. It will involve a mixture of workshops, informal training on how to publish to the 360Giving Standard, and one-to-one sessions looking at organisations’ information needs and how open data can support them.
Workshops will run from mid-April for four months and will be thematically based, making them more relevant for participants. The workshops and the support and use of 360Giving platforms and training and is free and open to all.
To find out more about the project including how to get involved, visit: www.threesixtygiving.org/manchester/, or email: [email protected].