Skip to content

Yes No Disable Analytics

Open Data: Deep dives to map funding

Brought to you by:

London Funders logo

At London Funders, we hope to help to drive a learning culture, where shared data, intelligence and insight leads to better decision-making and action for our communities. One of the ways we do this is through our championing of open data for a more accountable, transparent and well-informed sector. Over half of our members are already sharing their data using the 360Giving Data Standard, contributing to a wealth of data about how funding flows through London and the UK.

Over the past year we have been working on two projects that leverage open data to map and understand the funding landscape – and critically help us to identify how we can improve it. One project has explored the funding landscape for equity and justice infrastructure organisations across London and the UK, and a second examined social welfare advice in London. These projects have helped bring some of this data alive, bringing deep dives into the nuances and complexities that shape our city’s social fabric.

Equity Infrastructure Mapping

Our Equity Infrastructure Mapping project aims to understand the current state of funding for equity and justice infrastructure organisations in London and the UK. Following 360Giving’s infrastructure report, highlighting the lack of funding going towards infrastructure groups (and our Way Ahead report from 2016) we want to know where does funding specifically for equity and justice organisations fit into all of this? 

Equity and justice infrastructure organisations address long-term, systemic, and structural issues, providing essential support ranging from capacity building and leadership development to movement building and resource allocation. Between 2021-2022, data from 60 key funders revealed only 5.7% of investment from UK foundations goes to the justice sector, with only 0.3% going towards building power through community organising.

We still lack a deep understanding of the infrastructure support available to equity and justice organisations. This research explores both the “demand” and “supply” sides of funding, identifying gaps and opportunities to inform strategic development. The project includes quantitative analysis from available datasets and qualitative research with funders and funded groups, providing a holistic view of the funding landscape. Finally, this project provides a first-of-its-kind exploration of the perceived need and impact of equity and justice infrastructure organisations based on our conversations with stakeholders.

The rapid review of literature (alongside our ongoing quantitative analysis) reveals a lack of evidence that is equity and justice infrastructure specific. However, we can still draw on some of the insights from broader literature on general infrastructure organisations which shows that:

  • Infrastructure funding benefits the wider sector: It improves collaboration and creates more resilient systems. One study showed a strong social return on investment for every £1 invested into 4 equity and justice infrastructure organisations.
  • Infrastructure is key to systemic change: By fostering resilience and collaboration, infrastructure organisations support stronger movement building.
  • Capacity is not keeping pace with demand: The infrastructure sector hasn’t grown in line with the voluntary and community sector, leading to increased pressure.

Whilst the project is still ongoing, we are seeing that overall, funding has sharply declined – by 9% in real value – to equity and justice infrastructure groups between 2020 and 2024. This is attributed partly to the ongoing cost of living, with funders reporting more demand than supply of funds, putting additional strain on the sector. Smaller specialist infrastructure organisations who used to depend a lot on government funding have reported sharp declines, while the need for their services has increased. Despite ongoing challenges, equity and justice infrastructure organisations continue to create outsized impacts on the sector. Our conversations revealed impacts across individual, organisational and systemic levels for community leaders, frontline groups and the equities sector.

As part of this project, we’ve used a range of data sources to explore and analyse funding trends: without this it can be hard to understand and evidence how investment is changing over time. But it’s also highlighted some of the gaps and one thing we’ll be calling for from this work is for more funders to share their data on platforms like 360Giving so that we can use this knowledge to best direct resources in the future. Look out for our full report later in the autumn.

Mapping Funding for Social Welfare Advice

Social welfare advice is vital to a just, safe, and healthy London. Every year, thousands of Londoners rely on advice services to navigate financial, social, and legal challenges – often preventing crises and ensuring access to rights.

Our Mapping Funding for Social Welfare Advice project, delivered with 360Giving and supported by the Greater London Authority, aimed to better understand the funding landscape for these services. This project included quantitative analysis to identify organisations who are providing advice within London and examined the funding flows from the public, private, and philanthropic sectors over the last three years.

Key findings included:

  • Only 26% of known grants were for more than one year
  • Around 40% of income comes from government sources
  • 74% of advice providers have a turnover under £31m
  • 77% of known grant funding comes from just 20 funders

These insights highlight the need for longer-term, more sustainable funding to meet increasingly complex needs. Interviews with funders revealed shared concerns about resource pressures and a growing consensus on the need for sustainable national financial settlements for local authorities.

Encouragingly, funders expressed a strong desire to collaborate earlier and more intentionally – aligning and pooling funds to act on shared learning.

The Role of Open Data in Driving Change

Open data is not just a tool; it is a catalyst for change. By making data accessible, we can help drive innovation and understand which communities aren’t getting the funding they need. Open data allows us to identify trends, measure impact, and make informed decisions that benefit the communities we serve.

The work of 360Giving and UKGrantmaking is making it easier to use open data, but when doing deep dives, as for our projects above, we often find it is still fragmented, inconsistent, or inaccessible. Local authority data is difficult to access and rarely standardised, making it hard to compare funding across boroughs or track changes over time whilst Charity Commission data is often also incomplete, with differences in England and Wales to Scotland and Northern Ireland making UK-wide analysis time-consuming and inconsistent. This means that a lot of data processing is done manually to standardise datasets, which slows down research and limits public engagement. If we want more people to understand and engage with the funding landscape, we must make data – and the insights it enables – more accessible, standardised, and open.