Frequently Asked Questions

One of the challenges in looking at grantmaking data is that we often know where the funder is based and where the recipient organisation is registered, but we don’t always have an informed picture of where the specific funded project will be delivered or where the people supported are located.

This makes it difficult to understand the grantmaking picture geographically, and the picture can be particularly misleading in London where a higher proportion of national and international charities are based, making it difficult to understand funding that is supporting Londoners rather than just received in London. This situation has been further exacerbated in recent years with the increase in organisations moving to remote-working as the majority of registered address services have an address in London.

We focused on London to understand how far this picture was being skewed and how we could better understand the grantmaking in London and for Londoners.

We also focused on London because we already have a higher proportion of funders in London publishing their data using the 360Giving Data Standard as a result of previous data work by London Funders. While there is still more work to do, especially to encourage data sharing from local authorities, the momentum has supported enough data to be available to be looked at meaningfully.

We hope our focus on London for this release can act as a pilot for approaching further geographical data analysis in the future.

Anybody can access and download the charts and tables. It can be used in many ways.

If you are a funder:

• Compare your organisation against others
• Understand the context your organisation works in
• Inform strategic thinking
• Understand trends
• Identify others to collaborate with
• See collective impact of groups of funders or collaborations

If you are a charity:

• Inform your organisation’s fundraising strategy
• Understand trends and the context for your fundraising
• Understand how your funding compares to other charities

If you are a researcher or policy maker:

• Understand the scope and scale of grantmaking in the UK
• Highlight the value of the funding
• Combine the data with other data for your own analysis

360Giving can also produce bespoke reports and research based on this data for funders or collaborations.

If you have a question about the data or need help to use it, there is a range of support available, including bookable 1-1 support slots. Get in touch

UKGrantmaking analysis for 2022-23 reports £3bn spending on grants by central government departments to UK civil society.

This figure is derived from analysis of data published using the 360Giving Data Standard about grants awarded by 14 central government departments taken from the annual publication of central government grants published in March 2024. This figure represents only a small proportion of total UK government grantmaking. 

The full dataset published by the UK government includes 62,926 ‘general grants’ awarded to 29,185 recipients, with a total value of £42.5bn. We focused our analysis on grants that were relevant to the civil society context and therefore excluded government-to-government transfers, either between central government and other government departments or from central government to local authorities. Other exclusions included grants to schools, private sector organisations and international institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations.

The ‘general grants’ included in the UK government grants publication account for 30% of government grant spending in 2022-23. The other 70% are known as ‘formula grants’, which are a type of funding distributed to certain types of recipient, such as local authorities and schools, with the amounts calculated using a formula. For further information about the published grant data awarded by UK central government departments for 2022-23, including non-charitable grants, read 360Giving’s blog.

Organisations were allocated to a single segment based on segmentation from existing research and reports, including previous Foundation Giving Trends reports and the use of 360Giving partners’ membership lists. 

You can view the definitions of the different segment in the Methodology section.

There are a number of grey areas where segments might overlap or where there wasn’t enough information available, so assumptions needed to be made about the segmentation. This means that the segments are indicative only to help understand the picture. If you believe there is an error in the data or allocation of grantmaker to a segment, please let us know by completing this short amendment request form so that we can update in the next edition of UKGrantmaking. 

The data presented in the platform is derived from charity regulator datasets, company and charity accounts, data reported to 360Giving data standards, other open datasets and desk research. In our methodology we noted the challenges in sourcing the data and the issues with some of the quality of the data. 

Every effort has been made to support the data to be as accurate as possible with the information that was available to us at the time. We welcome feedback on inaccuracies to support us to develop and enhance our approach for future editions.

If your organisation has been noted with a value you consider to be inaccurate,  has been placed into a segment which you consider to be incorrect, or anything else which you consider should be changed, please let us know by completing a ‘request for an amendment’ form. We will explore your query and update our records accordingly if an amendment is needed. Amended figures and categories will be included in the next edition of UKGrantmaking.