This is intended to be a live section that will be updated based on feedback on the platform and questions from users. If you would like to submit a question, please Contact Us, or for anonymous questions submit them here.
Why focus on London?
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.
How can UKGrantmaking be used?
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.
Who can help me understand or use the data?
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
How much does the UK government give in grants?
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.