Written evidence submitted by 360Giving
Written evidence to the DCMS Select Committee
Impact of COVID-19 on the charity sector
April 2020
What is the point of a foundation making a grant to a body that has recently received a Government grant, or vice versa? How do we know whether one small town is swamped with grants while another is not? Or whether one sector is missing out while another has a good flow of grant money?
Financial aid markets can’t function without basic information about money paid, to whom, and for what purpose. The highly competitive market for grants is hobbled by a lack of these basic facts.
At 360Giving, our vision is for UK grantmaking to be more informed, effective and strategic. Prior to our work, there was no publicly available data on grantmaking in the UK – funders and grant seekers did so in the dark. This was a recipe for market failure and inefficiency, and would load unnecessary costs into the system.
We help funders publish their grants data in an open, standardised format for anyone to find online and use for free. The data is standardised so it can be combined and compared, helping us to understand funding across the UK, spot trends, and inform policy and practice. Publishing their grants data also helps funders to understand themselves better and find opportunities to collaborate with others, informing policy and practice.
Since we were founded in July 2015, we have worked with over 120 grantmakers to publish their grants data to the 360Giving Data Standard. This means that, for the first time in the UK, it’s possible to see and compare billions of pounds of grants awarded by different funders all together. The data is transforming the knowledge base of the whole sector. We’ve also developed free, online tools that make the data easier to access, use and visualise.
Despite facing their own financial pressures, philanthropists and foundations have been agile and collaborative in responding to the coronavirus crisis. Many have stepped up their giving to make exceptional gifts. There have been a number of co-ordinated responses and pooled funds, and collaboration and information sharing to support strategic decision-making.
In spite of these significant efforts, the scale of the impact of the crisis on charities is immense. It is making a substantial impact on their activities to generate the funds they need to deliver services. The scale of the shortfall cannot be met from philanthropists and foundations alone.
We support the general analysis that, given a £4billion funding deficit arising from the crisis, a £750m response from the Government will have profound repercussions – this accentuates the need for better data to make decisions.
Philanthropists and grantmaking foundations have stepped up their giving in new ways. 360Giving is helping funders by providing analysis to support decision-making, and enabling information about COVID-19 grants to be published and shared, to inform prioritisation and reduce duplication.
The philanthropic response to the COVID-19 crisis has required grantmakers to act quickly, and in new areas. Making good grants to new grantees requires good public information about who else is funding, and to which organisations. The Government’s own granular grant data is a substantial and currently missing part of the data infrastructure we need for a full UK picture. In the USA and Canada, governments are required to publish their grants as data under Open Government legislation. In the UK, the Government has repeatedly failed to do so.
The grantmakers that publish their data in the 360Giving Data Standard are providing information that anyone can search, to see where COVID-19 grants have been made, how much, to whom and what for. This allows funders and potential applicants to see the nature, amount and topic-coverage of grants made.
To help make COVID-19 grants data easy to access and navigate, we have created an online tracker, which updates daily: https://covidtracker.threesixtygiving.org
More broadly, all grants data that funders have published openly can be searched using our flagship search-engine for grants data, GrantNav https://grantnav.threesixtygiving.org
We would be happy to demonstrate either of these tools to the committee or staff.
Alongside the additional funding required, it is vital to ensure that funds given by donors and the Government are used as effectively as possible.
The Government’s historic and current grants data are both important. The historic data helps to complete a national picture of grantees and what they do. The current data is of obvious utility. We would urge the Government to build on the process to publish historic data and to publish COVID-19 response and other grantmaking data in near real time to the 360Giving Data Standard.
Civil society reaches parts that the Government cannot reach. It will play a central role in the alleviation and prevention of suffering during and after the COVID-19 crisis. The sector can do a better job if the Government – local and national – provides data about what it is doing in an open and accessible format.
As per the UK’s Open Government Partnership (OGP) commitment, we expected the Cabinet Office to release grants data for all central government departments in autumn 2018. This target was not met and a new deadline of 31st March 2020 was set by the Government, however this has also now been delayed due to concerns around the coverage and quality of the data being substandard.
Once this data is published it will be a huge step forward. Aside from giving us the fuller picture we need of funding across the UK, it will also mean that the Government can have a proper understanding of where and how its grantmaking fits in with that of other funders and the voluntary sector as a whole.
In the evidence provided by other charities and sector bodies, you will see information about the funding gap that must be met to ensure that essential services delivered by charities continue.
Alongside this, it is important that the Government shares and makes use of data to make more effective use of limited funds available.
For funders’ response to the COVID-19 crisis to be targeted and efficient, we need Government data. Indeed, so does the Government – we know the cross-government picture is poor. At this exceptional time, we have two asks of the Government to make the COVID-19 response more effective: