National Lottery Heritage Fund has now published the first phase of its data on the 360Giving GrantNav platform, which is dedicated to hosting open data from a range of funding bodies.
This first instalment of Heritage Fund’s published data concerns grants issued between 2013 and 2019, a six year period in which it provided almost £2.2 billion in 10,201 grants to 7,497 recipients.
Earlier this year the funding body published a spreadsheet of grant data on its own website, but GrantNav offers the chance to maximise the exposure and accessibility of the information.
Open data is information that can be freely used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose.
Tom Steinberg, Digital Lead at National Lottery Heritage Fund, stated: “Given that the funding we distribute comes from people playing The National Lottery right across the UK, it’s really important that anyone can find where money is being spent, and what on.
“By working with 360Giving we’re making it much easier for Lottery players and heritage projects to find what has been funded in their areas.”
The information on the platform is open access and therefore anyone is able to discover how and where an ever-growing list of grant makers channel their funding.
National Lottery Heritage Fund is currently the fifth largest funding body (in terms of grant award value) on the platform, with GrantNav’s total data now covering 332,000 grants made to over 191,000 recipients.
Rachel Rank, CEO of 360Giving, described Heritage Fund’s decision as a “key milestone in making funding data more open, accessible and useful”.
Rank went on to say: “It makes it easier to get the bigger picture on the UK funding landscape and understand how the work that sustains and transforms the UK’s heritage is being supported. Being able to search this data all in one place gives everyone greater insight into who is funding different organisations, activities and regions and to see changes over time.”
