Five year ambition for open philanthropy in the UK

We believe that open-ness leads to better grant making.  In particular where one grant maker can see the grants made by others when deciding to fund say a topic area or a particular grantee.  You can see gaps and who is backing who.  The more rich the data available, the better the investment decision.  We believe that greater transparency about grant-making will allow the public to see the benefit and impact of the sector and so inform the debate about tax and philanthropy.

We note the huge amount of work that has gone into open-ness of international aid flows, led by the UK and leading to a G8 declaration. But grants made within the UK are as important as aid payments.

So we have set a ‘moonshot’ ambition that, within 5 reporting years 80% of grants made by UK charities, foundations & other grant makers are reported as open data to agreed standards and 50% by number/volume.

We want to bring about:

A clear information landscape for grant-makers in the UK showing who has funded what, where, with how much and for what

Improved effectiveness in grant making and greater scope for informed strategic philanthropy and collaboration

Transparency for the public, taxpayers and authorities