A competition to use public data to visualise trends in charity giving has been won by a model which reveals “hidden themes” in charity funding.
The competition is held by 360Giving, which collects open data on grant funding across the sector in a searchable format.
It received a large number of data visualisations, identifying everything from how grantmaking compares to a map of deprivation in England, to the funding for user-led organisations, to which charities share funders in common.
However the winning visualisation, by data visualisation specialist Xavi Jiminez, was an attempt to identify hidden trends, using “text mining” to discover groups of words in grant documents which create a unifying theme.
Themes included words such as:
- Young, people, skills, opportunities, confidence and behaviour
- Health, mental, fitness and wellbeing
- Families, parents, learning and needs
One theme which is growing in importance from a low base is one connected to core costs and running costs, largely as a result of the work of two funders – the Robertson Trust and the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales.
More information on all projects is available on the 360Giving Challenge page.
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