Data sources and licensing

Redcar Fundseekers draws on open data sources from several organisations. This page lists those data sources, explains how we have adapted each one, and sets out the terms for reusing the underlying data. We are grateful to the data publishers named below. Without their work, a free funding directory for Redcar and Cleveland would not exist.

Funder profile data — Find That Charity

We draw funder profiles from Find That Charity. For each registered funder, that covers charity number, regulator, registered office, classifications, and links to the funder’s own social and web presence.

Find That Charity brings together public records from three sources: the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR), and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland.

In practice, we select fields, normalise formats, and combine the data with our own records. We then republish it on the funder pages of this site.

Find That Charity publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).

Grantmaking financial data — 360Giving UK Grantmaking

We take the financial figures on funder pages from 360Giving‘s annual UK Grantmaking dataset. These cover latest reported income, grantmaking spend, net assets, and the financial-year-end date that anchors them. Each year, we import a fresh copy of the dataset and refresh the year-keyed figures on each funder page.

For our use, we select a subset of fields, join the data to our own funder records, and reformat it for display.

360Giving also uses the CC BY 4.0 licence for the UK Grantmaking dataset.

Underlying public-sector data sources

Both Find That Charity and the UK Grantmaking dataset rest on public records from UK public-sector bodies. Those data sources include the three charity regulators above, Companies House, and HM Revenue & Customs.

Those bodies also use the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL v3.0) for their data. OGL v3.0 sits underneath the CC BY 4.0 licence that Find That Charity and 360Giving apply to their own enriched products. As a result, both licences apply to the data we use, and we acknowledge both.

To meet OGL v3.0’s attribution requirement: Redcar Fundseekers contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Funder activity classifications — UK Charity Activity Tags

The “Areas of work” and “Activity tags” shown on each funder page come from the UK Charity Activity Tags (UKCAT) taxonomy. UKCAT classifies UK registered charities and Community Interest Companies across 24 broad categories and around 213 detail tags. It is produced by NCVO, Sheffield Hallam University, and David Kane, and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).

We join the UKCAT data to our funder records using Find That Charity’s organisation identifiers. In particular, the tags describe what a funder does as an organisation — not the scope of individual grant programmes it runs.

Grant programme classifications — UK Charity Activity Tags

The “Area of work” filter on the funding directory also draws on the UKCAT taxonomy. Here, however, we apply it to individual grant programmes rather than to funder organisations. We tag each programme with one or more of UKCAT’s 24 broad categories — for example Health, Education, or Environment. Where applicable, we also add more specific subcategory and detail tags.

We assign these tags automatically by matching keywords against programme titles, descriptions, and eligibility text. Around 94% of programmes currently carry at least one Area of work tag. The remaining programmes still appear in unfiltered searches, but do not show in filtered results for a specific area.

Because the tagging is automated, mistakes can occur. If you find a programme tagged incorrectly, please tell us at [email protected] and we will correct it.

There is an important distinction between the two uses of UKCAT in this directory. Funder-level tags, shown on each funder page, describe what the funder organisation does as a whole. Programme-level tags appear on each grant listing and power the Area of work filter. They describe what a particular grant is for.

NCVO, Sheffield Hallam University, and David Kane produce the UKCAT taxonomy. They publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). The source is charityclassification.org.uk.

Open and Trusting grant-making standard — IVAR

We show on each funder page whether the funder has signed up to the Open and Trusting for Trusts and Foundations initiative. This is a set of eight grant-making commitments developed by IVAR (Institute for Voluntary Action Research), designed to make the grant-making process more open, proportionate, and trust-based for applicants.

IVAR publishes a list of participating funders on their website. In May 2026, we captured that list and matched those funders against our own funder records by name. Each confirmed match is then flagged on the relevant funder page so that visitors can see at a glance whether that funder has adopted the Open and Trusting commitments. We therefore refresh this data periodically as IVAR’s published list changes.

The source for this indicator is IVAR’s publicly accessible website. Importantly, IVAR and the Open and Trusting initiative are independent of Redcar Fundseekers, RCVDA, and TVRA.

Funding programme information

We compile programme details from each funder’s own published material. That covers eligibility, deadlines, amounts, and how to apply. Where we have written original descriptive prose, that text is the work of Redcar Fundseekers. In addition, where any material comes directly from a funder, we attribute it at the point of use.

Keeping the directory accurate

We refresh the directory on a rolling basis. Once a year, we run a full enrichment pass against the source datasets. Even so, funder programmes change often. For this reason, each funder page links to the funder’s own website, which is the authoritative source for current eligibility, deadlines, and how to apply. Please check there before applying.

If you spot something that looks wrong, please tell us at [email protected]. We will also check it against the source.

Reuse of this directory

Redcar & Cleveland Voluntary Development Agency (RCVDA) and Tees Valley Rural Action (TVRA) run Redcar Fundseekers as a free service for the voluntary and community sector. In general, we welcome charitable, educational, and community reuse with attribution. Our terms of use page sets out the full position, including how reuse interacts with copyright and database right.

For anything substantial — and especially anything commercial — please get in touch at [email protected] so we can talk it through.