This is a network analysis of five major funders of science and research activities in the UK in the year 2016 - Arcadia Fund, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Lloyd’s Register, Wellcome Trust, and the Wolfson Foundation. In 2016, these grantmakers funded 354 organisations globally, with the majority being UK universities. The Wellcome Trust funded 315 of the organisations, with 17 of the remaining 39 being funded by two or more of the grantmakers. The most popular grantee is the University of Cambridge, which received grants totalling £112 million from four of the funders. It also received the biggest single grant of £84 million from the Wellcome Trust. 

This network graph shows the 17 institutions that are funded by more than one grantmaker and the amount that was awarded. The thicker the line, the bigger the funding flow. Notice that the Wolfson Foundation marks its regranting, usually listed as grants of £0.

How did we do this? 

We took the raw 360Giving data for Arcadia, Gatsby Charitable Trust, Lloyds Register, the Wellcome Trust and the Wolfson Foundation and using the headers in the Standard schema, we made a new dataset of science funding. 

Arcadia, Gatsby and Wolfson also award grants to the arts and humanities, so we had to filter their grants. Wolfson uses the Grant Program Title field, which helped us to filter only for grants to science and medicine. Arcadia uses a classifications field to classify its grants, so we only looked at grants made under its environment programme (which includes funding for scientific research). Gatsby doesn’t use classifications or the grant programme field, but as it awards a small number of high value grants each year, it was easy to identify its funding to neuroscience or plant science, the two main science fields it supports.