Through our work with the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector and partners in London we identified that people struggled to find a clear picture of what is going on at a London wide level, within Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and within their own borough or local area.
While there are several large publicly available data sets to explore, most organisations don't have the resources to tap into them properly. So we decided to try and create a tool which could provide an accessible, easy to use way of exploring London's amazing VCSE sector.
Working with David Kane we initially set out to develop step by step guidance for using and connect the multiple Excel files you can download from the Charity Commission, but we soon realised that this was unworkable for anyone with average Excel skills and laptop specs!
So we embarked on a co-design process, hearing from a range of stakeholders and building and iterating a prototype tool using Power BI. We expanded data sources to include Companies House to include Community Interest Companies to our original registered charities dataset and then matched with 360Giving records to bring in data about funding.
Over the course of 9 co-design sessions, we made lots of additions and imporvements to the dashboard based on input and feedback from people working in the sector, both in terms of usability and content.
We launched the dashboard in July 2025 as part of London Data Week to great interest. Additional ideas and use cases were suggested and we're busy making changes and having conversations.
Now that the Datawise London programme is over, we are now seeking funding for the next phase of development. We see this focusing on incorporating community-owned datasets from infrastructure organisations and exploring the potential to expand the dashboard’s coverage beyond London.
If you are a funder interested in supporting this next stage, either independently or as part of a consortium, please get in touch with alicelinell@superhighways.org.uk
Contact
Datawise London is a partnership led by Superhighways at Kingston Voluntary Action.
If you are interested in finding out more about the project and its resources or would like to share your own data ideas and challenges please contact us.