Governments provide subsidies to support projects and programs in many policy areas. It is not always easy to find what governments fund and to which recipients. Also governments do not know when a recipient applies for grants to various governments. In fact, even departments within one government agency often do not know to whom they provide subsidies.

Enter open data. Since 2014, the Dutch government has published per ministry which recipients they fund. Slowly, more and more local authorities have started to publish so-called subsidy registers. However, this information is usually not published as open data. To show what you can see if this information is unlocked, Open State Foundation developed Subsidietrekker.nl. It allows users to find data about the grant, government, the recipient and the amount granted.