Private philanthropy is a growing source of funding for low- and middle-income countries – supporting key global and interconnected issues outlined in Agenda 2030, from health and education to gender equality and climate change. Alongside official development assistance (ODA) and other sources of finance, philanthropy brings distinctive strengths, including higher risk tolerance and flexibility, and the ability to catalyse resources in underfunded areas. However, limited data on philanthropic flows and insufficient understanding of philanthropic practices continue to constrain effective co-ordination and complementarity with public and private finance.
The OECD Centre on Philanthropy has been working with the philanthropic community since 2018 to better measure and understand private foundations’ giving for development, increase transparency on their cross-border and domestic contributions, and facilitate an informed policy dialogue. The two previous reports have helped shape and amplify the global demand for more and better data on global philanthropy for development. With fresh evidence and analysis drawn from a wide network of foundations around the world, they also showed how that demand can be met.
This third edition of Private Philanthropy for Development unpacks new data and updated analyses of philanthropic funding towards low- and middle-income countries over the period 2020-2023 to offer a more comprehensive picture of philanthropy’s role in sustainable development. The report situates philanthropy within the broader development co-operation landscape, comparing its scope, geographical and sectoral priorities to ODA’s. Ultimately, it focuses on how philanthropy is positioning itself as a strategic partner both to its beneficiaries and the other development finance providers, and provides insights to strengthen understanding, dialogue, and collaboration across the international and domestic development community.
The report summarises open, reliable and comparable data collected from 506 philanthropic organisations for the period 2020-2023 and includes organisational data on strategies from 105 organisations. The format and definitions used in the questionnaire were compliant with OECD-DAC statistical standards and classifications, which makes the data comparable with ODA.
Compared to the two previous editions, this one collects data from a greater number of large foundations and other organisations based in middle-income countries, particularly in India, the People's Republic of China, and Mexico. The report also dives deeper into foundations’ strategies for crisis response, including COVID-19; their collaborative and co-financing behaviours; and their approaches to locally led development.
Private Philanthropy for Development (Third Edition) delivers unprecedented data on the multifaceted contributions of philanthropy to sustainable development. As the development finance architecture undergoes profound transformation, this evidence provides an essential foundation for development actors seeking to better co-ordinate actions and exploit synergies across public, private, and philanthropic resources, beyond Agenda 2030.