The results in this report draw from a global survey conducted by the OECD between June 2024 and September 2025. The survey aimed to capture grant-level financial data for cross-border and domestic philanthropy, as well as several organisational aspects of large philanthropic donors. To this end, two instruments were used:
A financial survey. This survey collected grant-level data from each participant organisation, including project description, recipient name, annual disbursements/commitments, geographical allocation, financial instrument used, channels of delivery, modality of giving, climate and gender markers, expected duration of project/grant. The format and definitions used in the questionnaire were compliant with OECD-DAC reporting standards and classifications, which make the data comparable with official development assistance (ODA).
For foundations that reported only commitments, annual disbursements were estimated based on project duration.
For all activities carried out in multiple countries for which foundations knew the countries but were uncertain about the exact share of funding that went to each individual country the OECD prorated the resources at the grant level in equal proportions among all countries identified by the foundation.
Purpose codes and SDG target data not provided directly by foundations were derived using a text-based classification tool based on a supervised machine learning algorithm (ModernBERT, Modern Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). This tool, developed by the OECD with financial support from the European Commission, assigns sector-specific purpose codes and SDG targets to individual transactions based on reported project description and recipient.
Operations denominated in currencies other than the United States dollar (USD) were converted to constant 2023 USD.
Foundations that did not wish to disclose grantee-level information were able to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the OECD so that only aggregated, anonymised information about their donations would be made public.
An organisational survey. This survey was deployed through an online questionnaire that included seven thematic modules:
1. Financial instruments, income and non-financial support: financial instruments used by the foundation, all sources of income, how the foundation manages its endowment, investment strategies and the type of non-financial support provided to grantees.
2. Co‑financing: capturing how foundations engage in joint funding arrangements by documenting the number and types of co‑financed initiatives, detailing survey respondents’ financial contributions, partner organisations involved, and the sectors targeted, while also identifying the key barriers that limit broader participation in co‑financing.
3. COVID‑19 response: examining how the pandemic affected foundations by documenting associated organisational and programmatic changes; the module also identifies steps taken to strengthen resilience for future crises, as well as the most impactful partnerships and initiatives that emerged in response to the pandemic.
4. Learning, Evaluation and Information: assessing how foundations organise and conduct evaluation; identifying the main challenges and underlying factors shaping evaluation practices; and examining the types of information foundations make publicly available, alongside the constraints that limit their overall transparency.
5. Gender Equality: examining how foundations support gender equality by identifying the types of interventions they implement and the tools they deploy; and assessing the main barriers that limit greater investment in gender equality.
6. Crisis Response: analysing how foundations reacted to major crises between 2020‑2023; identifying the primary objectives guiding crisis‑response initiatives and the channels through which aid is delivered; assessing the main operational challenges encountered in crisis contexts; and examining how foundations integrate long‑term solutions into their crisis‑response programming.
7. Locally Led Development: examining how foundations engage with and empower local actors by assessing the extent to which strategies, staffing structures and funding practices are locally informed, while also identifying the approaches used to strengthen local engagement and the key barriers that hinder deeper investment in locally led development.
For COVID‑19 key partnerships and co‑financing projects reported by respondents, the project country, sector and modality were manually coded following a review of the information provided.
For activities spanning multiple countries or sectors, the OECD allocated project‑level resources proportionally, distributing them equally across all identified countries and sectors. All co‑financing project amounts were standardised to constant 2023 USD.
For the collaboration network visualisations used in the analysis of COVID‑19 partnerships and co‑financing projects, nodes representing respondents and their partners were connected if they had jointly participated in at least one project.
