Funding trends: methodology and data
Articles on funding trends are authored by Jenny Lah. They have been selected and adapted from an unpublished report, written as part of a scan of the TPA landscape undertaken by OTT Consulting to inform the Hewlett Foundation’s new TPA grantmaking strategy .
Author: Jenny Lah. Editor: Hannah Caddick. Reviewers: Ajoy Datta and the Hewlett Foundation TPA team.
Data
This analysis draws on data, funders’ documents, other news and reports and a series of semi-structured discussions with 16 funders and experts. The Creditor Reporting System (CRS) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is a key source for scale and trends in funding. Other data sources checked include SDG Funders, Advancing Human Rights of the Human Rights Funders Network (HRFN) and Candid, Aid Atlas and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) reports via d-portal.
In terms of documentation, funders’ websites were reviewed, and Google searches were undertaken to uncover news, announcements and other reports. The key sites reviewed were: Devex, Donor Tracker, OECD DAC and the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI).
Due to limited time and data, some kinds of funding are left out, including domestic government funding, community-based funding, the for-profit private sector and Chinese state-sponsored finance. For many TPA issues, the key funding source is domestic governments. This should be kept in mind when interpreting the data because decreases in international funding may actually mean the government increased its own funding.
Interviews were conducted with individuals affiliated with:
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark (Bilateral donor)
- Ford Foundation (Philanthropy)
- Gates Foundation (Philanthropy)
- HRFN (Network)
- IDRC (West Africa) (Bilateral donor)
- Luminate (Philanthropy)
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Finland (Bilateral donor)
- OECD GovNet (Network)
- OSF (Philanthropy)
- OSIWA (Philanthropy)
- Sida (Bilateral donor)
- TAI (Network)
- UK FCDO (Bilateral donor)
- USAID (Bilateral donor)
- Wellspring (Philanthropy)
- World Bank (Multilateral)
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