Private philanthropy poured $68.2 billion into development work between 2020 and 2023, according to a new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report. That’s about a tenth of what governments gave through official aid over the same period.
Of that total, $52.8 billion crossed borders, flowing from foundations to projects abroad. The rest — $15.4 billion — stayed within low- and middle-income countries, funded by philanthropies based there. The report, Private Philanthropy for Development (Third Edition), says foundations can’t match the scale of government aid. But they don’t try to. Instead, they take risks that governments often can’t, and move faster when new ideas need testing.
Africa received $17.6 billion in cross-border philanthropic funding — a third of the global total. That number grew steadily too, from $4.0 billion a year in 2020 to $4.8 billion by 2023. Two names stand out here: the Gates Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation. Together, they gave more than half of all the philanthropic money that reached Africa.
Where does the money go? Mostly health. It takes 40% of all philanthropic funding. Education comes next, at 11%, and civil society programs get 7%. One gap worth noting: philanthropies spend more, proportionally, on gender-focused work than governments do. Foundations put 8% of their funding toward programs for women and girls — much of it for sexual and reproductive health. Government aid agencies, by comparison, put just 2% toward the same kind of work.
Most foundations don’t operate in isolation. More than two-thirds of the philanthropies surveyed said they run multiple joint projects, working alongside more than 300 partners in total. Those partners are usually other foundations, companies, or international NGOs. Local NGOs and government agencies show up less often in these partnerships — something the report flags as a missed opportunity.
