What Does Philanthropy’s Global Footprint Tell Us About Its Role in a Changing Aid Landscape?

The recent decline in official development assistance has given new urgency to a familiar question: can private philanthropy help fill the gap?

The likely answer is: not at the scale required. Private foundations cannot replace public aid budgets and should not be treated as a substitute for predictable, publicly accountable development finance. But that does not make philanthropy marginal. Because foundations can be more flexible than official donors, they can sometimes move faster, take risks that public agencies avoid, and invest in issues that fall between bilateral and multilateral mandates.

That makes a second question more important: where is philanthropic money already going?

Since foundations have more discretion over where and whom they fund, their choices can produce a highly uneven distribution of resources. Some countries may attract many donors because they offer scale, are easier to work in, or already host a dense ecosystem of international partners. Others may be left out, not because their needs are smaller, but because they have not been common destinations for philanthropic funding.

To examine this directly, I use OECD project-level data on cross-border private philanthropy from 2017 to 2023, covering roughly $32 billion in country-allocable commitments from 41 large foundations. The analysis shows the concentration of funding in some countries. But it also points to more encouraging patterns: the field has shifted somewhat towards fragile countries and Africa in recent years, and in countries with many funders, there is little sign that foundations are simply duplicating each other’s sector choices.

Philanthropy’s reach is shaped by more than poverty

If philanthropic funding were driven primarily by poverty, poorer countries would receive more funding per person. They do, but only slightly. At almost any given income level, countries receive very different levels of philanthropic support. A factor of hundreds in per-capita philanthropic funding can separate two countries with similar income per head.

The sector mix helps explain why income is only part of the story. Health is the most common dominant sector, and health funding cuts across income groups. This pattern suggests many health grants are shaped not only by poverty but also by factors such as demographics and disease burden. Similarly, the number of middle-income countries receiving funding primarily for environmental or cross-sector activities indicates that foundations also fund global challenges, such as climate change, that do not follow a simple poverty map.

Figure 1. Global philanthropy is shaped by more than poverty

Philanthropy’s geographic footprint is moving toward fragile states and Africa

The geographic footprint of philanthropy is not static. Comparing 2017–18 with 2022–23 and restricting the comparison to foundations already reporting at the start of the period shows a discernible shift in donor presence and the amount of funding per country.

Several fragile or conflict-affected countries gained philanthropic donors. Afghanistan, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan each gained four to six donors. Ukraine moved from a single donor before the war to 20.

Figure 2. More philanthropic donors are moving into fragile states

Africa, broadly, also attracted more philanthropic activity. Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda all gained both funders and funding. By contrast, several upper-middle-income countries, including Brazil, China, Colombia, and Mexico saw donor presence thin out.

This is an important and broadly encouraging shift. But it comes with a caveat: fragile states saw donor presence grow faster than funding per country. A country with six foundations making modest grants is in a very different position from one with the same number of donors making large commitments.

Countries with more foundations attract other foundations, but that is not necessarily herding

One concern about private philanthropy is that donors may cluster where other donors are already present, either to achieve scale or to benefit from existing partner networks. Such clustering could become self-reinforcing over time, as countries with many funders attract more, while countries outside the network are left behind.

Figure 3. Philanthropic donors are more likely to enter countries where other donors are already active

At first glance, the data appear consistent with the above hypothesis. Across country-years where a foundation could have entered but had not yet done so, the probability of entry rises sharply with the number of foundations already active in a country. In countries with no incumbent philanthropic donors, the probability that a new donor enters in a given year is about 1.6 percent. In contrast, in countries with 20 or more incumbent donors, the probability rises to over 12 percent.

But when we compare each country with its own past track record of attracting philanthropic funding, the correlation between existing donors and new entries weakens. In other words, foundations do not appear to enter simply because more foundations happened to be there in that same period. The more plausible explanation is that many foundations are drawn to the same countries for similar reasons—need, scale, visibility, stronger partner networks, or easier operating conditions—rather than because they are directly following one another. One caveat, however, is that a seven-year panel may be too short to completely rule out the herding hypothesis.

Bigger foundations do not necessarily have more distinctive footprints

Even if foundations are not literally following one another, they may still end up with similar country portfolios. To examine this, I compare each donor’s country allocation with that of other donors in the OECD database.

Some foundations, such as the Jacobs Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, have country portfolios that look quite different from the rest of the field. Others sit much closer to the centre with significant overlaps in the countries they fund.

Larger foundations are often among the less distinctive donors geographically. This is not surprising, as a large donor with a broad portfolio is statistically more likely to overlap with the countries that many other foundations also fund.

Figure 4. A few foundations fund a distinct set of countries, while most tend to have significant overlaps

The more policy-salient question, then, is not whether large donors are distinctive for their own sake. It is whether their scale expands the philanthropic map or simply reinforces existing patterns of concentration. This is relevant because, if major funders use their resources to enter countries that smaller foundations cannot or will not reach, they can potentially reduce geographic exclusion.

Geographic concentration does not mean sectoral duplication

Given that foundations are concentrated in certain countries, the key follow-up question is whether those donors are mostly funding the same things.

The evidence suggests they are less likely to be duplicating efforts. In countries with three or more donors, foundations’ sector portfolios overlap less than we would expect if each donor applied its usual global sector mix inside that country. Put differently, foundations that converge geographically often specialise sectorally.

Figure 5. Philanthropic donors converging in the same country often divide sectors among themselves

This shows that there is usually some degree of division of labour, whether deliberate or emerging from donors’ differing priorities. A country can look crowded at the donor level while still having a differentiated sectoral pattern in the distribution of funds.

But this also implies that, if donors divide sectors among themselves, each sector in each country may end up depending on only one or two foundations. That reduces duplication, but it may also create vulnerability.

The first grant matters because relationships tend to last.

The trend in within-country philanthropic funding reveals significant persistence over time. A foundation active in a country in one year has a 65 percent chance of remaining active there the following year. By contrast, a foundation not present in a country has only a 26 percent chance of entering.

Figure 6. Funders tend to stay where they are already operating

This does not mean countries necessarily have stable philanthropic funding envelopes from year to year; total funding can rise and fall as it often follows project cycles. What persists is the set of underlying relationships between countries and philanthropic donors.

This is not necessarily a problem. Stable funding relationships can support better outcomes and greater scale by enabling multi-year programming, accumulated trust, local knowledge, stronger implementing partnerships, and the time needed to build effective programmes.

But persistence can also have distributional consequences. Countries with established philanthropic relationships are more likely to keep them, while those with few or no existing relationships may struggle to attract funding, even when the need is clear.

Philanthropy’s catalytic role in a low-aid world

In light of the recent historic aid cuts, it is encouraging that philanthropy was already moving somewhat towards fragile countries and Africa. It is also a good sign that when donors concentrate in the same countries, they often seem to avoid duplicating one another.

Philanthropy cannot be expected to replace ODA country by country. Rather, its most useful role will likely be to help shape a more sustainable new equilibrium by smoothing the transition, testing ideas, absorbing early risk, building delivery and evidence systems, supporting regional platforms, and making underfunded countries or sectors more fundable over time.

Country-allocable funding often needs concentration to achieve minimum scale, sustain partnerships, and reduce transaction costs. The challenge is to combine strategic concentration with systemic interventions that are likely to ensure longer-term equity. Philanthropy can do this by using non-country-allocable funding, which already accounts for a larger share of total giving, to extend benefits beyond the countries that already attract direct foundation funding.