In 2019, U.S. private and community foundations included in Candid’s Foundation 1000 dataset awarded $8 billion in global giving, a nearly fourfold increase since 2002, a new study from the Council on Foundations (COF) finds.

The report, The State of Global Giving by U.S. Foundations: 2022 Edition  (84 pages, PDF)—developed in collaboration with Candid—highlights funding trends leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic and surfaces the subsequent challenges and shifting priorities and strategies that followed. It provides a close read of data from 2016-19 and offers a window on how U.S. foundations are supporting international efforts to improve health outcomes, address climate change, expand access to education, ensure human rights, and engage with other global priorities.

Between 2016 and 2019, grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation accounted for 44 percent of all global giving by U.S. foundations, an outsized representation the report highlights throughout. Health-related funding accounted for 49 percent of all global grant dollars. When adjusted to exclude funding from the Gates Foundation, the share still represented 20.1 percent of all international grantmaking. Human rights funding realized the fastest growth in global support, moving from 7 percent of global grant dollars between 2011-15, to 11 percent between 2016-19.

The largest share of funds was directed to sub-Saharan Africa (25.1 percent) and the Asia & Pacific region (17.7 percent), while India, Israel, Nigeria, and China ranked as the top four countries by geographic focus based on U.S. foundation grant dollars. U.S. foundations continue to rely on intermediaries headquartered in this country, with 61 percent of global giving being directed to U.S.-based organizations, 27 percent directed to intermediaries in third countries, and fewer than 13 percent of global grant dollars going directly to organizations operating in the country served by the grant.

While roughly 25 percent of annual grant dollars distributed since 2008 have been directed to global giving—up from 13 percent in 2002—that trend has not increased relative to domestic giving. Few foundations explicitly define their grantmaking based on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but 84 percent of the top 1,000 U.S. foundations continue to align their global giving broadly with the advancement of SDGs. The report looks to the post-pandemic philanthropic landscape highlighting bright spots including the mobilization of youth movements, the leveraging of technology, the renewed emphasis on human rights, and the intentionality of addressing power dynamics between grantmakers, grantees, and communities.

“The pandemic and racial reckoning have opened up a whole new series of ideas for potential innovation, which is where...philanthropy should be,” one interviewee commented for the report. “It’s an opportunity for us to rethink our sector.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/comptine)