Even as the global economy buckled under the Covid-19 crisis, philanthropists and grant makers maintained their same rate of giving to international causes, awarding more than $70 billion in 2020, which is about the same as two years earlier. That is quite the opposite behavior of private capital investors, which dropped global investments nearly 100 percent as the pandemic hit.
That finding comes from a report released Thursday by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
The 2023 Global Philanthropy Tracker showed that in 2020, overall cross-border giving declined by 0.5 percent in the 47 countries measured, which represent 61 percent of the global population and 85 percent of global gross domestic product, a measure of the value of goods and services produced.
Cross-border philanthropy accounted for roughly 8 percent of all global financial resources measured flowing between the countries in 2020, with the remaining funds coming largely from remittances, which increased by 19 percent as more migrants sent money home to support their families during the pandemic, and government aid.
“It’s encouraging to see that even in the face of these very difficult few years, private philanthropy and remittances remained resilient,” said Una Osili, associate dean for research and international programs at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Donors and grant makers in the United States contributed more than $49 billion to global philanthropy in 2020, by far the most of any country measured, followed by Britain, at $6 billion, and Germany, at $3 billion. While data was limited on which regions receive the most cross-border giving, Africa appeared to be the most common recipient, followed by Asia and Europe.
Among countries that collect data on where international donations go, health and education were the causes most commonly supported by cross-border giving, followed by religion and humanitarian or crisis-related aid.
Global crises, such as World War II and the Great Recession, have often inspired new spurts in global giving by illuminating gaps in government funding, said Jean Paul Warmoes, executive director of the King Baudouin Foundation United States, which facilitates cross-border giving. The pandemic has been no exception, he says.
“There’s a renewed interest — a bit of a renaissance in fundraising,” said Warmoes, who noted that donors have also become increasingly invested in global giving that benefits “local initiatives developed by local leaders who grew up in their communities,” rather than larger international nonprofits.
While the pandemic prompted several countries and international groups, including the World Health Organization, to create new campaigns to encourage cross-border giving, it still falls short of the amount needed to respond to major global crises like climate change, the report says.
Beyond the analysis of 2020 giving, the report also provided a look at what happened to international giving after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
That war has prompted an “opportunity for innovation” in cross-border giving, says Osili, who credited everyday donors with finding new ways to support Ukrainians. At the beginning of the war, for instance, some people from outside Ukraine booked unused stays at Airbnbs across the country as a gesture of solidarity and a means of injecting money into the local economy.
Still, Osili warns that even as some countries increase their global giving, others have responded to crises like war and economic turmoil by focusing their philanthropy on domestic causes. In Turkey, for example, cross-border philanthropy declined by over 45 percent from 2018 to 2020.
“As we look ahead, solving many of these challenges, including climate, requires countries to work together,” she said. “At the same time, there are these tensions that are also pushing us to look inward as well.”
Researchers also noted a lack of data tracking and transparency by governments as a major barrier to increasing the flow of grant making — and accurately capturing its scope. The report also emphasized the need for more local philanthropic organizations to act as bridges between nonprofits and philanthropists from outside a region, as well as investments in new avenues for international giving, like crowdfunding and crypto-donations.
The report used gross national income per capita, which takes into account all yearly income earned by residents at home or abroad, to categorize the countries measured. It included data from one low-income country, four lower-middle income countries, 10 upper-middle-income countries, and 32 high-income countries.
Other findings:
- Nearly all of the cross-border giving came from people in the wealthiest countries. Grant makers and other philanthropic donors in the low- and lower-middle income provided a total of $42 million to other countries, givers in the upper-middle income countries donated $644 million, and those in high-income countries awarded $70 billion in 2020
- Donors in United States gave sums that represented 0.23 percent of the country’s gross national income to global causes in 2020, the most of any country measured. It was followed by Britain, whose contributions represented 0.22 percent, Qatar at 0.19 percent, and Switzerland at 0.16 percent.
- In 2020, donors in China increased cross-border giving to $103 million, nearly five times the amount they donated in 2018, and the largest jump in any upper-middle-income country, though Turkey remains the largest upper-middle-income donor with $402 million in global donations.
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