The Addis Ababa Action Agenda welcomes the rapid growth of philanthropic giving and the significant financial and non-financial contribution philanthropists have made towards achieving our common goals. It encourages philanthropists to partner with Governments, as well as increased transparency and accountability in philanthropy.
Specifically, the Addis Agenda:
- Encourages growth of philanthropy and efforts to increase cooperation between philanthropic actors, Governments and other development stakeholders
- Calls for increased transparency and accountability in philanthropy
- Encourages philanthropic donors to apply due consideration to local circumstances and align with national policies and priorities
- Encourages philanthropic donors to consider managing their endowments through impact investing
Update from the 2018 Financing for Sustainable Report
The Addis Ababa Action Agenda goes beyond setting commitments targeting growth of philanthropic giving, and emphasizes elements of collaborative action: transparency, alignment with national development planning and priorities. Collecting data on philanthropy has long been perceived as challenging as systems for monitoring philanthropic investments were often rudimentary in many places in the world.
In 2017, the OECD carried out an unprecedented large-scale Survey on Philanthropy for Development and was able to gather project-level data from 143 foundations worldwide. The data suggested that these foundations provided around $8 billion per year for development during 2013-15, mainly for health-related causes in developing countries, with a specific focus on Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia. Moreover, comparing the survey results with ODA, foundations appear to be key funders of health, population and reproductive health activities in developing countries.
Building on the encouraging results of the Suvey, the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate has been working on data-sharing partnerships with the largest foundations active in development. While the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been reporting its grantmaking activities as well as programme-related investment on a regular basis since 2010, by end 2018 the number of foundations which engaged in regular reporting to the OECD has reached 26, representing a total commitment of USD 7.1 billion in 2017. These data are made publicly available at the activity level and free of charge through the OECD Stat portal.