Six major philanthropies funding international projects to promote transparency and accountability have released a database of the projects they are supporting.
The assembled list of 1,011 ongoing projects, worth $508,618,269, was compiled by the Transparency & Accountability Initiative (TAI), the London-based coordinating body for the six donors. It shows ongoing grants in the transparency, participation and accountability areas.
The TAI data does not allow for year-over-year comparisons of spending because many of the projects are multi-year grants, some having started as early as 2015.
The searchable and downloadable database shows active projects as of October 2020. It will be updated again in January 2022.
The database includes the name of the funder, the name of the recipient, the amount, the title of the grant and usually a one-sentence description of the project.
The six funders and their individual totals are:
· Luminate – $162,447,225
· Hewlett – $101,611,237
· Ford – $93,762,320
· OSF – $91,128,738
· MacArthur – $57,028,750
· Chandler – $2,640,000
“Most of this data is already publicly available on their respective websites, however the Secretariat has now published all of its members’ grant data in one central place,” according to an explanation. “We hope this makes for more efficient searches for funders and practitioners keen to know what organizations are supported by TAI members.”
The website suggests several uses:
For grantmakers – find peers to engage around new portfolio thinking, new partners you might want to meet.
For grant seekers – find out which funders you might have in common with your peers, or identify new peer groups you might want to meet.
Joint Actions Documented
The website shows where the TAI funders have contributed jointly.
All but McArthur underwrite the Open Government Partnership, an organization of governments and civil society organizations.
The database indicated total contributions of $14,650,000 to OGP, with varied grant periods, from 2018 to 2023.
Six other organizations are supported by four TAI members: Accountability Lab, FACT Coalition, Global Witness, Natural Resource Governance Institute, Open Contracting Partnership and Publish What You Pay.
TAI seeks to “help donor members work together to improve grant making practice and boost collective impact.” TAI’s website says it helps its donor members “improve their grantmaking practices around four focus areas: Data Use for Accountability, Strengthening Civic Space, Taxation and Tax Governance, Learning for Improved Grantmaking.”
On March of 2020, TAI adopted a five-year strategy “designed to reinforce the “what”, the “how” and the “who” of funding for the transparency and accountability field.”
The 2020 Semi-Annual Report, from August 2020, documents TAI’s activities. It also states that from Jan. 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020, TAI spent $397,611, “roughly 36.5 percent” of its budget, but doesn’t include further financial information. The 2019 annual report, dated March 2020, puts the TAI annual budget at $1,311,930.
