Cross-Border Giving Was $82 Billion in 2023, Before the Aid Cuts

Anyone setting an international grantmaking budget for the coming year has to begin from a figure for how much private charitable money actually crosses national borders, because the argument for stepping into a funding gap only holds once you know the size of your own side of the ledger. That figure was published in June by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, whose Global Philanthropy Tracker reported that cross-border philanthropic outflows, meaning private charitable money that leaves one country to be used in another, reached USD 82 billion in 2023 across the 47 countries the study covers. Those countries together account for 83% of global gross domestic product, which is the combined value of everything the world's economies produce, and for roughly 60% of the world's population, so the count reaches most of the money and most of the people. The reference year deserves as much attention as the headline, because 2023 is the most recent year with available data for most of the countries covered, which means the newest available picture of global private giving closes two years before the events that now shape much of the conversation about it.

The Tracker places that USD 82 billion inside a larger accounting, because philanthropy is one of four ways money moves from these countries to the rest of the world. The other three are official development assistance, which is the aid that donor governments budget and report to the OECD; remittances, which is money that migrants send back to their families; and private capital investment, which is for-profit money seeking a return abroad. Counting all four together, the 47 countries moved USD 860 billion across their borders in 2023, so philanthropy carried close to a tenth of the total. The study also records that philanthropic outflows have been the steadiest of the four over the past three decades, which is a useful finding for anyone who has watched aid budgets and investment flows move with elections and interest rates.

What happened after 2023 appears in a separate record, and the OECD publishes it in its own preliminary figures. Official development assistance from the member countries of its Development Assistance Committee, the group of major donor governments that reports aid figures to it, amounted to USD 174.3 billion in 2025, and the OECD states that this total "fell by 23.1%, in real terms, compared to 2024." The OECD describes that as "the largest annual contraction recorded in the history of ODA," and notes that aid in 2025 sat 4.2% below its 2019 level. The decline concentrated among a few providers, because 26 of 34 members reduced their aid while the five largest providers together accounted for 95.7% of the total fall, and the United States drove 75.1% of it with a reduction of 56.9%. The OECD projects a further 5.8% decline in 2026.

Setting those two records beside each other is where the practical problem appears, and it is a problem of timing before it is a problem of scale. The best available measure of what private philanthropy sends across borders describes 2023. The contraction that philanthropy is now being asked to answer happened in 2025 and is projected to continue through 2026. So an organization that opens the Tracker to size its opportunity is reading a careful account of the world as it stood before the thing it wants to respond to, and the report claims nothing else, because the researchers state plainly that 2023 is the most recent year with available data for most of the countries covered. The distance between when global philanthropy can be measured and when decisions about it get made runs to roughly two years, and that distance follows from how the data is assembled, so no amount of looking harder at the report will close it.

The scale question follows from the timing question and needs stating carefully, because the two datasets use different reference years and different accounting conventions, so they do not subtract cleanly from one another. With that caveat attached, the comparison is still instructive. Development Assistance Committee aid stood at USD 174.3 billion in 2025 after the largest single-year contraction on record, and total measured cross-border philanthropy stood at USD 82 billion in 2023. Government aid, even after that contraction, therefore remains more than twice the size of all the private cross-border giving the Tracker was able to count. The Tracker adds two further constraints on any substitution story, because philanthropic outflows rose 16% between 2020 and 2023 yet registered a slight decline of 1% once adjusted for inflation, and because roughly 95% of the total measured originated in high-income countries, which are the same countries now reducing their aid budgets.

For nonprofit and foundation professionals, the immediate consequence lands in the planning documents before it reaches the mission statement, because a board paper that cites the global philanthropy figure to justify an international commitment is citing a 2023 baseline against a 2026 need, and the honest version of that paper says so in its first paragraph. Naming the vintage of your evidence costs the case for the commitment very little, and it protects the commitment later, when someone asks why the projected environment did not match the one that arrived.

For digital and crypto-native giving leaders, the measurement lag gives the infrastructure you are already building a use that is easy to state, because a gift sent on a blockchain, meaning a shared public database that records every transfer as it happens, can be counted the same day rather than two years later. The volumes here remain modest against USD 82 billion, so the honest claim is about speed rather than size, and speed is what the sector currently lacks. Publishing a running count of what moves across borders through digital rails would give the field a current indicator to hold alongside an instrument that reports on a two-year delay.

For donors and family-office advisors, the reference-year problem changes what due diligence on an international gift should ask, because a recommendation built on sector-wide figures inherits whatever year those figures describe. An advisor who wants a current picture has to supplement the global data with something closer to the ground, such as the recipient organization's own funding composition and how much of its budget came from government sources that have since been reduced. The concentration finding matters here as well, since a grantee that drew heavily on the aid programs of the five providers responsible for most of the contraction now faces a different situation from one that did not, and that distinction will not appear in any aggregate number.

For corporate giving and CSR leaders, the same lag shapes how international commitments should be worded, because a multi-year pledge benchmarked to sector averages is benchmarked to a period that has since changed materially. Writing a review point into the commitment, tied to the release of updated figures rather than to the calendar, keeps the pledge credible without asking the company to guess at conditions that cannot presently be measured. That wording also gives a corporate funder a defensible answer when the reported need in a country moves faster than the reported supply of philanthropic capital.

For NGOs and international organizations, meaning the groups that move money and programs across national borders, the finding that philanthropic flows have been the steadiest of the four over three decades carries more weight than the headline total. Steadiness is a property worth designing around, because a funding base resting on the most volatile of the four flows will absorb shocks that a more diversified base would not, and the 2025 aid figures are a recent demonstration of how sharp those shocks can be. The constraint is that steadiness does not imply room to expand, since the same report shows philanthropic outflows roughly flat in real terms across 2020 to 2023, so a strategy that treats private giving as a reliable partner rests on firmer evidence than one that treats it as a reserve able to absorb a government-scale withdrawal.

Organizations are deciding right now how to respond to the contraction in public aid, and they will keep deciding with whatever evidence they have, so the open question is a narrower one. It is what a sector does when its best measurement instrument reports on a two-year delay while the conditions it measures change faster than that. Building a current-year read on cross-border giving would take coordination that does not presently exist, and until it does, every plan written against the global figure is a plan written against a photograph of a year that has already passed.

"A number that took two years to assemble is still worth having, so long as everyone in the room knows which year they are looking at."

EILEEN HERNANDEZ, THE STRATEGIC STEWARD

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This is the practical edge of the Disintermediated Global Impact pillar of the DIA framework, because reducing the number of institutions a gift passes through on its way across a border also reduces the number of reporting cycles standing between a decision and the evidence for it, and the Global Philanthropy Tracker is a careful reminder of how long those cycles currently run.

Sources and Frameworks

Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. (2026, June 9). Global Philanthropy Tracker 2026 (12th ed.). Cross-border philanthropic outflows from 47 countries reached USD 82 billion in 2023; those countries represent 83% of global GDP and about 60% of world population; all four cross-border resource flows totalled USD 860 billion; philanthropic outflows were the most stable of the four over three decades; outflows rose 16% from 2020 to 2023 and declined 1% adjusted for inflation; roughly 95% of the measured total came from high-income countries. Verified 2026-09-10.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2026). Preliminary official development assistance levels in 2025, DCD(2026)8. ODA from DAC members totalled USD 174.3 billion in 2025, down 23.1% in real terms from 2024, the largest annual contraction on record and 4.2% below 2019; 26 of 34 members reduced ODA and the five largest providers accounted for 95.7% of the fall, with the United States driving 75.1% through a 56.9% reduction; a further 5.8% decline is projected for 2026. Verified 2026-09-10.

Framework anchor: DIA Protocol, Disintermediated Global Impact pillar.