Welcome to the latest roundup of news from the world of aid and development transparency.

The 2026 Aid Transparency Index is cancelled

We’re disappointed to announce that the 2026 Aid Transparency Index is cancelled. All future editions are also in doubt unless further funding can be secured.

The Index has provided an independent assessment and ranking of the transparency of the world’s largest aid and development agencies since 2012. It has had a significant impact on the quality and quantity of aid data that is published to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard.

Without the Aid Transparency Index, there is real danger of an unchecked decline in aid transparency. It puts the global aid dataset at risk. This comes at a time when the role of aid transparency in countering misinformation has never been clearer—and never been more needed.

Our CEO Gary Forster wrote this opinion piece for Devex on the implications of its loss. And you can read our statement here.

Philanthropic foundations falling short on transparency

In 2022, 26 foundations endorsed the Donor Statement on Supporting Locally Led Development, which included a pledge to increase direct funding to local organisations. But our new report, Promises Versus Progress finds that the vast majority have failed to report targets or progress. There is little public evidence of meaningful action.

While we applaud those philanthropies making public commitments on locally led development, without transparency, it’s impossible to know if these promises are turning into real impact. Meanwhile, local organisations—already hit hard by US aid cuts—can’t afford to wait. It’s time for greater urgency and real progress. Many have already tackled the challenges of how to define local, how to report grants publicly, and how to use open data standards. We stand ready to help foundations move forward.

Why US foreign assistance data must stay public: The case for aid transparency

In the US, aid transparency is the law. The 2016 Foreign Aid Accountability Act and 2018 Evidence-Based Policymaking Act mandate public access to US foreign assistance data. Writing in February, Sally Paxton, US Representative, Publish What You Fund and George Ingram, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, outline how the US Administration is undercutting much of the transparency that has been built through hard work over the past decade, dismantling and degrading many of the websites and data sets that would allow for an evidenced-based assessment of foreign assistance programmes. They argue that without transparency, accountability weakens.

Launching our 2025–2030 strategy: Strengthening transparency for greater impact

We are proud to launch Publish What You Fund’s 2025–2030 strategy—an ambitious roadmap to reinforce transparency as a pillar of effective, accountable development finance. This strategy builds on years of progress while responding to the new challenges of our time.

In this blog, our CEO, Gary Forster, and Chair, Al Kags, set out how transparency is more important than ever and why we’re focusing on making aid transparency bigger, better and louder.

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The power of transparency in fighting disinformation and defending USAID

In this Bond blog, Gary Forster discusses how transparency and data are our most powerful defence against the many false statements made about the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The current attacks on USAID are a stark reminder of how fragile the truth can be. The systems we have built over decades can be dismantled far more quickly than they were constructed. If we lose them, we risk returning to an era where aid decisions are made behind closed doors, unchallenged and unscrutinised. We cannot afford to be complacent. The fight for transparency is, at its core, a fight for accountability, truth and the ability to stand up to power when it seeks to obscure reality.”

2024 unwrapped

After a busy start to the year, we took a moment to reflect on our achievements in 2024. Here’s a brief roundup of what we got up to and the influence our work has had. A big thank you to all those who have supported and worked with us.

Other news

Here’s a quick roundup of other news and publications we’ve been reading over the last few weeks:

This New Humanitarian article raises the alarm about the data streams underpinning humanitarian response which are about to collapse, and argues that preserving core data systems must be a priority. It highlights that FEWS NET – an early warning data resource on hunger crises – is no longer online and warns that the interconnectedness of data streams means that the failure of one can trigger cascading failures across multiple domains.

Donor Tracker has published an article analysing the developments at USAID, looking at where US foreign assistance has been spent and the likely impacts of the cuts. The article kicks off a series which includes a new Development Cuts Tracker, compiling and exploring the implications of ODA cuts on development funding worldwide. It features analysis of the expected declines in 2025 and 2026, detailing which donor countries are scaling back.

Writing in the New Humanitarian, Mike Pearson of ODI Global examines how the humanitarian sector has come to be extremely dependent on a
small number of mainly Western donors– the top three donors contributed 62% of public humanitarian funding in 2023. He also looks at which geographies are most reliant on a few donors, which sectors are most at risk from the cuts, and the need to diversify the funding base.

Economists for Ukraine have analysed the value of US assistance to Ukraine, providing a quantitative economic estimate of the value of military aid. The paper states that the true value of military assistance is US$18.3 billion (rather than the State Department’s figure of over US$60 billion) due in part to inflated valuations of older weapons stockpiles. It also examined non-military aid (direct budget support), valuing it at US$32.6 billion (in the form of reimbursement of expenses or collateral for loans).

Meanwhile the US FBI Director has called on Congress to investigate Ukraine aid transparency.

The Brookings Institution has published an interview with George Ingram, an expert in foreign assistance, reflecting on the global implications of the US aid cuts, what comes next and the gigantic leap backwards from transparency in recent weeks.

This new Hamilton Project dashboard allows the tracking of US federal expenditures in real time, with the ability to filter by department and programme. With daily updates, this provides a tool to track the latest USAID spending.

France has set up a commission to assess the impact and transparency of its development aid, following allegations by the far right that taxpayers’ money is being squandered overseas. The French minister of foreign affairs has commented that projects will be assessed on a case by case basis to ensure that they serve either the direct or indirect interests of French people. France’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget was recently cut by 35% and the ODA budget for 2025 now stands at €3.8 billion.

The OECD has released new data on gender equality finance provided by Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members which shows that in 2022-23, the volume of ODA with gender equality objectives increased to US$68.7 billion, and its share of total bilateral allocable ODA went up to 46%, a rebound from the previous period.

Here’s a quick reminder of our reflections on the state of gender financing data and the opportunities to improve it.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has set out the current picture on UK development, following the major budget reductions, competing crises and global turbulence since 2020. It reports that aid spending on refugees in the UK rose from £628 million in 2020 to £4.3 billion in 2023 and Ukraine has become the top recipient of UK aid.

The Center for Global Development (CGD) has released an analysis of the UK’s plans to cut its aid budget from 0.5% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.3% in 2027 to fund defence spending. The authors point out that even if costs for supporting refugees and asylum seekers within the UK fall by 30%, the UK’s actual international spend will be closer to 0.17% of GNI—the lowest in the G7 by far.

A new study into impact investing funds by BlueMark has highlighted impact transparency gaps. The study says there are significant challenges in funds’ impact reporting to investors, with 97% not regularly checking the quality of their impact data. It also highlights gaps in the completeness of disclosures.

The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) has released detailed recommendations urging the US Administration and Congress to establish a new development and humanitarian structure in the State Department by creating a Deputy Secretary for Development and Humanitarian Affairs. MFAN says these reforms would centralise leadership, improve coordination, and ensure accountability in the State Department’s new structure.

ClimateFiGS has published a summary of the lessons learned and calls to action from its climate finance tracking workshop in December 2024. It covers the gaps, challenges, and innovations in how we track climate finance.

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