It is tales like this that convince American taxpayers that aid funding is squandered. America is relatively stingy, given the size of its economy. Total official development assistance in 2022 was just over 0.2% of gross national income. But that is enough to make the country the world’s largest donor, ahead of Germany and Japan., the arm of the government that is responsible for dishing out much of that funding, committed $32.5bn last year, a figure that has climbed markedly over time .
But this is an expensive way to do good in the world. Data from the Share Trust, a non-profit group, suggest that aid agencies could save 32 cents of each dollar they spend through overhead and salary costs if they used local intermediaries. Across the globe, aid agencies are trying to hand more money directly to local groups, an effort known variously as “localisation” and “decolonising aid”. In 2016 donors and aid organisations struck a “grand bargain”, vowing to provide 25% of global humanitarian funding to local responders by 2020. Yet that target was missed by a wide margin.’s performance versus other aid agencies, says Raj Kumar of Devex, an aid-focused news group: the data are too patchy.
Second, the agency is making itself more accessible to small, faraway organisations. Piles of paperwork are off-putting. In a survey of small and medium-sized development firms by Unlock Aid, a campaign for foreign-aid reform, one-third said they avoid takingproject, ended up tangled in audits and disputes with the agency that took their toll on the organisation.is trying to put an end to all that. A new website, workwithusaid.