Religious and faith-based organizations contribute substantially to international development as major donors to care for the most vulnerable.

Political pressure is increasing in some quarters to cut public spending on foreign assistance leaving religious and voluntary sectors to fundraise for aid. It is critical to understand faith-based entities are effective partners implementing government grants and are already secure substantial private resources for development assistance. Data are limited on the on revenues and expenditures of faith groups to international development. One publicly available source of data is the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) annual filings required of tax-exempt Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This report uses publicly available IRS 990 forms of 71 of the largest US faith-based NGOs engaged in international development and aid activities to quantify the private and public revenues and expenditures from FY2011-FY2015.

As the just released Hudson Index of Philanthropy 2016 shows, US  private philanthropy significantly outpaces US Official Development Assistance (ODA)  as a proportion of total US contributions to total economic engagement with developing countries ( 12% vs 9%), and religious organizations contribute 14% of the total of that private philanthropy.

The Center for Faith and the Common Good (CFCG) has updated its analysis of data on US FB NGO financing for international development to include FY 2015. See here for more information on CFCG

Click here for the Sources of Revenue and International Expenditures of US Faith-Based NGOs FY2011-2016 on the JLI website.