Understanding how a nation or region organises and prioritises its grant funding provides insight not just into where the money is going, but also how that nation sees itself moving forward – domestically as well as in relation to its neighbours and beyond. It is at the same time revealing of the needs and gaps the country is looking to address and a declaration of its aspirations for the future. Those are the elements we’ve worked to capture in this first-of-its-kind journey through the landscape of grant funding around the world.
This project to understand the global grant funding landscape began with what seemed like the simplest of questions – How much grant funding is available around the world?
Since 2020, dozens of countries have cobbled together large pools of reactionary funds to the COVID-19 health crisis, while shoring up additional stimulus packages to keep their economies afloat until life ‘returned to normal.’ Many entities have tracked the value and efficacy of these
short-term funding streams over the last two years, but few have broadened their scope to include the entire landscape of the world’s grant ecosystem. This lack of information at a granular-level is the result of two primary hurdles:
1. A large variance in grant funding approaches within and across countries makes quick data analysis difficult. A single national government takes multiple approaches in how they distribute funding – whether it be via grants, loans, incentives, rebates, tax credits or other alternative
mechanisms. The complexity grows dramatically when you look downstream at state, province, or prefecture funding activities – and then again when you start to compare information across countries and continents with wideranging systems of government and economic practices. These factors can make even the basic ingredients of a global grants analysis difficult, such as defining a grant (more on that in the methodology section). A true global analysis of grant funding requires the development of common terminology that recognises the diversity of the
funding landscape in each country, while allowing for side-by-side comparisons of the results.
2. While there are many firms that provide grants intelligence services, they tend to be localised resources. An analysis like the one provided in this document requires a firm with extensive competency in grants and a global presence. And because Grants Office is uniquely positioned to undertake this endeavor – providing grants intelligence across six continents supported by staff and offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Australia – we have taken up the challenge.
Grants Office began this analysis of the global grant funding landscape with purpose and passion. More than just answering a simple question about how much grant money is available, our mission became to project the global grants landscape through 2025.
