Peace and Security Funding Index: An Analysis of Global Foundation Grantmaking - 2017 Edition

Abstract

In the year since we launched the first Peace and Security Funding Index, elections around the world brought authoritarian populist leaders and governments to power, the United States and Europe saw an increase in hate crimes, and violent conflict continued to affect civilians across the globe. Within this dynamic global context, we see both new threats to peace and security emerging and long-term challenges persisting, like the protracted conflicts in Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.Yet, people all over the globe continue to work to move towards a more peaceful world. In Colombia, a longnegotiated peace accord was signed with the potential to bring decades of conflict to an end. Around the world, even in countries with contentious elections, we saw the smooth and non-violent transition of power that is the hallmark of functioning democracies. The hard work of peace goes on, and while it may take years to see progress, what we do know is that peace and security funders continue to support it. In 2014, the latest year complete data is available, 290 foundations supported over 1,800 organizations with $357 million.The hundreds of millions of dollars granted every year in this sector are helping to prevent and mitigate conflict and build stable, resilient societies across the globe.Both in this report and on peaceandsecurityindex.org, we once again showcase stories of the incredible work peace and security funders support across a wide range of strategies, issues, and contexts. These stories, as well as the sample grants found throughout the Index, help bring the data to life. They also illustrate the long-term, evolutionary nature of peace and security work: though all of the stories found in the Index directly correspond to grants made in 2014, the work those grants supported remains relevant in 2017 and beyond. With the 2,773 grants they made in 2014, funders built coalitions, trained journalists, and empowered grantees to tackle a variety of peace and security issues, laying the groundwork for more recent funding and progress.The 2017 Index tracks funding across 23 diverse issue areas, many of which overlap with other sectors, like

The Social Progress of Nations Revisited

“…10 and those patterns reported in the other figures reprinted in the paper are expected to continue well into the future. This is the goal toward which people themselves are working and which governments, international development assistance organizations, and private philanthropists are investing at historically unparalleled levels (Koob et al 2018;UNDP 2018;World Bank 2018). And the outcomes of these multilayered investments are yielding equally unparalleled positive outcomes.…”