Half of USAID's spending goes to 25 organizations. Who are they?

The U.S. Agency for International Development has a new strategy to help partner countries achieve “self-reliance.” Part of that involves addressing the concentration of the agency’s spending with a “relatively small circle of large organizations,” as the strategy describes it, which includes some of the biggest international development organizations in the industry. But which organizations are these, just how concentrated is USAID’s spending with them — and to what extent has that started to change? Devex analyzed five years of U.S. government spending data to find out. Geographically, USAID spends mostly with U.S.-based organizations Under its new strategy, USAID wants to work more with “local entities” and “locally established partners” — the former essentially refers to truly local organizations, while the latter can be organizations from anywhere but with strong histories of localization and on-the-ground capacity building in the relevant country. To date, these have not been major partners for USAID. For each of the past five fiscal years, more than 80% of its spending has gone to U.S.-based partners. That proportion has declined over the five years, but the deconcentration of spending on U.S.-based firms has primarily benefited multilateral organizations and international NGOs based in Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, and Denmark. USAID has not increased its spending with “local entities” over that time, a proportion that has hovered around the 6-7% mark. More than half of USAID spending goes to 25 organizations How small is the “small circle of large organizations”? From fiscal year 2015 through 2019, almost 40% of USAID spending went to just 12 organizations. More than half its spending — just under 55% — went to 25 organizations. These included private firms, multilateral agencies, and international NGOs. Admittedly, included in this figure are USAID’s contributions to several United Nations agencies, the Global Fund, and the World Bank — eight of these top 25 are multilateral organizations. The other 17 are either private companies, international non-profit organizations or INGOs. This breakdown has not substantially changed over the past five years. The top 25 So who are these elite USAID partners? This section lists the top prime awardees, based on total federal action obligations over the past five years. It also includes the number of awards won over that period, which is calculated as a unique count of award ID’s attributed to that organization or group of affiliated organizations. This list excludes multilateral organizations that received funding from USAID during this period. It also groups some affiliated organizations, such as John Snow Inc and the JSI Research and Training Institute, for example. In this interactive visualization, you can interact with the data of these top 25 partner organizations. 25. CARE International $418 million | 164 awards 24. ACDI/VOCA $434 million | 100 awards 23. Kenya Medical Supplies Authority $437 million | 1 award 22. Palladium International $442 million | 41 awards 21. Pathfinder International $458 million | 20 Pathfinder International awards 20. AECOM $486 million | 55 awards 19. Deloitte Consulting $521 million | 110 awards 18. Management Sciences for Health Inc $530 million | 59 awards 17. World Vision $531 million | 183 awards 16. Management Systems International Inc $540 million | 171 million 15. University Research Co., LLC $581 million | 50 awards 14. Creative Associates $583 million | 61 awards 13. Population Services International $584 million | 58 awards 12. Mercy Corps $587 million | 186 awards 11. Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, International Foundation for Election Systems $627 million | 212 awards 10. Save the Children Federation $823 million | 278 awards 9. RTI International $1.16 billion | 153 awards 8. Tetra Tech $1.297 billion | 175 awards 7. Abt Associates Inc $1.47 billion | 84 awards 6. Catholic Relief Services $1.49 billion | 297 awards 5. Johns Hopkins University and Jhpiego $1.57 billion | 101 awards 4. Development Alternatives Inc $2.06 billion | 220 awards 3. John Snow Incorporated, JSI Research and Training Institute, and the Partnership for Supply Chain Management Inc $2.196 billion | 72 awards 2. FHI 360 $2.31 billion | 228 awards 1. Chemonics International Inc $6.32 billion | 266 awards Interact with the data of these top 25 partner organizations. For access to funding analysis, the latest funding updates, and opportunities from over 780 sources — in addition to exclusive Devex Pro news content — please get in touch to learn more about a Devex Funding membership.