A major multilateral organization needed to understand where Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) was heading through 2030 — and what a shifting funding environment would mean for its revenue and operations. Aid budgets were under pressure across donor governments, the competitive landscape was changing, and leadership needed a clear-eyed view of the road ahead rather than a snapshot of the present.
We produced a master report documenting the state of the world at the time of commissioning, and forecasting ODA trends to 2030, integrating vetted open-source data, proprietary data, and the organization's own internal data with the perspectives of multiple senior development professionals from outside the organization. We then translated that analysis into a set of recommendations for senior leadership: how to adapt to a tighter funding environment, how to build on and promote the organization's advantages over peers and align to best-in-class practice, and how to further diversify an already strong funding portfolio. We have since provided regular updates to conditions and forecasts.
Starting with members of our specialist pool, we convened senior expertise from across the development and humanitarian-aid sector — including the former head of a major peer development agency, senior former USAID officials, and several of the leading academic authorities on ODA — alongside perspectives from government, the private sector, humanitarian organizations, and supply chain. We synthesized these inputs against the data using scenario-planning methodologies, scoping out a series of possible worlds and identifying the steps that would inoculate the organization against worst-case outcomes while positioning it to capitalize on favorable developments.
Leadership came away with what it had lacked: a clear-eyed read of the funding landscape and a ranked playbook for protecting revenue, sharpening competitive position, and broadening the funding base ahead of the curve. We continue to update the picture as conditions shift. A comparable synthesis — this many senior voices, integrated this fast — would be hard to assemble through conventional channels at any reasonable cost.