The funding gap
Rees Calder · 25 April 2026 · 7 min read
Global health aid was $42 billion in 2023. Global education aid was $16.4 billion. Both figures come from the same sources (IHME and UNESCO respectively), cover the same year, and describe problems of comparable scale. The difference in funding is roughly 2.5 to 1. The difference in need is nowhere near that ratio.
The gap between what problems receive and what they arguably deserve based on scale, tractability, and neglectedness is the most important feature of the giving landscape. Understanding where the gaps are is the closest thing to a cheat code for maximising the impact of your donations.
Where the money goes vs. where it should
Three comparisons illustrate the mismatch.
Health vs. education. The IHME Financing Global Health database (2023) shows health aid grew from $13 billion in 2002 to $42 billion in 2023, driven primarily by three institutions: the Global Fund ($5.4 billion annually), PEPFAR ($6.9 billion), and Gavi ($2.1 billion). This growth is a genuine success story, but it came partly at the expense of education. UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Report (2024) shows education aid stagnant at $16.4 billion in real terms, roughly the same as a decade ago.
The Global Partnership for Education estimates the annual financing gap for quality education in low and lower-middle income countries at $97 billion. For health, the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (2013, updated 2024) estimates the gap at $70-80 billion. Education's gap is larger, but it receives less than half the external funding.
Why? Health outcomes are easier to measure. A bed net prevents malaria cases (countable). A vaccine prevents deaths (countable). A year of schooling prevents... what, exactly? The measurement problem drives the funding gap. Donors and governments fund what they can measure, not necessarily what matters most.
Climate adaptation vs. mitigation. The Climate Policy Initiative's Global Landscape of Climate Finance report (2024) tracks $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance. Of that, roughly 95% goes to mitigation (reducing emissions: renewable energy, electric vehicles, efficiency) and roughly 5% goes to adaptation (preparing for climate impacts: flood defences, drought-resistant crops, early warning systems).
The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (2022) explicitly states that adaptation finance is "an order of magnitude" below what's needed. The communities most vulnerable to climate change (low-lying coastal areas, arid regions, subsistence farming communities) are predominantly in the Global South and receive a tiny fraction of climate finance. The gap between adaptation funding and adaptation need is one of the starkest in any sector.
Neglected tropical diseases vs. major infectious diseases. The WHO classifies 20 conditions as "neglected tropical diseases" (NTDs): schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, soil-transmitted helminths, and others. Collectively, NTDs affect over 1.6 billion people. Annual funding for NTD control is roughly $1.5 billion (WHO, 2024). Annual funding for HIV/AIDS alone is roughly $20 billion. HIV affects roughly 39 million people.
Per-person funding: HIV receives roughly $500 per person affected. NTDs receive roughly $1 per person affected. The ratio is 500 to 1. The diseases differ in severity and treatability, but not by a factor of 500. The NTD funding gap exists partly because NTDs affect the poorest populations with the least political voice, and partly because NTD treatment is so cheap that the total funding requirement looks small in absolute terms, even though the per-person need is real.
Why gaps persist
Four structural reasons.
Measurability bias. Funders prefer quantifiable outcomes. "Lives saved" is more fundable than "years of education improved" or "institutional capacity built." This systematically underfunds prevention, education, governance, and long-term capacity building relative to acute health interventions.
Visibility bias. Disasters attract funding. Slow-moving crises don't. The humanitarian sector calls this the "CNN effect": media coverage drives donation surges for visible emergencies while chronic underfunding of prevention and development continues. The CAF UK Giving Report (2024) shows that disaster-related giving spikes are 3-5x larger than steady-state development giving, even when the steady-state problems are larger in scale.
Institutional path dependence. Once funding flows are established (PEPFAR for HIV, the Global Fund for malaria/TB/AIDS, Gavi for vaccines), they tend to persist and grow. Starting a comparable funding mechanism for a new cause area requires years of advocacy and political alignment. Education has been trying to build its equivalent of the Global Fund since the early 2000s without success.
Donor preference mismatch. Individual donors and institutional funders have different motivations. Individual donors respond to emotion, narrative, and personal connection. Institutional funders respond to evidence, political strategy, and peer influence. Neither consistently funds based on gap analysis. GiveWell is one of the few organisations that explicitly recommends based on where the marginal dollar does the most good, accounting for existing funding.
How to use this for your giving
Three practical applications.
Check existing funding before you donate. Before giving to a cause, ask: is this already well-funded relative to the problem? GiveWell's "room for more funding" analyses are the best available tool for this. They estimate not just whether a charity is effective, but whether additional donations would actually be spent productively given existing funding levels.
The Open Philanthropy "worldview diversification" approach offers another framework: allocate across cause areas based on your best estimate of neglectedness, not just effectiveness. A moderately effective intervention in a neglected area may do more marginal good than a highly effective intervention in a well-funded one.
Fund the unfashionable. The causes that are hardest to fundraise for are often the ones where marginal donations do the most. Mental health in low-income countries, institutional governance reform, neglected tropical diseases, education system strengthening: these consistently appear on "most underfunded" lists and consistently struggle to attract individual donors.
Founders Pledge's cause area reports are useful here. They evaluate entire sectors by scale, neglectedness, and tractability, and their recommendations often diverge from popular giving patterns precisely because they account for funding gaps.
Don't chase emergencies. The humanitarian funding surge after disasters means that emergency appeals are often overfunded relative to steady-state development work. The Disasters Emergency Committee's analysis of the 2015 Nepal earthquake response found that appeal donations exceeded assessed needs within weeks, while chronic food insecurity programmes in the same region remained underfunded throughout. If your goal is impact, consider redirecting disaster-giving impulses toward chronic underfunding.
One sentence
The gap between what problems receive and what they need is where your marginal donation does the most good. Fund the unfashionable, check existing funding levels, and resist the pull of whatever's in the news.
Sources used: IHME Financing Global Health database (2023), UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (2024), Global Partnership for Education financing gap analysis (2024), Climate Policy Initiative Global Landscape of Climate Finance (2024), IPCC Sixth Assessment Report adaptation finance findings (2022), WHO Neglected Tropical Diseases Global Report (2024), Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (2013, updated 2024), CAF UK Giving Report disaster giving analysis (2024), GiveWell room for more funding methodology (2024), Open Philanthropy worldview diversification framework (2024), Founders Pledge cause area reports (2024), Disasters Emergency Committee Nepal earthquake response review (2016). Full links in the planning doc.