The Foreign Assistance Dashboard provides a view of U.S. Government foreign assistance funds and enables users to examine, research, and track aid investments in a standard and easy-to-understand format.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard was initiated by the Department of State and USAID under the policy guidance of the National Security Staff. Future iterations of the Foreign Assistance Dashboard will be developed in consultation with U.S. Government agencies receiving or implementing foreign assistance.

Please Contact Us to report incorrect data, broken links, or other technical or usability issues or to ask a question regarding foreign assistance data. Before contacting us, you may be able to find the answer to your question in the list of Frequently Asked Questions. For questions about the federal government not related to ForeignAssistance.gov, visit USA.gov or call 1(800) FED INFO (1-800-333-4636) (8am - 8 pm ET Monday - Friday).

The U.S. Government has a long history of providing foreign assistance to respond to global needs, assist people overseas struggling to build a better life, and make the world safer. It is this compassion and action that stands as a hallmark of the U.S. and reflects the true character of this nation.
According to Section 634(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended:

(b) For purposes of this section—

1. "foreign assistance" means any tangible or intangible item provided by the United States Government to a foreign country or international organization under this or any other Act, including but not limited to any training, service, or technical advice, any item of real, personal, or mixed property, any agricultural commodity, United States dollars, and any currencies of any foreign country which are owned by the United States Government; and
2. "provided by the United States Government" includes, but is not limited to, foreign assistance provided by means of gift, loan, sale, credit, or guaranty.

In simpler terms, official foreign assistance is the unilateral transfers of U.S. resources (funds, goods, and services) by the U.S. Government to or for the benefit of foreign entities (including international and regional organizations) without any reciprocal payment or transfer of resources from the foreign entities. Foreign assistance is not just confined to funds or commodities, it also includes the provision of technical assistance, capacity building, training, education, and other services, as well as the direct costs required to implement foreign assistance.

The designation of foreign assistance is based on whether foreign entities receive direct benefits from programs supported by U.S. Government resources without paying for them. U.S. transfers to international or regional organizations where the U.S. reaps direct benefits from the operation of the organization do not qualify as foreign assistance. While authorized primarily under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, U.S. Government foreign assistance is also authorized by other legislation.

With the mandates of the U.S. Government’s Open Government Initiative, Paris Declaration, and the Accra Agenda for Action, the U.S. Government is required to make information on foreign assistance programs more transparent. Together, these initiatives will:

• Contribute to greater understanding on the part of the tax-paying public of the depth and breadth of the U.S. Government’s work in international development;
• More actively engage stakeholders in the foreign assistance dialogue as both successes and failures are appropriately noted and analyzed;
• Make U.S. Government foreign assistance data available to implementing partners to inform their efforts as they work side by side with us to address development challenges;
• Help donor countries coordinate, simplify procedures and share information to avoid duplication;
• Assist host country governments so they are in a better position to manage their own country systems and aid flows; and,
• Put foreign assistance information in the hands of people who benefit from U.S. Government assistance – thus empowering them with information that could lead to viable solutions.

Each of these websites represents different funding timeframes and reporting parameters than what is contained in the Foreign Assistance Dashboard. For more information on the type of data represented in the Foreign Assistance Dashboard visit the About the Data page.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard currently includes foreign assistance budget planning, obligation, and disbursement data for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), as well as budget planning data for the Department of State. The data comes from a variety of agency budgetary, accounting, and procurement systems.

No, the country pages are not a complete view of the foreign assistance benefitting a particular country. In the Congressional appropriation, some funds are not appropriated at the country level. These funds are appropriated to Washington based offices for subsequent allocation to field offices, regional offices, or worldwide programs. Some of these funds are programmed to benefit multiple countries or a regional or worldwide program and cannot be represented on the country page.

The Dashboard is not an accounting tool, but a way to help the U.S. Government be more transparent. Thus, it may not always be possible to trace funded amounts through the stages of the U.S. financial processes (appropriation, obligation, disbursement) on a dollar for dollar basis within the Dashboard data.

Data for the following agencies are currently displayed on the Foreign Assistance Dashboard:

• Department of State (budget planning data only)
• USAID (budget planning, obligation, and spent data)
• Millennium Challenge Corporation (budget planning, obligation, and spent data)

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard aims to eventually integrate all U.S. Government foreign assistance budget, financial, and program data. Please continue to check back as the Dashboard is expanded to incorporate additional data sets.

Updates will be made on a continuous basis as more data becomes available from additional U.S Government agencies and for additional fiscal years. Agencies update their own internal data sets on different schedules. Please continue to check back for additional data sets.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard contains the most recent publicly available foreign assistance data for the contributing agencies.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard contains a large data set, which has been organized in a few standard charts and graphs. However, all of the raw data is available for users to query and sort in customizable ways. Use the "Data Query" tool to create a customized data set by selecting a set of variables or by exporting the entire data set to Excel or CSV.

To implement Foreign Assistance programs, U.S. Government agencies typically partner with a wide variety of organizations, including private voluntary organizations (PVOs), local and regional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private sector companies, and public international organizations (PIOs).

Offices based in the United States (primarily but not exclusively in Washington, D.C.) are organized around both regional and functional offices. These offices provide support to overseas offices, program globally-focused activities, and assist in providing overall policy guidance and program oversight. Funds initially allocated to these offices are subsequently allocated to overseas offices or to worldwide programs.

There are instances when funds are de-obligated from a program or activity due to changes in scope of activities. A de-obligation is an agency’s cancellation or downward adjustment of previously incurred obligations. De-obligated funds may be re-obligated within the same time period. Negative disbursements appear for reconciliations and corrections in OECD codes.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard plans to include project level information in the future, which will include details on which contractors, non-governmental organizations, or grantees are receiving federal funds to conduct foreign assistance projects. Until the data is available, project information is available on U.S. Government agency websites such as USAID.gov and MCC.gov.

The Foreign Assistance Dashboard currently contains only data from 2005 to the present. Foreign Assistance data prior to this can be found on the U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants Database (also known as the “Greenbook”) (http://gbk.eads.usaidallnet.gov/). The Greenbook includes U.S. foreign assistance to the rest of the world by reporting all loans and grants authorized by the U.S. Government for each fiscal year. Please note that the Greenbook content differs from the current Foreign Assistance Dashboard data since they represent different points in time in the budget process and different reporting parameters.

No. An Organizational Unit (OU) is responsible for the management of foreign assistance funds allocated to its mission and objectives, whereas a beneficiary is the direct or indirect recipient of the assistance benefits. Organizational Unit is a term of reference used to designate an entity responsible for planning and management of foreign assistance programs. Currently on the Dashboard, information identified with country-specific OUs may not capture all funds or activities originating from regional or functional OUs. Regional and functional OUs manage programs that benefit a number of countries, and may include flows to multilateral organizations as well as individual nations. Over time, the Dashboard will include the allocation of regional and functional OU programs to particular countries and organizations.