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Top 10 Things You Should Know

The Dashboard
#1 thing to know The goal of the Foreign Assistance Dashboard is to make all U.S. Government foreign assistance investments available in an accessible and easy-to-understand format. The Dashboard is still in the early stages of development. Future versions will incorporate budget, financial, and program data from all U.S. Government agencies receiving or implementing foreign assistance. Read more about the Dashboard here.

#2 thing to know The foreign assistance data on this site may be different from data presented on other websites due to different funding timeframes and reporting parameters. It’s important to understand the data presented on this site.

#3 thing to know The Foreign Assistance Dashboard currently contains budget planning, obligation, and spent data for USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the Department of the Treasury, as well as budget planning data for the Department of State. Other U.S. Government agencies that receive foreign assistance funds and additional funding and programmatic details will be phased into the Dashboard over time. To learn more about the data click here.

#4 thing to know In November 2011, the United States became a signatory to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that includes donors, partner countries, and civil society organizations whose aim is to make information about aid spending easier to access, use, and understand. The United States has been a member of the IATI Technical Assistance Group (TAG) since 2009, and in that capacity was fully engaged in shaping the IATI standard. Read more about IATI here.

The Budget
#5 thing to know The President submits to Congress, in February of each year, a detailed budget request for the federal government for the coming fiscal year. This annual budget request includes a request for foreign assistance funding. Click here for more information about the budget process.

#6 thing to know MCC provides well-performing countries with large-scale grants to fund country-led solutions for reducing poverty through sustainable economic growth. MCC grants complement other U.S. and international development programs. There are two primary types of MCC grants: compacts and threshold programs.
  • Compacts are large, five-year grants for countries that pass MCC’s eligibility criteria.
  • Threshold programs are smaller grants awarded to countries that come close to passing these criteria and are firmly committed to improving their policy performance.

#7 thing to know An appropriations bill authorizes the disbursement of public funds to a certain limit for a specified purpose. Therefore, appropriations amounts do not represent funds actually spent on programming. Click here for more information on the budget process.

Countries and Sectors
#8 thing to know Not all funds can be disaggregated by country. Some funds are allocated to Washington based offices for subsequent allocation to overseas offices or to worldwide programs.

#9 thing to know All foreign assistance data is classified into one of several distinct sectors that describe what the program does and enables the aggregation, comparison, and analysis of data without double counting. For a complete list of sectors, click here.

#10 thing to know Budgets and programs are classified within the sector framework according to “what” they are doing and not “why” they are doing it. This preserves sector classification consistency and prevents funds from being double counted. For more information on sectors, click here.