Our finances

Transparency is one of DI’s core values, and we endeavour to ensure our financial information is open and transparent.

We report our project activities to the IATI Standard, and in 2019 we retained our top five-star rating from Transparify, who look at the financial transparency of major think tanks.

You can find detailed information about who funds us and how we spend our money on our finances page .

A range of organisations fund us, primarily private philanthropic foundations, governments and multilateral organisations that are committed to global development and ending poverty.

In 2019 we diversified our funding base with five new donors contributing to DI projects increasing our income from 2018 to 2019 by just under £1 million. Additionally, the value of funding increased by the continuing weakness of the pound buoying the value of non-sterling donations.

2019 income – £5.9 million

2018 income – £4.9 million

In 2019, as in previous years, our highest expenditure was on staff costs and professional services. There was an increase in the use of contractors and freelancers again, mainly driven by DI hosting the SDG Kenya Forum in the DI Kenya office and paying the salaries of staff working on their projects. Consultants are an important resource for DI to facilitate agile working, allowing us to be responsive to quick turnaround opportunities.

DI also invested substantially more this year in IT and infrastructure, including moving our servers to cloud-based platforms, and updating hardware equipment for staff in our offices. In 2019 DI also put in place an extensive learning and development programme for staff which accounted for some expenditure. The value of our work lies in our knowledge, skills and expertise, and so this is where we invest most heavily.

Note : You can download the data on our funding and expenditure from our website at devinit.org/who-we-are/our-finances

2019 expenditure – £5.8 million

2018 expenditure – £4.7 million