The default setting for many funders — particularly private foundations and charitable trusts — has historically been opacity. Who received grants, in what amounts, and on what basis are treated as internal matters. Even some government funders have been reluctant to publish detailed grant decision information beyond what is required by OIA or annual reporting obligations.
This is changing. The expectation that funders will publish meaningful information about their grants — not just summary statistics, but enough for the public, grantees, and the broader sector to understand how decisions are made — is growing. For government funders, it is increasingly a standard of better practice. For charitable trusts, it is an emerging norm in response to growing scrutiny of how private wealth is deployed for public benefit.
Accountability to the public. Grants programmes that distribute public money — government grants, lottery proceeds, charitable trust distributions — are deploying resources that have some form of public nature. Transparency about how those resources are used is an accountability obligation, not just a courtesy.
Trust in the funding system. Opacity creates space for suspicion. When decisions about who receives public grants are not transparent, the possibility of bias, favouritism, or capture is harder to disprove. Transparency is the most effective mechanism for building public trust that decisions are made fairly.
Applicant equity. Unsuccessful applicants who can see who was funded, and for what, are better positioned to understand whether the process was fair and to improve future applications. Opacity removes this accountability mechanism.
Sector learning. When funded grants are published with sufficient information about purpose and approach, other organisations can learn from successful proposals. This creates a knowledge commons that benefits the whole sector.
Institutional memory. Publishing grant decisions creates a public record that persists even when programme staff change. Future decisions can be made with reference to what has been funded before, reducing the risk of inconsistency or double-funding.
Minimum disclosure standards for grant programmes vary by funder type, but a meaningful transparency commitment includes:
For all funded grants:
- Organisation name
- Grant purpose (brief description of what was funded)
- Amount
- Grant period
- Programme or fund from which the grant was made
For government and Crown entity funders:
- The above, plus
- The assessment criteria used
- The decision-making process (who assessed, who decided)
- Where declined applications are publicly requested, the basis for the decline
- Any conflicts of interest declared and how they were managed
For charitable trusts and foundations:
- The above (voluntarily, as better practice), plus
- Annual reporting to the Charities Commission (required) that accurately reflects grant activity
- Clear description of the charitable purposes the grants serve
For co-funded programmes:
- Which funder contributed what, so the total funding picture is transparent
- Whether the same project received grants from multiple sources
One of the most effective transparency mechanisms is a publicly accessible database of funded grants. Several models exist:
On-funder disclosure. The funder maintains a public database on its website, updated when grants are made. Some do this through their grants management system, which can publish approved grants directly to a public-facing view. Others publish periodic lists (quarterly, annual) in less granular form.
Cross-funder disclosure. In some jurisdictions, funders contribute to shared transparency platforms — databases that aggregate grant data across multiple funders to give a comprehensive view of funding flows in a sector or region. In New Zealand, there is no comprehensive cross-funder database, but some sectors (arts, environment) have informal information-sharing practices.
Annual reports. Most charitable trusts and government agencies include grant information in annual reports. The depth of this information varies widely — from a full list of funded organisations and amounts, to summary statistics that provide no individual grant visibility.
The most useful transparency format for the sector is individual grant-level data (organisation, purpose, amount) published in machine-readable format that allows analysis. Summary statistics that aggregate grants into categories are less useful for accountability and sector learning.
Transparency in grantmaking is straightforward when grants are made to organisations. It becomes more complex when grants are made to individuals — scholarship recipients, individual artists, emergency assistance recipients.
For individual grants:
- Name publication may require consent and may not be appropriate for sensitive grant types (emergency assistance, mental health, housing)
- Aggregate statistics that protect individual identity are usually sufficient for accountability purposes
- The privacy default should be toward protection for individual recipients and toward disclosure for organisational recipients
Greater transparency is almost always good for the sector. But it creates some genuine tensions:
Sensitive applications. Organisations applying for grants related to sensitive issues — organisations working with family violence survivors, LGBTQIA+ communities, people with mental health needs — may not want their application or funding to be publicly visible. A blanket transparency requirement without any provision for confidential grants creates risk for these organisations.
Competitive sensitivity. For for-profit and social enterprise applicants to innovation or business development funds, grant disclosure may reveal commercially sensitive information. This is a real tension in programmes that fund early-stage commercial development.
Donor restrictions. Some philanthropic grants are made subject to donor confidentiality requirements — the donor does not want to be associated with the grant. Disclosure of such grants may require disclosing only the grant recipient and purpose, not the funding source.
These tensions are real but manageable. A default toward disclosure with a documented process for confidential treatment of genuinely sensitive cases is more defensible than a default toward opacity.
For funders considering how to build transparency into their grants programme, the government grants management and community foundations pages cover how Tahua supports public reporting and disclosure. To discuss transparency features for your programme.
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