Open Society Foundations Launches Challenge Grant to Foster Accountable Governance

The Open Society Foundations are pleased to announce that they have awarded a challenge grant to Open Government Partnership (OGP) worth a potential of $10 million in new support. The matching grant will help OGP scale up its work, and support its members in government and civil society to co-create and implement open government reforms that deliver results for citizens.

“In far too many places, citizens perceive their elected governments to be disconnected and unresponsive, or corrupt and captured. At the same time, citizens’ ability to freely speak, associate, and assemble is itself under attack. Working with reformers from government, civil society, and other stakeholders, open government can be a countervailing force against the rise of repressive governments and positive global force for reinvigorating democracy. Open Society Foundations’ generous donation will provide OGP with the resources and partnerships to advance this goal,” said OGP CEO Sanjay Pradhan.

As part of the partnership, the Open Society Foundations will award OGP $1 million in 2020 and an additional $4 million in matching grants within three years if OGP raises $5 million from other partners. 

“The Open Government Partnership shows us countries working together to make government decision-making more responsive and more accountable. If we are to prevail peacefully over global challenges, this is the only real way forward. So I hope others will rise to the challenge of this matching grant, to support a vision that we are all so much in need of today,” said Patrick Gaspard, president of the Open Society Foundations.

Specifically, the grant will:

• support government reformers and civil society to advance reforms in priority OGP members
• advance shared policy priorities, including anticorruption, access to justice, public services, gender and inclusion, and civic space
• support OGP to raise its profile, strengthen global advocacy and partnerships, continue hosting influential and action-forcing international summits, launch a smart global media campaign around gender and inclusion, and build a portfolio of inspirational OGP stories
• support OGP to invest in monitoring, evaluation, research in order to bring the best evidence to bear in decision-making

Since 2011, OGP has brought together government leaders and civil society advocates in a unique partnership—one that combines these powerful forces to promote accountable, responsive, and inclusive governance. OGP’s 79 countries and growing number of local governments—together representing more than 2 billion people, along with thousands of civil society organizations—have secured nearly 4,000 commitments to make governments more transparent, participatory, responsive, and accountable to citizens.