What this covers: DAC members, DAC associates and non-DAC donors, and what including or excluding EU Institutions does to DAC-level totals and rankings.

Concepts and definitions

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is the OECD body through which donor countries coordinate their development finance. Membership requires OECD membership and appropriate strategies, policies, and institutional frameworks for development cooperation, an accepted measure of effort, and a system of performance monitoring and evaluation. There are 33 DAC members, including most Western donor governments and the EU Institutions. Estonia joined in July 2023, and Latvia became the 33rd member in March 2025.

DAC associates are non-OECD members invited to take part in all DAC meetings and decisions, except those on the accession of new OECD members. They can serve as Chair or Vice-Chair of the DAC. Romania is the lone DAC associate. Most analyses count associates alongside DAC members.

Non-DAC donors are providers of development finance that are neither DAC members nor associates. Some non-DAC providers, such as Türkiye and the UAE, report to the OECD. Others, such as China and India, do not, and OECD figures for them are estimates. Reporting is voluntary and methodologies differ, so non-DAC data is less complete and less comparable than DAC members' data.

EU Institutions, chiefly the European Commission, are a DAC member in their own right and report ODA separately. Much of their funding comes from EU member states, which channel money to them as core contributions or earmarked funding.

Including EU Institutions

Including EU Institutions in a DAC total adds funding that member states already report as their own ODA, including core contributions that imputed multilateral calculations attribute back to them. It can therefore double-count member state contributions. Excluding them understates the total resources flowing through the DAC system. The choice changes both totals and rankings, and the right one depends on the question.

Rankings of DAC members usually leave EU Institutions out, because their outflows include funding sourced from other DAC members and so distort the comparison. The OECD's headline "DAC countries" total leaves EU Institutions out, and its "DAC members" aggregate includes them.

Switching between inclusion and exclusion within one analysis makes its figures incomparable.

Pitfalls

• In common usage "DAC members" is ambiguous about EU Institutions, and readers can assume either meaning, even though the OECD aggregate of that name includes them.
• Non-DAC donor data placed next to DAC member data looks equivalent, but its coverage and methods differ.
• DAC associates presented as a separate category without explanation confuses readers, since most analyses count them as members.

What makes a result verifiable

A result is verifiable when it states the donor grouping used (DAC members, DAC members excluding EU Institutions, all reporting donors, and so on) and why, says whether EU Institutions are included, notes the comparability limits of any non-DAC data, and notes the membership status of any individual donor where it matters, such as DAC associate status.