Compass was developed in response to the surge of COVID-19 research funding announcements in 2020, when the creators began tracking funding commitments in real time for the first time. By the end of that year, they had recorded US$9.1 billion in announced commitments. However, when those figures were later compared with verified investments captured through the G-FINDER survey, the actual total was just over half, at US$4.7 billion. This revealed important limitations in relying solely on announced funding, such as double counting, non-new money, and the uncertainty of long-term commitments. Even so, the exercise demonstrated the value of real-time tracking as an early indicator of funding trends in global health R&D.
This experience led to the creation of Compass, a platform designed to address the delay in traditional funding data reporting. While G-FINDER remains the most trusted annual source for tracking R&D investments in neglected diseases, emerging infectious diseases, and women’s health, its thorough methodology means the data is usually not available until late the following year. Compass was created to provide a faster alternative by using publicly available grant data from funders such as the US NIH, UKRI, the Gates Foundation, and Coefficient Giving, allowing users to see funding activity much sooner than through the annual survey cycle.
Originally launched to track investments in neglected disease research, Compass has now expanded in 2026 to also include emerging infectious diseases and women’s health. This broader scope is significant because funding for emerging infectious diseases often rises sharply during outbreaks and declines afterward, making real-time visibility especially important for understanding preparedness between crises. Similarly, women’s health R&D has long been both underfunded and insufficiently tracked, so more current data on who is investing and where can help strengthen insights and accountability in this area.
The platform presents funding in a way that combines real-time and retrospective understanding. Publicly available data from Compass funders includes both past disbursements and projected future spending from active grants, while the remainder of funding is later captured through the G-FINDER survey. Together, these datasets align with total G-FINDER figures. Historical Compass data has proven to be a useful signal for where future funding is heading, but users are cautioned not to interpret current-year or future-year figures as complete. For example, lower apparent funding in 2026 is mainly due to timing, since many grants for the year had not yet been publicly announced as of March 2026. Multi-year grants are also spread across future years, which naturally makes projected funding appear thinner over time.
Overall, Compass is intended to serve as an informed early view of the funding landscape rather than a definitive final count. It is free to use, updated monthly, and aims to provide funders, researchers, and advocates with a more current picture of global health R&D financing than was previously available. The creators encourage users to explore the platform, review its methodology and tutorial for deeper understanding, and share feedback on how the data can become even more useful for answering unanswered questions in funding analysis.
