The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation donated $1.9 million in the form of grants for the College of William and Mary to maintain Project-Level Aid. PLAID was established at the College in 2003 to organize information on international finance including bilateral and multilateral aid given by the United Nations and World Bank. The database currently has information on more than 430,000 aid projects.
“The PLAID project can help researchers and policymakers worldwide better understand how the billions in international aid are in fact being spent,” Dean of Arts and Sciences Carl Strikwerda said in a press release. “William and Mary is extremely grateful to the Gates and Hewlett foundations for making an investment in a resource that has the potential to assist everyone from the UN and other international organizations to governments, foundations and scholars.”
