The global philanthropy sector is young and growing fast, with 72 percent of foundations established in the past 25 years, the Global Philanthropy Report funded by UBS finds.

However resources are highly concentrated in certain sectors with education the most popular area for investment, and coordination between philanthropic foundations geographically is limited with 60 percent of the over 260,000 identified based in Europe and 35 percent in North America. Despite this, 58 percent of the foundations identified by the report do not collaborate with other foundations.

While the combined assets of the world’s foundation...