An ongoing challenge for funding organizations is tracking the outputs and outcomes of research they have funded. Understanding the impact of funding is a vital input into funding strategy, programme design, and mission alignment. ORCID provides the foundation to address this challenge, by providing a registry of persistent unique identifiers for researchers and methods for linking to digital research objects. Funders can integrate ORCID identifiers into their research workflows, such as grant application processes and grant progress reporting protocols. Combined with efforts by research organizations and publishers, embedding ORCID identifiers in critical funding workflows will make it possible to link a researcher’s contributions across their career. Greater precision and transparency of funded research and associated outputs can improve information on global research and development resource flows, vital for funding agency gap analysis and strategy.