Recent debates about decolonising research suggest that researchers should reframe how they think of research participants in the Global South: not as data points, but as partners who are involved from research design to dissemination. However, the findings of development research are rarely shared with participants or other non-decision-maker audiences in the Global South.This study explores the structural factors that have led a research funder, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) (formerly Department for International Development (DFID)), to focus its research communication efforts almost exclusively on policy audiences, and how this has shifted in the years since DFID was first established in 1997.