As a future of US foreign aid cuts comes into focus, so do efforts to respond

By THALIA BEATY With most of programs funded by the U S Agency for International Improvement cut and the agency s remaining staff communicated their jobs will end by September the reality of the Trump administration s sudden halt to more than years of international maturation work has sunk in Related Articles Supreme Court blocks order requiring Trump administration to reinstate thousands of federal workers White House keeps world guessing as clock ticks down to Trump s new tariffs Trump says high tariffs may have prevented the Great Depression History says different Trump is expected to sign executive orders to boost coal a reliable but polluting vitality source If they cut too much people will die Healthcare coalition pushes GOP on Medicaid funding Billionaire presidential advisor Elon Musk who led the charge to dismantle USAID has called the agency criminal and corrupt Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced multiple programs did not advance American interests The administration continues to cancel programs including humanitarian and food aid and has mentioned it will roll any remaining programs into the State Department Two months into the cuts selected workers and organizations who once carried out those programs are evolving a variety of initiatives to stand in the breach left by the dismantling of U S foreign aid Direct cash to laid off workers Laura Meissner had worked as a contractor for USAID since and specialized in humanitarian assistance specifically programs that give cash directly to people in need In early February a friend approached her to help start a charity event to benefit other USAID workers who like her had lost their jobs USAID employed people in Washington and at offices around the world with about half coming from other countries Meissner along with a small group of organizers eventually set up The Solidarity Fund with the Greater Washington Locality Foundation which will really make grants directly to former workers The grants will start at and increase depending on the size of the household We want to make it a meaningful enough sum that it ll make a real difference in their ability to buy groceries pay medicinal bills pay the rent or mortgage or keep the lights on Meissner explained So far the fund has raised about from donors and has already recommend applicants to receive funds It s so easy to feel like nothing that you do matters because there s so countless big problems and it feels like they re happening all at once But everything does matter even if it s just to somebody she reported Research to help foundations and funders with more money Even for people who investigation international improvement it s been hard to understand all the solutions U S cuts have impacted the field The think tank Rethink Priorities which prioritizes cost-effectiveness in charitable interventions studied the gaps created by the cuts to help donors respond They provide a chart showing how big of a share U S funding was in any given area and encourage funders to consider how urgently the impacts of the cuts will be felt They also suggest donors consider if others might fill the gap Tom Vargas a senior researcher at the think tank reported he hopes the research helps to spread the money around in a way that makes sense We re funding things that other people will not fund They hope their research influences donors big and small while also recommending giving to urgency funds Bridge funds to get money to programs that could still operate Within a month of the pause on USAID programs a number of nonprofits started exigency funds to get money to life-saving programs or to stabilize organizations that would otherwise close Even the World Food Campaign the United Nations agency that responds to conflicts and famines has started a charity fundraiser hoping to bring in million from U S donors So far urgency funds have raised between several hundred thousand dollars to over million mostly from individual donors and a few have already granted out hundreds of thousands of dollars The funds have gone to a Yemeni organization that provides urgency food supplies to send cash directly to people fleeing violence in Democratic Republic of Congo to a Kenyan organization that supports people living with HIV and to a campaign combatting malnutrition in Ethiopia Promotion for organizations to close or merge The amount raised by the bridge funds does not come close to replacing the tens of billions lost in the U S aid cuts Various international rise organizations even those who did not directly receive funds from USAID face existential funding shortages commented Blair Glencorse founder and co-CEO of Accountability Lab whose organization has been tracking the impact of the U S cuts More than a third of nonprofits who responded to their survey reported they had less than three months of funding The figures from the beginning indicated that it would be around now that organizations are going to fall off a cliff he explained And that s exactly what we re beginning to see His organization has heard from more than nonprofits mostly in the Global South who want to explore merging spinning off programs winding down or otherwise partnering to try to prevent their largest part valuable assets from being lost Those assets could include employees property systems contacts or intellectual property Glencorse explained they estimate it will cost between and for each transaction or merger and have assembled a squad of experts who can help organizations They have gotten specific funding from foundations for the partnership matching function and estimate that they have between to months to help nonprofits make these big organizational changes The snowball effect is really beginning to pick up at this point he mentioned of the cascading impacts of the U S foreign aid cuts Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives endorsement through the AP s collaboration with The 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