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When trump The administration froze foreign aid overnight, prompting efforts to figure out how to continue vital aid programs that could be funded by private donors.
Several groups began fundraising in February and ultimately, these emergency funds raised more than $125 million within eight months, an amount far greater than organizers had ever envisioned.
In those early days, even as the need grew, wealthy donors and private foundations struggled with how to respond. Which of the thousands of programs funded by the US abroad can be saved and which will have the greatest impact if they continue?
“We were fortunate to connect and communicate with some very strategic donors who immediately understood that the right answer for them was actually an answer for the region,” said Sasha Gallant, who led a team at the US Agency for International Development.
Members of Gallant’s team, some of whom were fired and others working outside business hours, compiled a list that ultimately included 80 programs that they recommended to private donors. In September, Project Resource Optimization, as their effort is known, announced that all programs were funded, with more than $110 million in charitable grants raised. Other emergency funds raised at least an additional $15 million.
The most visible were the funds raised by private donors in response to the unprecedented withdrawal of US foreign aid. It’s possible that private foundations and individual donors may have made large donations, but those gifts may not be reported for several months.
For the Trump administration, USAID’s closure was a cause for celebration. In July, the Secretary of State marco rubio That said, the agency has little to show since the end of the Cold War.
“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has increased,” Rubio said in a statement.
Moving forward, Rubio said state Department Would focus on providing trade and investment, not aid, and would negotiate agreements directly with countries, minimizing the involvement of non-profits and contractors.
Some new donors inspired by emergency
Some private donations came from foundations, Gallant said, that decided to make more grants than they planned for this year and were willing to do so because they had confidence in PRO’s analysis. For example, grantmaker GiveWell said it has given away $34 million that otherwise would not have had to respond to direct aid cuts, including $1.9 million to the program recommended by PRO.
Others were new donors, such as Jacob and Anne Ma-Weaver, men in their late thirties living in San Francisco who had earned so much through their work at a hedge fund and a major tech company, respectively, that they planned to eventually give significant sums. Jacob Ma-Weaver said the U.S. aid cuts led to unnecessary deaths and was shocking, but he also saw an opportunity in this moment to make a big change.
He said, “It was an opportunity for us and I think it inspired us to turn our lifelong plans, which were very vague and amorphous, into something concrete that we could do now.”
The Ma-Weavers gave more than $1 million to projects chosen by PRO and decided to speak publicly about their donations to encourage others to join them.
“It’s really very uncomfortable in our society — maybe it shouldn’t be — to tell the world that you’re giving away money,” said Jacob Ma-Weaver. “There’s almost this embarrassment of riches about it, really.”
Private donors could not support all of USAID’s programs.
The funds PRO raised did not match USAID’s grant dollar for dollar. Instead, the PRO team worked with implementing organizations to limit their budgets to only the most essential parts of the most impactful projects.
For example, Helen Keller International ran several USAID-funded programs providing nutrition and treatment for neglected tropical diseases. Eventually all of those programs were eliminated, taking away about a third of Helen Keller’s total revenue.
Shawn Baker, executive vice president of Helen Keller, said that as soon as it became clear that US funding was not coming back, they began testing their programming. When the PRO contacted them, they said that they were able to provide a very small budget to private funders. Instead of an annual budget of $7 million for the nutrition program NigeriaHe proposed $1.5 million to keep it running.
Another nonprofit, Village Enterprise, received $1.3 million through PRO. But they were also able to raise $2 million from their own donors through a special fundraising appeal and received an unrestricted $7 million gift from billionaire and author MacKenzie Scott that they inherit in 2023. Flexible funding allowed them to maintain their most essential programming during the seven months of uncertainty created by CEO Dianne Calvi.
It was surprising to PRO researchers that many organizations managed to keep their programs up and running even after significant funding cuts. Since February, the small staff supporting the PRO has increased its commitment to the project by a month at a time, expecting either donations to dry up or the projects to no longer be viable.
“The time we were able to buy has been absolutely invaluable to our ability to reach more people who are interested in moving forward,” said Rob Rosenbaum, PRO team lead and former USAID employee. He said he was proud to be able to mobilize donors who had not previously donated to these causes.
“Being able to convince someone who otherwise wouldn’t spend this money at all or would be sitting on it to move it to this area is the most important dollar we can move,” he said.
Other donors may wait to see what happens next
Dean Karlan, USAID’s chief economist, said when the Trump administration took office in January, not all private donors were eager to jump into the gap created by the U.S. foreign aid cuts, which occurred without any “rhyme or reason.”
Despite the extraordinary mobilization of resources by some private funders, Karlan said, “You have to realize that there is also a fair amount of reluctance to clean up the mess that creates the moral hazard problem.”
Uncertainty about what the US will fund going forward is likely to continue for some time. The emergency funds offered a short-term response from interested private funders, many of whom are now trying to support the development of what comes next.
For Karlan, now an economics professor at Northwestern University, it is painful to see the consequences of aid cuts on recipient populations. He is also angered by attacks on the motivations of aid workers in general.
Nonetheless, he said many in the region want to see the administration rebuild a system that is efficient and targeted. But Karlan said he hasn’t seen any action yet, “so that tells us how serious they’re really going to be in terms of spending the money effectively.”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.