President Donald Trump has put millions of lives at risk by shutting down most of America’s humanitarian and development work abroad. After freezing almost all spending on foreign aid, the administration this week finished its purge at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), announcing that 83 percent of its programs are being axed.
But you can help keep some of these lifesaving programs going. Experts who see the immense value of these programs — which prevent and treat diseases, supply food and clean water to people living in extreme poverty, and help refugees fleeing war — have spun up new emergency funds to enable the programs to continue their operations. And they’re seeking donations.
So if you’re unhappy with Trump’s purge, you are not powerless here. Donating to one of these funds can be a way to resist the administration’s “America First” ethos. And because the funds are supporting programs that are extremely cost-effective — meaning they save more lives than others would with the same amount of money — they offer an unusually powerful opportunity to help the world’s most disenfranchised groups.
Some may question whether it should fall to private donors to fill in the funding gaps this way; isn’t this the government’s job? It is. But in moments when the government isn’t doing nearly enough, individual generosity can really shine by stepping in with emergency aid. This is one of those moments.
If you’re concerned that private donors stepping in now will reduce pressure to restore USAID later on, consider this: There’s no way donors will manage to fill the massive gap that the government has left behind. Philanthropy may yield millions of dollars, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions that the government was providing.
Besides, USAID was doing a lot of things donors just can’t do, like steering very large and highly trained staffs and working directly with other organizations and governments. So most experts I spoke with said it won’t be plausible to argue that philanthropy can just replace government aid.
And people in urgent situations around the world need help now. They can’t simply keep waiting for their next meal or their next dose of medication. That’s what the three funds below are designed to address immediately. Let’s check them out.
1) The Rapid Response Fund
This fund was co-created on February 17 by two organizations: The Life You Can Save, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting extreme poverty, and Founders Pledge, a nonprofit empowering entrepreneurs to do the most good possible with their charitable giving.
These nonprofits have a specialty in finding the most high-impact and cost-effective lifesaving programs out there. They’ve spent years rigorously evaluating programs, finding the ones with the strongest evidence base, and recommending them to donors who want to be sure they’re getting the most bang for their charitable buck.
Less than a month after its launch, the Rapid Response Fund has pulled in over $1.5 million and is already disbursing cash to organizations that it has high confidence in based on past evaluations. They include:
- The International Rescue Committee, which fights childhood malnutrition — linked to almost half of deaths among children under 5 years old — through programs led by community health workers. These programs cost only $130 per child treated and multiple studies have found recovery rates of 53 percent to 82 percent.
- The Iodine Global Network, which prevents iodine deficiency, the most common cause of brain damage in newborns. This work not only saves lives but also improves educational outcomes and breaks cycles of poverty — all at the low cost of 5 cents to 10 cents per person annually.
- Goal 3’s IMPALA project, which equips African health care workers with tools like vital signs monitors so they can detect patient deterioration early and intervene when treatments are most effective. Initial results from a Malawian hospital showed a remarkable 59 percent drop in child mortality compared to the previous year.
Jessica La Mesa, co-CEO of The Life You Can Save, told me programs like these were severely underfunded relative to their potential impact even before the USAID cuts.
“We needed more before, and we need even more now,” she said. “There’s still a massive funding gap, even just within the organizations we recommend — a $77 million gap across everything we’re looking at funding. So we have a long way to go.”
Want to help fund crucial work like this? You can donate to the Rapid Response Fund here.
2) Unlock Aid’s Foreign Bridge Fund
Unlock Aid is a coalition group aimed at making global development more effective. Its new Foreign Aid Bridge Fund is meant to help sustain the organizations that were impacted by the US government’s cuts.
This fund is prioritizing organizations that are not only high-impact and cost-effective, but that have a sustainable business model — rather than being dependent on a single source of revenue, like the US government. Since the fund will be temporary, it’s looking for organizations that will be well positioned to continue even after the fund expires.
Unlike The Life You Can Save and Founders Pledge, which are funding organizations they’d already evaluated in the past, Unlock Aid is accepting fresh applications from programs in need. They’ve already received applications from hundreds of organizations. The benefit of that is that they have the chance to encounter groups that aren’t on their radar yet but are doing critical work. But it means their grants committee has to assess a whole lot of material in a short timeframe.
That said, they’ve been able to move fast: Just days after launching on February 13, they awarded their first four grants, noting, “This rapid turnaround demonstrates our commitment to functioning as a true emergency fund, getting critical resources out quickly to organizations that need them most.”
Those grants are going to two African organizations that provide lifesaving treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis; another African organization that gives communities access to malaria care; and a humanitarian organization in the Caribbean.
If you want to fund more similar work, you can donate to Unlock Aid’s Foreign Aid Bridge Fund here.
3) GiveDirectly
GiveDirectly is an organization based on one big idea: If you want to help the world’s poorest people effectively, why not just give them cash?
The organization has been giving out no-strings-attached cash transfers for years, and along the way, it’s built up an impressive evidence base showing the benefits of these transfers. Cash gives people the agency to buy the things they really need, as opposed to what outsiders think they need. And it can be disseminated much faster than goods, thanks to cellphone-based banking. Cash is now considered the baseline standard for challenges like poverty alleviation, with other interventions judged on whether they’re superior to cash.
GiveDirectly had about 38,000 families across Mozambique, Malawi, Morocco, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) slated to receive $20 million in life-changing cash transfers this year, funded by the US government’s foreign aid budget. Unfortunately, seven GiveDirectly programs were among those impacted by the USAID cuts; the organization recently received termination letters.
“I think in DRC it’s been particularly terrible,” Anthea Gordon, GiveDirectly’s country director based there, told me. Over 500,000 people in eastern DRC have been displaced by fighting between M23 rebels and Congolese government forces. When M23 took over the city of Goma, where GiveDirectly’s office is, Gordon lost power and internet — so she initially had no idea about the USAID cuts.
“I was hiding in a corridor,” she said. “When I resurfaced a couple days later, I couldn’t believe it. Out of the DRC humanitarian aid budget, the US funded about 70 percent, so this has had a massive, massive impact — at a time when there was more need than ever for humanitarian aid. It was complete disaster.”
For the families who were supposed to be receiving cash transfers, the cuts mean they’ll be at risk of being unable to afford essentials like food, medicine, and safe housing. So GiveDirectly has launched its own fundraising campaign, with the hope that it can still deliver cash to as many of the families as possible.
If you like the idea of showing solidarity with the world’s poorest people in an effective and non-paternalistic way, you can donate to GiveDirectly’s campaign here.
And if you want to support one of these three funds, but aren’t sure which, don’t spend too much time worrying about it: Though they each vary a bit in their approach, all three support high-impact, cost-effective programs that can achieve an unusual amount of good with your money at an urgent time like this. That urgency is what Gordon, in the DRC, wants people to remember.
“In terms of individuals’ lives, if you have HIV and you’re taking retrovirals and you don’t have your supply resumed very quickly, it’s game over,” she said. “We need something now to keep the health centers open, to give people cash, to have their next meal.”
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