Global Nonprofits Warn of Humanitarian Crisis Amid Foreign Aid Cuts, Urge Continued Private Donations

This press release was issued on March 27, 2025 by The Abbi Agency:

The Life You Can Save, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting extreme poverty, and Founders Pledge, an international nonprofit empowering entrepreneurs to do the most good possible with their charitable giving, shared an update on its Rapid Response Fund, an initiative created in response to recent U.S. foreign aid cuts, in an exclusive webinar on Wednesday, March 26.

Foreign aid freezes imposed by the U.S. government in January 2025 have now turned into permanent cuts, consequently gutting life-saving programs across the world’s poorest regions. This has caused a ripple effect in government funding in nations across the globe, further raising the urgency and scale of private donations to preserve as many programs and ultimately, saving as many lives as possible. The Rapid Response Fund, which launched on Feb. 17, 2025 as a joint initiative between The Life You Can Save and Founders Pledge, was created to be a fast, high-impact solution to keep life-saving programs running and ensure that every dollar is directed where it’s needed most.

On Wednesday, it was announced that the Fund has raised over $3 million in private donations in just over a month. As a result, The Life You Can Save and Founders Pledge have made grants totaling $700,000, with an additional $600,000 in grants currently in progress. But the work is not over. The organizations are calling for immediate action and support now to sustain critical programs and encourage high-impact private philanthropy in a rapidly changing landscape.

“With a challenge of this magnitude, doing it alone isn’t optimal,” said Jessica La Mesa, Co-CEO, The Life You Can Save. “The last thing the ecosystem needs right now is everybody funneling money to the same organization. What we need to be doing is coordinating and ensuring that as many programs and organizations as possible are being sustained. [Launching the fund] in partnership with Founders Pledge made a huge amount of sense, and we’re thankful they’re doing it with us.”

“Hearing directly from our grantees about the growing challenges they face underscores the urgency of this moment,” said Matt Lerner, Managing Director - Research at Founders Pledge. “The $3 million raised for the Rapid Response Fund in such a short time demonstrates the power of collective philanthropy, but the need remains immense. Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save urge individuals and organizations to join us in bridging this critical funding gap and ensuring that their life-saving programs can continue their work.”

The organizations are directing funds to vetted, high-impact nonprofits, using years of evaluation experience to guide donors toward the most effective giving opportunities. Grantees from the fund, including Ciarán Donnelly, SVP of Crisis Response, Recovery, and Development at the International Rescue Committee (IRC); Niek Versteegde, Founder and CEO of GOAL 3 - IMPALA; and Werner Schultink, the Executive Director of the Iodine Global Network (IGN) were invited to speak at the webinar to share the direct impacts of the funding cuts and how the Fund is continuing to help sustain their work.

For example, after the US funding cuts were announced in January, IRC was faced with nearly closing its doors to 41 stabilization centers– similar to intensive care units (ICU)– that provide round-the-clock care for malnourished children. Thanks to the donation from the Rapid Response Fund, this allowed IRC to keep its life-saving treatment centers open across the world.

“We see an opportunity here to drive real reform in how malnutrition programming is administered in humanitarian settings,” said Ciarán Donnelly, SVP of Crisis Response, Recovery, and Development at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). “We think we can bring together a coalition of implementers of policymakers and donors to not just replace what’s been lost through the U.S. funding cuts, but also to build a much more effective system for responsive malnutrition treatment in emergencies.”

IGN, which focuses on treating and reducing iodine deficiency during pregnancy and childhood, is working with governments to optimize use of cost and ensure there are long term solutions with iodine deficiency.

“This cut in aid is probably going to have an impact on the wider thinking in many countries,” said Dr. Werner Schultink, the Executive Director of the Iodine Global Network (IGN). “Already in many other countries there are cuts that will have an impact on all this kind of work we are trying to do and it will increase the need to become more cost efficient; to do better ways of data collection and analysis; and to find ways in which to enable governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America, to take on more responsibility by themselves, even in situations where you have a very limited amount of funding available.”

GOAL 3’s IMPALA project, which aims to transform pediatric healthcare in low and middle-income countries through monitoring devices for neonatal and pediatric wards has seen devastating impacts in the aftermath of the U.S. foreign aid cuts.

“In Malawi, where the [Rapid Response Fund] grant was given, it will take years to recover,” said Niek Versteegde, Founder and CEO of GOAL 3 - IMPALA. “The grant that has been given has been very pivotal to us, specifically because we also have to get to the point where we can really show this and survive until we can really bring it forward. We are grateful to Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save because it allows us to bridge a very important gap.”

Grants deployed to organizations from the fund so far include:

• $100,000 to the International Rescue Committee to support their acute childhood malnutrition program.
• $50,000 to the Iodine Global Network to support their most urgent needs in Madagascar in iodine deficiency and associated monitoring activities.
• $300,000 to GOAL 3’s IMPALA project to support vital signs monitoring devices for neonatal and pediatric wards in Malawi.
• $250,000 to Sanku to support their malnutrition program in Ethiopia.

For more information or to donate, visit the Rapid Response Fund webpage.