{"id":10443,"date":"2025-02-20T07:07:36","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T07:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=10443"},"modified":"2025-02-20T07:07:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T07:07:36","slug":"top-rated-charities-in-jeopardy-amid-battle-over-foreign-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=10443","title":{"rendered":"Top-rated charities in jeopardy amid battle over foreign aid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Donald\u00a0Trump’s order to suspend all U.S. foreign aid, which was announced on January 20, is currently on hold amid a legal review.<\/p>\n

But for nonprofits, charities and public service organizations that rely on federal funding, some damage has already been done.<\/p>\n

“Foreign assistance programs don’t operate with an on\/off switch,” said\u00a0Mitchell Warren, executive director of the\u00a0AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, which provides HIV prevention resources worldwide.<\/p>\n

More from Personal Finance:<\/strong>
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About 30% of the overall nonprofit sector’s revenues come from government grants and contracts, according to Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, which brought a suit against the federal funding freeze resulting in a temporary restraining order.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The temporary restraining order preventing the administration from freezing all federal funding has had a positive effect, with many nonprofit organizations previously unable to access funds to continue their vital work now able to do so,” Yentel said.<\/p>\n

However, “some federal agencies continue to make expected funding unavailable, and many nonprofits \u2014 especially the smallest among them, with the least resources to fall back on if a federal payment doesn’t come through \u2014 are having to make difficult decisions to furlough or lay off staff, or to close programs entirely,” Yentel said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A worker removes the U.S. Agency for International Development sign on their headquarters on Feb. 7, 2025 in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Trump’s foreign aid freeze and the shutdown of\u00a0the U.S.\u00a0Agency for International Development is part of a larger effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Backed by the Trump administration,\u00a0Elon Musk\u00a0and his advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency said dismantling the USAID is a first step.<\/p>\n

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk wrote<\/a> on his social media platform X on Feb. 3.<\/p>\n

Most Americans support foreign aid. A 2024 poll by the Reagan Institute<\/a>\u00a0found that 54% of Americans believe the U.S. should be more involved in international affairs, while 33% want less U.S. engagement. Even more \u2014 77% \u2014 said the U.S. has a moral obligation to stand up for human rights and democracy around the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>‘Now is the time to dig deep’<\/h2>\n
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The freeze on foreign assistance funding sent “a shock wave through the nonprofit sector,” said Michael Thatcher, the CEO of nonprofit evaluator\u00a0Charity\u00a0Navigator.<\/p>\n

Many international organizations operate with less than 100 days of working capital, according to Thatcher, which means “this is going to change their ability to pay their staff and maintain operations,” he said. “About half may not survive.”<\/p>\n

In some cases, individual donors can bridge some of the funding gap, Thatcher said. “If some of these causes are things you care deeply about, now is the time to dig deep.”<\/p>\n

In fact, foreign assistance only comprises about 1% of the federal budget \u2014 or roughly $63 billion in fiscal year 2023 \u2014 and less than 0.33% of gross domestic product, according to a\u00a0Brookings Institution<\/a>\u00a0report from September. By comparison, U.S.-based institutions and individual donors contributed about $49.3 billion<\/a> to overseas causes as of a 2020 tally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>Where to give<\/h2>\n
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“Individual givers and philanthropy on a larger scale has a really important role right now,” said Michael Jarvis, executive director of the Trust, Accountability, and Inclusion Collaborative, a Washington, D.C.-based network of funders that operate around the world.<\/p>\n

“There’s no way that private givers can fill the gap that the U.S. government is leaving,” Jarvis said, “but it means that their funds are all the more important and needs to be strategically deployed even more effectively.”<\/p>\n

To that end, Charity Navigator compiled\u00a0a list<\/a>\u00a0of highly rated nonprofits that were affected by the funding freeze on foreign assistance, including Save the Children and UNICEF, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Individual giving “is already an important player and I do think people will step up more now,” Jarvis said. “There are ways people can use their voice effectively and certainly use their money effectively.”<\/p>\n

There may even be a tax benefit, depending on how those donations are made.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald\u00a0Trump’s order to suspend all U.S. foreign aid, which was announced on January 20, is currently on hold amid a legal review. But for nonprofits, charities and public service organizations that rely on federal funding, some damage has already been done. “Foreign assistance programs don’t operate with an on\/off switch,” said\u00a0Mitchell Warren, executive director<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[1543,3038,4222,4224,4223,4221],"class_list":{"0":"post-10443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finance-news","8":"tag-aid","9":"tag-battle","10":"tag-charities","11":"tag-foreign","12":"tag-jeopardy","13":"tag-toprated"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}