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“Generous” might not be the word that comes to mind when you think of the United States and foreign assistance at the moment. But that could be an apt term to describe average Americans outside the White House, who collectively could become the world’s biggest aid donor.
Also in today’s edition: The U.S. government is destroying what it’s already bought.
+ See you soon at 10 a.m. ET for our event on U.S. food aid: We’ll be joined today by former head of USAID’s food security bureau Dina Esposito, Farm Journal Foundation’s Stephanie Mercier, and DaNita Murray of South Dakota Corn to discuss what’s left, what has been lost, and what’s next for U.S. food aid programs. Register now. If you can’t attend live, we’ll send you a recording.
In a charitable mood
Don’t discount the U.S. when it comes to funding development. OK, you can pretty much discount the Trump administration, for whom development is at the bottom of its totem pole of priorities, but that’s not the case for many Americans.
In fact, U.S. charitable giving to international causes reached more than $35 billion last year — potentially setting it on course to eclipse the U.S. government — or any other government for that matter — as the world’s most important source of aid funding, my colleague David Ainsworth writes.
Specifically, Americans gave $35.54 billion in 2024 to U.S.-based nonprofits that describe themselves as working in the field of international affairs, according to a recent report by the Giving USA Foundation.
But there are some important caveats. First, even though U.S. charitable giving is a growing and vital factor in aid funding, it’s relatively small compared to other causes. David notes that giving to international causes represents only around 6% of total U.S giving to nonprofits across all sectors.
And while there was a spike in the American public giving to international causes around the year 2000, it has leveled off in recent years. The slowdown in the last decade roughly coincides with Donald Trump’s first presidential victory and the rise of anti-internationalist rhetoric that accompanied the “Make America Great Again” movement, though there is no hard evidence to show the two are connected.
Read: Could US charitable giving eclipse the government as a source of aid? (Pro)
+ Can philanthropy effectively fill the gaps left by bilateral donors? Join us this Wednesday to learn how the Gates Foundation is deploying its resources over the next 20 years in a live interview with its CEO Mark Suzman. Save your spot now and submit any questions you’d like us to include in our conversation to editor@devex.com.
Burning development
For months, $9.7 million of contraceptives purchased by the U.S. government for women in developing countries have been sitting in a Belgian warehouse. As early as today, they’re getting moved — not to those countries but to an incineration site to be destroyed, my colleague Elissa Miolene reports.
“They’ve said that this isn’t in alignment with their values,” says a source familiar with the matter who visited that warehouse, referring to the Trump administration. “They’re trying to destroy it all by the end of the month, and I saw some boxes there that aren’t expiring until 2031.”
“This is an estimated $10 million worth of commodities that could save lives that’s going to go up in smoke,” says Alan Bornbush, who was a former division chief for USAID’s family planning program until he retired in early March. “That’s not a trivial number of women and girls who could very well die now as a consequence of this.”
It’s unclear exactly which countries the contraceptives were meant to reach. But those most reliant on the U.S. government for family planning procurement were also some of those with the highest birth rates and weakest health systems.
“Just because the world’s biggest donor of family planning is pulling out, demand doesn’t stop,” says Sarah Shaw of MSI Reproductive Choices. “Demand is still there. Demand is still growing.”
MSI tried to pay for the shipment and distribution of the supplies in Belgium but said the offer was rejected.
Read: $9.7M in US-funded contraceptives slated for incineration this week
Related: Senators slam Trump official over expired food aid
A lesson in lobbying
Last week’s decision by U.S. lawmakers to rescue $400 million in funding for the country’s flagship HIV/AIDS initiative PEPFAR from Trump’s rescission package was a rare victory for aid advocates. But America’s premier HIV program is not the only one that got a reprieve. In the House of Representatives, lawmakers last week largely spared U.S. funding for global education programs in the fiscal 2026 budget.
That bill includes $737.6 million for the Nita M. Lowey Basic Education Fund — a dedicated U.S. federal funding stream for international basic education — of which at least $152 million is earmarked for multilateral partnerships supporting global education.
Before you get bowled over, that still represents a 20% drop from the $922 million bilateral funding in fiscal 2025 to support basic education in partner countries, formerly managed by USAID. However, that $152 million figure for multilateral partners remains the same, Devex contributor Gabriella Jóźwiak writes.
The bill still has to pass through the Senate gauntlet, but the House verdict was a pleasant surprise for education advocates.
Part of the success is likely attributable to a little-known bipartisan effort in the House called the International Basic Education Caucus, which in May urged lawmakers to fund Education Cannot Wait, or ECW — the U.N. entity for education in emergencies — and the Global Partnership for Education, which provides education in lower-income countries.
Nasser Al-Faqih of ECW tells us the result was “encouraging.”
“We were planning for the worst — we thought things will be impacted very similarly to what we’ve witnessed in the health sector,” he says. “But this is a sign of hope.”
Read: House cuts US global education funding 20%, spares multilateral partners
Smarter giving
The U.S. House of Representatives may have kept global education funding relatively intact, but in general, education tends to get the short end of the budget stick.
Enter the Jacobs Foundation, which is trying to innovate how we invest in education. Now at the midway point of a 10-year strategy — which is backed up by 500 million Swiss francs ($623.7 million) — the foundation is shifting away from one-off project grants toward long-term, locally led partnerships designed to influence how national education systems work.
In a recent Devex Pro Funding conversation, co-CEO Fabio Segura explained how the foundation is putting this vision into practice. For NGOs, education providers, and research institutions looking to partner with the foundation, the process is less about submitting a proposal and more about shared vision and flexibility.
Read: The foundation trying to change how we invest in education (Pro)
+ For more exclusive conversations with nonprofit and philanthropy funders and policymakers, sign up for Devex Pro with a 15-day free trial today and get immediate access to all our exclusive briefings as well as a deeper analysis of the development sector like you’ve never seen before. Check out upcoming events lined up for Pro members.
A premature pep in their step?
Last week’s hard-fought PEPFAR victory gave its backers a much-needed jolt of good news, but when you drill into it, how much of a victory was it?
The rescissions package still slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in global health funding. It may not even be the last rescissions package. And like global education, PEPFAR faces another big hurdle in Congress: the fiscal 2026 budget, which requests $2.9 billion for PEPFAR — an eye-watering decrease of $1.9 billion.
PEPFAR is also operating on a much narrower focus in the wake of USAID’s dismantling, my colleague Sara Jerving writes. For example, preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can only be offered to pregnant and breastfeeding women. That excludes prevention efforts for high-risk groups.
Then there’s the larger financial blow to HIV research. After decades of painstaking work, researchers are tantalizingly close to solving the riddle of the constantly mutating virus. That includes a breakthrough, six-month injectable prevention method known as lenacapavir.
“The potential is in our grasp to end a pandemic and in the process, stop the needless [infections] and deaths that continue to impact millions each year,” says Dr. Beatriz Grinsztejn, president of the International AIDS Society.
But scientific advances cost massive amounts of money, and the U.S. accounted for a significant chunk of it, which has thrown the decades-long battle against an evasive killer into doubt.
“This virus does not stop. It does not rest,” says Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town. “Even as we celebrate that Lenacapavir is a terrific breakthrough for prevention, we know that this virus can easily get ahead of us even there. And so we have to constantly be asking: ‘What is the next breakthrough that we are going to need to eventually bring this epidemic to a close?’”
Read: US aid cuts overshadow HIV research advances
ICYMI: Senate blocks $400M cut to PEPFAR, but it's a shell of its former self
In other news
A study warns that if not urgently addressed, antimicrobial resistance could cause more deaths and cost the global economy nearly $2 trillion a year by 2050. [The Guardian]
Development assistance to Southeast Asia is set to drop by over $2 billion in 2026 due to Western governments redirecting funds toward defense and domestic priorities, according to a Lowy Institute report. [Al Jazeera]
The U.S. has officially rejected WHO pandemic preparedness changes to the International Health Regulations adopted by consensus last year. [Reuters]
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued a memo instructing diplomatic posts to refrain from commenting on the fairness or legitimacy of foreign elections unless there is a “clear and compelling” U.S. policy interest. [The Wall Street Journal]
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
