I can only imagine how, on an average day — before U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office and erased the U.S. Agency for International Development — philanthropies were already flooded with funding requests. I can’t even begin to imagine the tidal wave of pleas they’re getting now in the wake of the aid cuts.
A “sea change” is what the sector needs at the moment, said Elizabeth Dale of the Dorothy Johnson Center for Philanthropy during a Devex Pro briefing, though panelists expressed doubts about how much philanthropy can step up.
Indeed, the overwhelming consensus is that philanthropic foundations cannot fill the cavernous financial void left by the world’s largest bilateral donor. But that also doesn’t mean they’re sitting idly by as the development community finds itself in free fall.