The political uncertainty facing U.S.-based nonprofits just got a major jolt. On Oct. 8, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, or CIFF — one of the world’s largest philanthropies, with $6.6 billion in assets — quietly announced it would end all funding relationships with U.S.-based nonprofits. And it didn’t make many headlines.
Not because grantees underperformed. Not because of strategy shifts. CIFF’s board says it simply no longer “feels confident in [its] understanding of the U.S. policy environment for foreign funders of U.S. NGOs.” So, “as a precautionary measure,” the U.K.-based foundation will redirect its money overseas until the rules are clearer.
That’s a big deal. Aid budgets get cut all the time; agencies come and go, but for a private foundation to decide the U.S. itself is too risky? That’s new — and as Craig Bowman of Common Ground Consulting puts it on his LinkedIn page, “that single sentence should alarm anyone working in global philanthropy or social impact.”