How can we reinvent aid?

Lately, Nithya Ramanathan has been listening to the Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast known for its authentic — and sometimes controversial — long-form interviews. That’s not necessarily because Ramanathan, the chief executive officer of nonprofit technology company Nexleaf Analytics, agreed with what the podcaster has to say. Instead, it’s more about figuring out what she’s missing and trying to tap into what’s relevant for one of the largest audiences in the world. “We might not feel like there’s truth, or fact, or whatever,” she added, speaking at a Devex Pro event on Friday. “But it comes out in a way that is very accessible — and I will say that our sector has lost the ability to be relevant, generally.” The need to reverse that trend was one of many pieces of constructive criticism that arose during the briefing, which centered on the future of the aid sector after months of change. Over the last seven months, the U.S. government has cut tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid, and in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that his office had slashed 83% of USAID’s programs. Countries across Europe have cut their budgets, too — and the United Kingdom is planning to reduce its aid spending to its lowest level in more than 25 years. In the wake of those cuts, the aid sector has been forced to reexamine itself. And while many feel that the dust is still settling, many others are looking toward what the future holds — and how the industry’s organizations might be able to reinvent themselves in the months to come. Sasha Dichter, co-founder and CEO of customer intelligence company 60 Decibels, highlighted the importance of listening — and the need to create an aid sector that is responsive to what beneficiaries say they need. He stressed that aid groups can no longer treat listening as a box-ticking exercise for monitoring and evaluation. Instead, he said, it must become a central design principle, shaping how programs are conceived, delivered, and measured against the needs of the people they’re meant to serve. Wolfgang Jamann, the executive director of the International Civil Society Centre, emphasized the need for international aid agencies to win back trust — especially among the general public. For ICSC’s members, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and SOS Children’s Villages, that has meant trying to tap back into some of the organizations’ most important values, Jamann said. “What [are] we based upon?” he said. “[We need to] redefine the way we work according to who we were meant to be, and who we are supposed to be.” And Sanjay Purohit, the head of nonprofit action hub the Centre for Exponential Change, said that in these times of upheaval, it’s even more critical for the sector to tap into every player connected to the international aid system: from the governments to civil society to the private sector to the communities themselves. Working with governments, for example, can help organizations see scale, ownership, and sustainability; working with the private sector, for another, can bring innovation and a different type of capital. “The future is a future where the response is faster than the problem — because our problems are not static,” said Purohit. “Our rate of response to them has to be faster than the rate at which the problems are growing, so we can overcome them.” In some ways, the collapse of the world’s largest donor — as painful as it’s been — may be the catalyst for some of that change within the sector, several of the panelists said. For example, bilateral institutions have long restricted nonprofits’ ability to take risks, as every dollar spent on aid is coming from a taxpayer. If the reliance shifts from bilateral institutions such as USAID to for-profit investors, some of the risk nonprofits are able to take could be scaled up, leading to more innovative, higher-impact solutions down the line. “I would love for more private sector market solutions, and also private sector capital, to come in and help us do that a little better … so we can start to take risks in order to get some of those bigger awards,” Ramanathan said. Jamann agreed — to an extent. He added that while for-profit solutions are important, there is a dividing line between what separates that sector from traditional aid groups: motive. But still, a careful, thoughtful approach toward learning from the for-profit world could help nonprofits navigate the changing landscape of today, Jamann said. “Let's be less risk-averse, more entrepreneurial, slaughter some of our holy cows that are standing in our way,” he said. There are other ways international aid agencies are changing. HelpAge International, for example, has completely decentralized, Jamann said, working to support organizations across the world dedicated to a common mission. Project ECHO, for another, is training health care workers in up to 70 disease areas across 100 countries, Purohit said, creating “hyperlocal health care ecosystems that are globally connected.” “The system that we’re working in is engaged in a tremendous shock. And I think if we think about how we all felt at the beginning of this year, we need to celebrate our collective resilience,” said Dichter. “It doesn’t mean that the damage hasn’t been real, and it doesn’t mean that we are out on the other side of this. But I think that what emerges from this emerges stronger.”