How the USAID freeze hit the agency’s biggest partners

Since the Republican administration announced a freeze on U.S. aid late last month, a huge number of organizations have been left suddenly without a significant proportion of their income. Many organizations were dependent on the U.S. Agency for International Development for much or most of their income, and their future now looks uncertain. But how much of their income have USAID’s partners lost? USAID funding went to three main groups: U.N. agencies, international nongovernmental organizations, and international development contractors. The United Nations has already estimated how much the halt in U.S. foreign aid would affect its agencies and identified that for some, such as UNAIDS, UNHCR, and the International Organization for Migration, each of which depend on the U.S. for more than 40% of their budget. But it’s not only the U.N. that would be deeply affected by the pause. Devex has previously identified USAID’s top contractors and grantees in the past, and this analysis identifies the likely impacts they would face. We used the disbursement data from the foreignassistance.gov platform and compared the figures in FY2024 with the latest reported annual income of the top contractors and grantees. In cases where organizations have a different financial year or have not reported for the most recent period, the figures will not cover exactly the same period. However, the figures allow a good estimate of the level of exposure that organizations have to USAID. How are the contractors affected? Among contractors, the picture is more difficult to determine. Many contractors do not report their total income publicly, however many of the top contractors are estimated to be heavily exposed to USAID, with some projected by those familiar with the situation to rely on the agency for up to 90% of their income. Funding reached over 1,400 prime contractors. Below, we look at the number of primes where we can accurately estimate the most recent funding. Among these organizations, the median exposure is only around 11%, however this conceals some stark differences. While many USAID primes are multinationals such as Deloitte, others are heavily dependent on the agency for most of their business. As above, the amount disbursed in the most recent year does not map exactly onto the same period as the most recent financial statements. In one case, that of Joint Medical Store, this means that the amount disbursed in the most recent year is more than the amount the contractor reported as its most recent annual revenue. But what about the grantees? Among the top 50 grantees, we were not able to obtain figures for disbursements and annual revenue for all organizations. We also excluded Johns Hopkins University, which is not an INGO. Among the remaining 32 organizations, total income was $14.6 billion, and total USAID income was $2.7 billion, representing 18.3% of all revenue. The median exposure to USAID among those organizations was 17.4%. However, the figures varied wildly, with some organizations receiving up to 80% of their income from USAID. Try out Devex Pro Funding today with a free five-day trial, and explore funding opportunities from over 850 sources in addition to our analysis and news content.