In just nine months, the Trump administration has laid waste to the development landscape, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and slashing nearly the entire U.S. foreign aid budget. This has posed a problem for nongovernmental organizations working on development the world over, derailing decades of work to increase access to health, food, education, and better governance. The impact is disproportionately felt across the global south, where these cuts will inevitably erode institutional knowledge and disrupt development trajectories.
But while the U.S. government’s actions have posed the biggest and most unexpected challenge for these groups, the reality is that the heyday of NGO influence was already long over. NGO revenue streams have dried up—and not just from the United States. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom had already begun their aid retreat before U.S. President Donald Trump took office a second time. In 2020, the U.K. effectively closed its equivalent of USAID, the Department for International Development, by merging it with the Foreign Office. Foreign aid dropped by about $6 billion after the merger, a decline expected to hit $11 billion by 2027.
Similar trends are visible across Western Europe. Sweden, which previously was one of the top countries that provided the most development aid as a percentage of gross national income, more than halved its overseas aid budget in 2023. In Germany, overseas development assistance fell by over 10 percent from 2023 to 2024, with more cuts projected as the country prioritizes defense spending. Similarly, in 2025, France reduced its development aid budget by almost 40 percent, representing a reduction of nearly 2.3 billion euros (about $2.6 billion). The Dutch government will cut 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) from its development aid budget by 2027, while Belgium has announced a 25 percent reduction in aid funding over the next five years.
Concurrently, global democratic recession and authoritarian resurgence have created a troubling environment for NGOs. In the face of fewer democratic constraints, these governments are also eroding the norms that supported these groups for much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
As a result of these trends in tandem, many development NGOs have had to abruptly close programs and lay off staff. In Ethiopia, South Africa, and Uganda, many NGOs working on providing HIV/AIDS treatment, vaccinations, and maternal and child health care have laid off staff or closed entirely. In Somalia, Save the Children closed nutrition centers. In Honduras and other countries, cuts to food programs administered by Catholic Relief Services left children without daily meals. U.S. and U.K. aid cuts have especially decimated sexual and reproductive health programs for women and girls. What does the global war on NGOs mean for development? And with their decline, can private aid to NGOs fill the gaps for the world’s poor?
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the wave of democratic transitions across Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, Western aid agencies channeled significant resources to NGOs in the 1980s and ’90s. NGOs increased in number, size, and funds received and emerged as key actors in development, democratization, and humanitarianism. A coalition of NGOs, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, played a key role in the adoption of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in 1997. Their efforts won them the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. Médecins Sans Frontières won the prize shortly after, in 1999, in recognition of its pioneering humanitarian work. In 1997, Jessica Mathews, who that year would become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described a “power shift,” in which NGOs became power brokers alongside governments in global politics.
These organizations in the development sector were seen as more competent and less prone to misuse and bureaucratic inefficiency than governments. In 1996, the United Nations started its Oil-for-Food program to allow Iraq to sell enough oil on the world market in exchange for food and medicine to soften the blow of sanctions after the first Gulf War. But Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein earned billions of dollars through corruption and illegal oil smuggling, furthering the notion that direct aid transfers to governments ran the risk of officials pocketing aid for themselves. Incidents such as this soured governments on direct transfers, and instead an increasing amount of foreign aid was channeled to development NGOs in an effort to alleviate global poverty, disease, and hunger. International NGOs also became important providers of humanitarian aid in the wake of ethnic conflict and genocide in the Balkans and Rwanda.
By the early 2000s, though, major NGOs began to struggle to operate at a larger scale while maintaining the grassroots contacts and input that contributed to their early successes. The growth of international NGOs raised concerns about how accountable these groups were to the communities they served, as locals felt excluded from agenda setting, implementation, and evaluation of NGO programs.
Others criticized the power dynamics inherent in their work, raising concerns that these groups might be replicating global hierarchies. Most international NGOs were headquartered in the global north, with influential development NGOs such as BRAC—headquartered in Bangladesh—being more of an exception rather than the norm. As a result, large NGOs could attract substantial funding, but this would draw funds away from local civic actors and needs. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the oversaturation of international NGOs in the country and the absence of any coordinating mechanism led these groups to duplicate one another’s activities. Similar concerns were present in other natural disasters, where NGOs and the aid sector were seen as overwhelming the local response.
In response to these criticisms, NGOs undertook actions to establish and enhance their financial transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Some reorganized with localization initiatives that gave decision-making powers to local communities. But governments around the world continued challenging NGOs’ legitimacy. They argued that these groups were elitist and advanced foreign agendas and partisan political objections. Claims such as those made by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell—who declared in 2001 that “NGOs are such a force multiplier for us”—did little to allay some foreign leaders’ concerns about these groups as partisan.
The subsequent color revolutions increased these leaders’ hostility toward NGOs. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, insists the West orchestrated protests and regime change in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine through its support of local NGOs and activists. While scholarly work debates whether U.S. democracy assistance and support by U.S. NGOs played a prominent role in regime change in these countries, leaders in the region wasted no time in jumping to the conclusion that the West was using NGOs as political weapons. Claims such as these paved the way for the global crackdown on NGOs—and a perception of their overreach was embraced by leaders around the world. In 2016, then-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, for instance, argued that foreign governments were using NGOs to subvert democracy.
Today, more than 130 countries have cracked down on NGOs, many through administrative means. An administrative crackdown uses the law to create barriers to entry, funding, and advocacy. In 2012, the Russian government forced organizations receiving foreign funding and engaging in “political activities” to register as “foreign agents.” The designation subjected groups to onerous financial requirements and placed them under government monitoring. Similarly, in 2010, Indian lawmakers amended the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), enabling the government to target nonprofits of a “political nature.” Neither Russia nor India clearly defined “political.”
More recently, in 2024, despite public backlash, Georgia passed a law requiring NGOs to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they received more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign sources. This April, the Georgian government introduced criminal penalties, including prison sentences, for individuals who refuse to register as foreign agents.
These laws’ chilling effect is not limited to groups supporting human rights, media freedom, political advocacy, or promoting democracy. In India, the FCRA hampered many development NGOs’ responses during the deadly delta variant wave of the COVID-19 pandemic because it prohibited subgranting funds from larger donors or international NGOs to grassroots organizations. It also imposed a 20 percent cap on administrative expenses drawn from foreign funds, inhibiting organizations’ capacity to hire more staff during the emergency. When India’s government did not renew Oxfam’s license and registration in 2022, it impeded the supply of oxygen cylinders, ventilators, and food to vulnerable communities.
International actors, meanwhile, have struggled to mount a coherent campaign to stymie such repression. This was partly because even during the first Trump administration, the U.S. government had already started positioning NGOs as a cultural enemy. In June 2018, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, blamed the U.S. withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council on NGOs. Meanwhile, Western democracies such as Australia and Italy started criminalizing and restricting NGOs working with migrants. In New Zealand, Greenpeace lost its charitable status due to its political activities, which was reinstated only after a High Court decision in its favor. In Canada, environmental NGOs, particularly those opposing proposed oil pipelines, faced increased prosecution. Authoritarian governments were no longer the only ones restricting NGOs. Democracies, fearful of these groups challenging their economic interests and questioning their development and industrialization policies, also began pushing back.
As a result, discourse around NGOs has dramatically shifted from the optimism of the 1990s. This July, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to the “globe-spanning NGO industrial complex” that, in his estimation, had little to show since the end of the Cold War. And following the change in the foreign-policy priorities of major Western powers, development NGOs face even greater challenges. Overseas development assistance by top donor countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fell by more than 7 percent in 2024. Some governments retreated due to strategic realignments that prioritized national interests such as defense spending over foreign aid. Others did so due to fiscal pressures and budget deficits. In response to dramatic cuts to development aid, private funders have stepped up. But will these new actors be able to ensure that NGOs’ programming continues without further cuts? And what does it mean for the development sector if NGOs are simultaneously losing access to state funds and support and becoming increasingly reliant on nonstate actors?
In the United States, several groups, including the Mellon, Skoll, and MacArthur foundations, pledged to fill the gap created by the loss of foreign aid in March and April. Others shored up emergency support and bridge funds to prevent disruption to the work of front-line organizations. However, the funds pledged by these foundations were a fraction of the U.S. foreign aid budget—to the tune of millions, vastly below the typical annual budget of USAID of some $40 billion.
Foundations and elite philanthropy are not the only sources of funds for these NGOs. Individual charitable giving may also have the potential to keep these organizations afloat. My research indicates that for individuals who already donate to nonprofits, learning about repressive NGO environments increases their generosity. In addition, individuals who frequently volunteer and trust institutions are more likely to maintain their support for international NGOs that face criticism or crackdown abroad. Further, my experimental study with Marc Dotson and Andrew Heiss shows that in the face of legal crackdowns and government efforts to malign NGOs, specific actions by these groups can prevent reductions in support from individual donors, with NGOs perceived as being financially transparent and accountable receiving continued support from individuals abroad.
Though the short-term response by foundations and the research findings on individual charitable giving may be promising, development aid previously given by multiple major global economies may not be easily replaceable by other sources. Official development assistance provided by the United States usually amounted to more than $60 billion annually. The Foreign Aid Bridge Fund has already concluded, with doubts about raising significant amounts of additional capital. And according to the latest Global Philanthropy Tracker report, 32 high-income countries contributed to more than $70 billion in cross-border philanthropy in 2020. While this rivals the amount of U.S. aid, coordinating these funds from so many countries would be a herculean task, and it’s unclear what organization would assume that role. Private aid will also be unable to replace the expertise, scale, or agenda-setting capacity that came with government aid.
In response to previous disruptions in aid (especially through the U.S. global gag rule, which prevents foreign NGOs that provide legal abortion services or referrals from receiving aid), NGOs have reached out to geopolitical rivals to avoid disruptions to their operations. The current foreign aid retreat leaves the door open for China, which already provides development assistance through its Belt and Road Initiative. However, China usually sidesteps NGOs, instead cultivating close relationships with foreign governments as a way to promote China’s own governance norms, including emphasizing state sovereignty.
If the era of NGOs is indeed coming to an end, the effects will be devastating for vulnerable communities, particularly in the global south. Many countries, especially non-democracies, had often tolerated development NGOs because of the services they provided. Increasing anti-NGO rhetoric on both the left and right, and Western donor governments scaling back on aid, means that development NGOs may face an even narrower civic space. Repressive governments may become even more emboldened to enact restrictive laws—ones that undermine advocacy and development NGOs alike.