In this 2023 supplied photo, women in El Volcán, Nicaragua, carry a water tank to be installed to store and treat clean drinking water for the community. Green Empowerment, a Portland-based nonprofit, helped with the clean water project.
Courtesy of Green Empowerment
Oregon’s international nonprofit sector has worked in treacherous places around the world — war zones, areas torn apart by natural disasters and communities facing exposure to deadly illnesses.
Now, workers in the sector find themselves using their problem-solving and resilience skills to help their own organizations recover from federal funding cuts and navigate a new landscape for U.S. foreign aid.
Pausing U.S. foreign aid was one of the first actions President Donald Trump took after being sworn into office on Jan. 20. The effects were felt immediately as billions in U.S. funding that supported an international supply chain of companies, aid organizations and government bodies was no longer available.
Since then, the Trump administration has cut thousands of jobs at the United States Agency for International Development, known as USAID, and has canceled more than 80% of USAID’s contracts. President Trump and his allies have said America’s spending on international assistance is wasteful.
“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” Trump said in his Jan. 20 executive order pausing funding. “They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
However, supporters of foreign aid point out that international support programs traditionally make up just 1% of the federal budget and provide life-saving programs and promote peace and collaboration with other countries.
Related: Why is the Trump administration targeting USAID?
Meanwhile, experts say the dramatic reduction in federal funding is having immediate impacts on international projects, putting lives in jeopardy and eroding the international community’s trust in the U.S. Domestically — especially in a state like Oregon that’s home to hundreds of nonprofits with international programs — the cuts are leading to lost jobs and steeper competition for non-government sources of funding.
Jim White, executive director of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon, said the state’s international organizations are reeling from the disappearance of federal funds, forcing them to turn to private funding or to shut down projects.
“That means starting to look at furloughs,” White said. “That means cutting programs. They’re burning down, in many cases, their reserves very quickly to try to keep programs open while the courts and the executive branch at the federal level are battling it out as to whether these things are legal or illegal to do.”
Trump’s moves continue to be challenged in court, and in the most recent ruling a judge said the administration could cancel contracts but must release funds for aid work that has already been completed.
End to lifesaving programs
Mercy Corps, one of Portland’s best-known nonprofits operating internationally, has ended programs supporting almost 5 million people around the globe.
“These programs not only saved lives, they prevented conflict and instability, and helped communities recover from crisis, reducing long-term reliance on aid,” Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Mercy Corps CEO, said in a statement. “Ending these programs so suddenly will be destabilizing and have devastating consequences for trust in the communities that relied on them.”
Mercy Corps declined to comment on how the federal funding cuts could impact its Portland office.
Even as the loss of federal support sends shockwaves through the state’s nonprofit community, experts said many of Oregon’s international organizations will be able to weather the storm. However, groups reliant on federal funds will slim down and could face closure, leaving holes in the ecosystem of organizations skilled in foreign aid work.
As the community adjusts, the makeup of funding will have to shift. Meanwhile, small nonprofits that receive little to no government funding will likely step up to fill as much of the void as possible.
In this 2024 supplied photo, Victor Lopez throws water in the air during a community celebration of having reliable access to clean water in Tolapampa Bajo, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Green Empowerment, a Portland-based nonprofit, helped with the clean water project.
Courtesy of Green Empowerment
Impact to Oregonians
Nonprofits, sometimes called non-governmental organizations or NGOs, typically raise operational funds in three ways: earned revenues from things like ticket sales to events, government contracts and private contributions.
For many Oregon NGOs operating internationally, government funding had been the most stable source of income — up until this point. Private funding is often allocated to specific projects without much money allowed for overhead like salaries and office space. Traditionally, USAID and other federal funding has helped fill in the gaps for those costs.
White with the Nonprofit Association of Oregon said when the government paused funding, it froze the portals organizations use to withdraw money already contracted or granted to them. Adding insult to injury, White said when groups call the federal agency to find out about already allocated funds, no one is there to answer the phone.
Still, Oregon will continue to be a healthy place to run a nonprofit, he said, in part because of the state’s high rate of volunteerism. But the federal funding cuts will ripple across the state and Pacific Northwest, starting with job cuts at some international NGOs.
“These are values that we as Americans, and certainly we as Oregonians have: when someone is in need, we step up,” he said, “regardless of who they are, what their background is, or what their race is.”
Related: How the gutting of USAID is reverberating around the world: Worry, despair, praise
Consequences of cutting back
It could take months before the scope of job losses are known, but the half dozen people active in the nonprofit sector that spoke to OPB for this story said they know Oregon aid workers who abruptly lost employment due to the federal funding cuts.
“There’s obviously the loss of economic livelihoods of our community,” said Theodore Khoury, professor of management and strategy at Portland State University’s business school. “People in our community that have dedicated their whole careers and lives to work in these areas and parts of the world — and made tremendous sacrifices to their families and their own lives to be part of this larger network of intended good that’s happening around the world.”
Khoury said the foreign aid system Trump brought to a halt this year certainly wasn’t perfect — but successful nonprofits had decades of experience working within the flawed system.
“They have to have legitimacy on the ground,” in other countries, he said. “But you also have to have cachet with places like USAID and the equivalent elsewhere to be able to secure enough funds and resources to leverage that legitimacy that you have on the ground.”
Organizations that have to abandon projects will likely have to rebuild legitimacy — which could take years — while securing new funding sources, he said.
In this 2023 supplied photo, community members are building a solar PV system to bring sustainable electricity to their village in Dagat, Kinabatangan, Sabah, Malaysia. Green Empowerment, a Portland-based nonprofit, helped with the solar project.
Courtesy of Green Empowerment
Shift in foreign aid ecosystem
Tigard-based Medical Teams International is a faith-based nonprofit providing medical attention to people in parts of Africa, Ukraine and other countries. U.S. government grants to the organization were suspended in January.
In February, CEO Eric Ha told OPB’s “Think Out Loud” the big question for his organization and similar nonprofits is: what are the systemwide implications for the international humanitarian ecosystem after the Trump administration is done evaluating foreign aid priorities?
“It could be a significant change in the resourcing that is available,” Ha said. “Not just from the U.S. government but from other agencies and institutions that have worked with the U.S. government for humanitarian assistance.”
Ha said about 15% of Medical Teams International’s annual budget comes from federal funding.
“We are looking at a wide range of scenarios and trying to proactively prepare ourselves for a wide range of potential outcomes over the next several months,” Ha said. “But there are a lot of unknowns and ambiguity as to what outcome is going to be.”
Related: Judge tells Trump administration it has less than 2 days to resume USAID funding
Double down on resource sharing
The funding cuts and uncertain future of international priorities may test the ability of nonprofits of all sizes to do even more of what they’ve often had to do: collaborate and be nimble.
Andrea Johnson is executive director with Portland-based Green Empowerment. The small nonprofit works in 13 countries and partners with more than 25 organizations to increase access to energy and water. Johnson said since its founding, Green Empowerment has supported more than 650,000 people in getting access to power and water at home.
“We rely heavily on the generosity of individuals and families for our work, which in this moment in time we are fortunate,” Johnson said. “We do not have U.S. government funding, so we are able to just continue our work and actually feel like this is a moment we should double down on it.”
Many of the organization’s financial supporters are from Oregon, she said, and have been donors for more than two decades.
Johnson is also a leader with GlobalPDX, a volunteer networking organization for Portland NGOs with international projects. She said when a major funding source disappears from the aid sector, it can lead to fear that there will be steep competition for limited philanthropic resources.
Instead of competing, Johnson hopes the NGO community will focus on sharing resources and continuing to build connections with global partners — even though she acknowledges that strong private funding and collaboration alone won’t replace the cuts from the Trump administration.
“But I do think you’ll see many organizations like Green Empowerment are probably going to be really strong,” she said, “and really needed in the next few years.”
