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Laid-off USAID employees are taking matters into their own hands to bridge the gap after DOGE cuts

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With most programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development cut and the agency’s remaining staff told their jobs will end by September, the reality of the Trump administration’s sudden halt to more than 60 years of international development work has sunk in.

Billionaire presidential advisor Elon Musk, who led the charge to dismantle USAID, has called the agency criminal and corrupt. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said many programs did not advance American interests. The administration continues to cancel programs, including humanitarian and food aid, and has said it will roll any remaining programs into the State Department.

Two months into the cuts, some workers and organizations, who once carried out those programs, are developing a variety of initiatives to stand in the breach left by the dismantling of U.S. foreign aid.

Direct cash to laid off workers

Laura Meissner had worked as a contractor for USAID since 2010 and specialized in humanitarian assistance, specifically programs that give cash directly to people in need.

In early February, a friend approached her to help start a fundraiser to benefit other USAID workers who, like her, had lost their jobs. USAID employed 10,550 people in Washington and at offices around the world, with about half coming from other countries.

Meissner along with a small group of organizers eventually set up The Solidarity Fund with the Greater Washington Community Foundation, which will actually make grants directly to former workers. The grants will start at $650 and increase depending on the size of the household.

“We want to make it a meaningful enough sum that it’ll make a real difference in their ability to buy groceries, pay medical bills, pay the rent or mortgage, or keep the lights on,” Meissner said.

So far, the fund has raised about $16,000 from 140 donors and has already recommend 10 applicants to receive funds.

“It’s so easy to feel like nothing that you do matters because there’s so many big problems and it feels like they’re happening all at once. But everything does matter, even if it’s just to somebody,” she said.

Research to help foundations and funders with more money

Even for people who study international development, it’s been hard to understand all the ways U.S. cuts have impacted the field. The think tank Rethink Priorities, which prioritizes cost-effectiveness in charitable interventions, studied the gaps created by the cuts to help donors respond.

They provide a chart showing how big of a share U.S. funding was in any given area and encourage funders to consider how urgently the impacts of the cuts will be felt. They also suggest donors consider if others might fill the gap.

Tom Vargas, a senior researcher at the think tank, said he hopes the research helps to, “spread the money around in a way that makes sense. We’re funding things that other people will not fund.”

They hope their research influences donors, big and small, while also recommending giving to emergency funds.

Bridge funds to get money to programs that could still operate

Within a month of the pause on USAID programs, a number of nonprofits started emergency funds to get money to life-saving programs or to stabilize organizations that would otherwise close. Even the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that responds to conflicts and famines, has started a fundraiser, hoping to bring in $25 million from U.S. donors.

So far, emergency funds have raised between several hundred thousand dollars to over $3 million, mostly from individual donors, and some have already granted out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The funds have gone to a Yemeni organization that provides emergency food supplies, to send cash directly to people fleeing violence in Democratic Republic of Congo, to a Kenyan organization that supports people living with HIV, and to a program combatting malnutrition in Ethiopia.

Support for organizations to close or merge

The amount raised by the bridge funds does not come close to replacing the tens of billions lost in the U.S. aid cuts.

Many international development organizations, even those who did not directly receive funds from USAID, face existential funding shortages, said Blair Glencorse, founder and co-CEO of Accountability Lab, whose organization has been tracking the impact of the U.S. cuts.

More than a third of nonprofits who responded to their survey said they had less than three months of funding.

“The data from the beginning indicated that it would be around now that organizations are going to fall off a cliff,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we’re beginning to see.”

His organization has heard from more than 70 nonprofits, mostly in the Global South, who want to explore merging, spinning off programs, winding down or otherwise partnering to try to prevent their most valuable assets from being lost. Those assets could include employees, property, systems, contacts or intellectual property.

Glencorse said they estimate it will cost between $30,000 and $50,000 for each transaction or merger and have assembled a team of experts, who can help organizations. They have gotten some funding from foundations for the “ partnership matching service,” and estimate that they have between 6 to 9 months to help nonprofits make these big organizational changes.

“The snowball effect is really beginning to pick up at this point,” he said of the cascading impacts of the U.S. foreign aid cuts.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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Parents hit back at RFK Jr.’s claim that ‘autism destroys families’

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The Education Department has a rude awakening for 5.3 million student loan borrowers: giving their info to debt collectors

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Trump’s memecoin enjoys surprise 10% surge after sales lock up is lifted

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President Donald Trump’s personally endorsed memecoin surged over the weekend, despite expectations that its price would tumble as tens of thousands of fresh tokens were released to project insiders.

$Trump, a memecoin launched by Trump in the lead up to his second inauguration, has gained 10% since Friday, when 40 million additional tokens were to be released into circulation. The event, known as a token unlock, was expected to depress the memecoin’s price by increasing its supply but it seems to have had the opposite effect. 

Token unlocks are when a group of people—usually project team members, early investors or advisors—receive their allocated tokens for free or at a lower price after a predetermined amount of time and are allowed to sell them. Token unlocks are a way for project founders to guarantee to investors that they won’t do a rug pull—a common scam in which a memecoin project’s team members dump their holdings at once, tanking the token’s price and leaving investors holding the bag.

The tokens that were released last week were allocated to “creators and CIC digital,” according to the token’s website. While the identity of the token’s creators is unclear, CIC Digital is a company known to be affiliated with Trump. As the $330 million worth of tokens were unlocked, investors feared that these holders would immediately try to turn a profit by dumping the tokens into the market. 

Despite these concerns, the team has not made any significant sales yet, according to crypto analysis firm Chainalysis. “As of 1 p.m. ET on Monday, Chainalysis hasn’t detected any on-chain actions from the creators of $Trump coins,” the firm told Fortune

The token team’s perceived commitment to the project has led to increased confidence in the token’s longevity, leading investors to rush back over the weekend, Dylan Bane, an analyst at research firm Messari, told Fortune. “Because the price hasn’t gone down and a large-scale sale has not occurred, the markets might be pricing in the possibility that the Trump team just chooses to hold on to these tokens,” he said. 

However, this does not mean that the team behind the token won’t ever sell, Bane added. While there were 200 million tokens released for the launch in January, there are staggered unlocks scheduled every few months until 2028, when the total supply of tokens will reach 1 billion. 

“There’s a lot more to be unlocked,” Bane said. “So, if the price goes down, that’s not in the team’s interest since most of their tokens are not unlocked yet.”

Investors’ anxiety with Trump’s memecoin may be justified. The coin’s entry into the market was tumultuous, skyrocketing from $1.21 to $75.35 within its first two days, reaching a total market cap of $14 billion. But the coin’s price began to plummet soon after, and it has lost 90% of its value since Jan. 19. The token’s price now sits at $8.28. 

In the aftermath of the launch, investors lost more than $2 billion, according to an analysis by Chainalysis for The New York Times. Meanwhile, Trump-affiliated entities have produced $350 million in revenue from trading fees and selling the token itself, according to an analysis conducted by the Financial Times

According to the memecoin’s website, two Trump-affiliated entities—CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight—will own 80% of the 1 billion total $Trump tokens once they are all unlocked in 2028. That would mean, at its current price, Trump’s team stands to walk away from the project with a profit in the billions of dollars. 

It’s unclear how much of the token Trump and his family own directly, if at all. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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