On July 1, 2025, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officially ceased to exist, with its few remaining programs and staff absorbed into the U.S. State Department. With its closure, U.S. foreign assistance funding dropped to $13 billion, a substantial decrease from the average $51.4 billion that the United States spent annually between 1946 and 2023. Historically, the United States has been the largest funder of development and humanitarian assistance worldwide and a global leader in the sector. In the future of foreign aid series, SFS faculty and alumni weigh in on the impact of these changes and the opportunities that they may present.
Anna Khandros (GHD’19) reflects on her experience with humanitarian aid delivery in Ukraine that had to quickly adapt when U.S. funding ended overnight. Khandros is a 2019 graduate of the Global Human Development master’s program and recently finished working for an NGO in southeastern Ukraine.
While the closure of USAID and the change in U.S. leadership posture have had devastating effects around the world—millions of people were abruptly cut off from lifesaving aid—they have also created an opportunity for humanitarian actors to revisit their ways of working to improve efficiency and coordination. The changes also created an opportunity for us to refocus on localization, one of the most widely discussed topics in the humanitarian sector for nearly a decade, so that more resources go directly to local actors, who are often best placed to lead aid delivery.
Having worked in Ukraine for the past three years, I saw how the humanitarian community quickly adjusted when the majority of American-funded aid delivery had to end overnight. First, UN agencies and NGOs re-prioritized activities and target areas and shifted the resources they still had available; organizations that did not rely as heavily on American funding were able to shift their programming to cover at least some of the most critical gaps. Second, some non-American donors provided emergency funding for alternative aid delivery. Third, national and international NGOs, as well as UN agencies, came together to redefine how we work together beyond the traditional cluster system to more effectively reach those who still fall through the cracks of the system. Finally, more funds were earmarked directly for local actors, which traditionally face many obstacles to accessing donor funding. These short-term adjustments did not negate the effects of abrupt funding cuts, but they do reflect the humanitarian’s system’s ability to adjust to unprecedented shocks.
This adjustment is ongoing in what is called the humanitarian reset, which broadens the goals of the 2016 Grand Bargain to re-imagine how we deliver aid. While I left Ukraine as new staffing and coordination structures were going into effect, I felt that these changes were positive and I remain optimistic that the humanitarian community will continue to adapt and improve.