Christian aid groups weigh life-threatening choices about who to help after USAID funding pause
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a warehouse in Haiti, nearly four metric tons of seeds cannot be distributed. Soon the planting season will be gone and with it, the best chance for those seeds to produce emergency food.
Across the world in South Sudan, a program treating severely malnourished children under age 5 has halted.
Both projects are led by World Relief, an evangelical organization whose work has collapsed in certain countries after the Trump administration froze most foreign aid and sidelined the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Faith-based organizations that partner with the U.S. government to deliver international aid are being hard-hit by the USAID shutdown, and are now facing their own layoffs, furloughs and severe funding shortages.
Remaining staff are being forced to make difficult choices about which lifesaving programs can continue without government funding.
“That’s what keeps me up at night,” said Matthew Soerens, World Relief’s vice president of advocacy and policy.
Two of the 12 largest non-governmental recipients of USAID funds are faith-based: Catholic Relief Services and World Vision. These Christian nonprofits serve millions of people globally and provide food, water and health care in conflict zones.
Catholic Relief Services — founded by U.S. Catholic bishops in 1943 — told staff to expect drastic reductions in their workforce this year, as much as 50 percent, due to cuts in U.S. foreign assistance. CRS receives more USAID support than any other non-governmental organization. The U.S. government funded nearly half of the 2023 CRS budget of $1.2 billion.
The Vatican’s global charity arm, Caritas, on Monday warned that millions of people will die as a result of the “ruthless” U.S. decision to “recklessly” stop USAID funding, and hundreds of millions more will be condemned to “dehumanizing poverty.”
The State Department has offered select waivers for organizations to continue “lifesaving” humanitarian work. But many organizations that have received waivers say federal funding has not arrived for those exempted projects, and they have been unable to get meaningful guidance from the U.S. government.
USAID headquarters staffers — in affidavits filed this week as part of a court challenge to the Trump administration’s dismantling of the agency — say they know of no one in USAID who has been told what process will be followed in accepting and reviewing waiver requests, and no funding is getting through to aid partners and programs.
World Relief received a waiver to continue its lifesaving work in one country — civil-war-torn Sudan — but it is still waiting on government payments for those programs and previously completed work.
“We can’t afford to misunderstand the instructions and spend resources that we don’t have,” Soerens said. “We have some cash reserves, but like most nonprofits, we don’t sit on months and months’ worth of cash.”
Churches and private donors have helped World Relief raise $4.5 million in two weeks to support international aid and its work in the U.S. with refugees. But the organization has furloughed employees and still faces a funding gap of $3.5 million for immediate needs.
Franklin Graham, an evangelical leader who prayed at both of Donald Trump's presidential inaugurations, runs Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical humanitarian organization that has received USAID funds. Graham said in a statement that “the details of the waiver process are not yet clear.”
Samaritan’s Purse has not stopped its emergency food and medical programs overseas, he noted, and less than 5% of the organization’s 2024 funding came from government grants.
“I think it’s a good thing for the government to assess and reexamine the various programs that the U.S. is funding around the world,” Graham said. “We trust that the new leadership will analyze all of the information and make good decisions.”
A spokesperson for World Vision, a Christian aid group that is separate from World Relief, said the organization was working on securing waivers and resuming critical programs as soon as possible. “Our commitment to serving vulnerable communities through humanitarian and development work remains strong, and we will continue to comply with all relevant regulations,” its statement said.
The first Trump administration did some “incredible work” at USAID, according to Adam Phillips, who led the USAID faith-based office during the Biden administration. Phillips continued some of the data-driven approaches to working with faith communities that the Trump team pioneered at the agency.
“It’s so mystifying to see what the second Trump administration is doing,” Phillips said, “because they’re really going backwards on some extraordinary commitments when it comes to faith-based partners.”
Supporters of USAID’s work argue it not only alleviates global suffering and promotes stability but also functions as a form of soft power to create goodwill and counter rivals like China and Russia.
Many conservatives have championed the type of public-private partnerships that USAID and religious groups traditionally have had. Indeed, when Trump again established a White House faith office, the Feb. 7 executive order said it wanted faith-based entities “to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.”
Faith-based groups hope their humanitarian work will pass muster with the second Trump administration after a 90-day review is completed.
“At World Relief, we’re also pro-life Christians. We believe in the value of human life,” Soerens said. “Our hope is that the president and the secretary of state examine this as quickly as possible and get things moving on that genuinely lifesaving humanitarian support.”
A USAID employee who works on lifesaving humanitarian assistance said she has been instructed not to communicate with grantees. She was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
She still finds common cause with faith-based organizations: She has long viewed her secular work of helping the vulnerable as an extension of her own Christian faith.
“I can’t say that if I weren’t a person of faith, that I wouldn’t be in this in this field,” she said. “But I do think my main motivation is that Christ calls us to be his hands and feet in this world. That’s what I want to be.”
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AP reporters Nicole Winfield in Rome, Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, and Gary Fields and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.
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