5 Ways Strategic Philanthropy Can Stay Agile Without Government Funding

Forbes

14-07-2025

Jessica La Mesa is the Co-CEO of The Life You Can Save, a charity evaluator focused on eradicating extreme poverty.
The global philanthropic landscape is at a turning point. Recent sweeping cuts to U.S. foreign aid have left high-impact organizations without the resources they need to deliver life-saving services. In this shifting environment, the future of philanthropy will depend on how philanthropic leaders adapt.
We must be willing to evolve, respond with urgency and tolerate more impact risk around the changing global conditions and act strategically with how we interact, communicate and call on donors. It's about rethinking how we collaborate, invest and innovate across borders and sectors to ensure that progress is not only preserved but accelerated. Whether you're leading a foundation, managing a high-impact program or directing a nonprofit organization, now is the time to reimagine what effective philanthropy can look like.
Identify the immediate and most critical gaps.
As federal funding remains uncertain, the giving community needs to work together to identify the programs with the greatest funding need and highest impact on the largest number of beneficiaries. In order to identify these funding opportunities, major funders need to collaborate at a scale not seen before. They must implement ways to cross-share diligence and evaluation across their granting portfolios, discussing the best methodologies to prioritize funding across all of the highest-impact granting opportunities. And then they must coordinate funding to avoid over- and under-funding critical organizations and programs in the ecosystem.
For instance, there are still major gaps in funding for health programs addressing malaria, tuberculosis and maternal health that could have catastrophic effects on the poorest communities. These areas, which saved millions of lives in the previous decade, are now threatened. By focusing on the most vulnerable groups, organizations can direct philanthropic resources to those places where they may prevent doomsday reversals for those groups and the world.
Know your donors.
Knowing your donors—and not just their capacity to contribute—is arguably the most fundamental component of effective philanthropy now. What moves them to give? What's the impact that drives them?
As the philanthropic sector becomes increasingly uncertain, nonprofit organizations must engage their donor base substantively and reliably. By establishing relationships based on trust, impact and values, nonprofits can form long-term relationships that drive effective and impactful change.
Reaching donors can take many forms depending on how your donor base likes to be interacted with, which may take trial and error. For example, when the USAID freeze and then permanent cuts were first announced, our team at The Life You Can Save, which primarily works with the most impactful global charities fighting extreme poverty, pivoted quickly to reach our donors. Increasing our newsletter cadence, cold calling donors and initiating even more personal face-to-face interactions with larger donors have helped foster relationships and trust-building across our benefactors.
Work together and collaborate.
I often think about how scientists and governments across the world collaborated to an extent never seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, enabling the production of vaccines and a return to normal life in record time. We need collaboration of this scale on both sides of the aid ecosystem.
There has always been competition for limited resources, but to maintain and grow levels of service delivery and impact, it may be necessary to ideate partnerships, collaborations or even consolidations that will enable their work to continue.
For example, the Rapid Response Fund—a partnership between our organization and Founders Pledge—brought together several different donor types to raise millions for high-impact foreign aid organizations. I remember the day I went to Dominic Finelli at Founders Pledge with the idea of uniting our organizations to bring this fund to life, right when our donors were looking for a way to help nonprofits facing funding cuts. From large-scale philanthropists to charitable startup founders to retail donors, funds created in partnership bring together more donors of different backgrounds, bringing in more capital for causes in need and making a deeper impact than if we all worked alone.
Act urgently.
Now is the moment that everyone needs to accelerate their contributions and get their capital off the sidelines, as this is a moment we can come together and demonstrate that we want to live in a more just and fair world.
The velocity that is required to save lives and maintain critical programs requires donors to move quickly with rigor and balance. It also requires funders to be more flexible than they were before and consider relinquishing capital allocation decisions to experts in the space who have done the research to understand where capital can be most effective.
Be flexible with shifting landscapes.
The problems facing philanthropy today are huge, but they are not insurmountable. The approach you took last year may not work the same this year. The donors who showed up for you in the past may need more convincing now. Be flexible to adapt to the changing behaviors, giving patterns and financial aid that may no longer be available.
By focusing on the most pressing gaps, knowing donors, building strong alliances, acting with a sense of urgency and possessing a clear plan for grant distribution, philanthropy can still make a difference even in a post-government era of funding. Nonprofit executives and philanthropic organizations must stay nimble, flexible and innovative to continue their effectiveness in this new landscape.
To those committed to ensuring the world becomes a better place, these strategies are not just convenient—they are essential. With the right plan, we can ensure the work of stopping poverty, cutting disease and empowering communities is a continued success no matter what challenges come our way.
Forbes Nonprofit Council is an invitation-only organization for chief executives in successful nonprofit organizations. Do I qualify?