We recently reported that roughly $7.5 billion in international affairs funding is set to expire by the end of this month. In a letter, more than 100 U.S. lawmakers have urged the State Department to spend the money. We unpack the situation and what it means for development spending, including the $3 billion previously slated for global health programs.

While some politicians are urging the State Department to spend its expiring budget, Samaritan’s Purse is turning down a $300 million federal grant. The organization’s president, Franklin Graham, maintained that the group has “always relied on God, not government, for funding.” We discuss the potential reasons behind this move, noting that in addition to not being aligned with Samaritan’s Purse’s mission, the money may have been deemed too restrictive and relatively insignificant compared to its $1.8 billion revenue in 2024.

To dig into these stories, and others, Devex Business Editor David Ainsworth sits down with reporters Sara Jerving and Elissa Miolene for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

Check out Humanitarian Frontiers, a member of the Devex Podcast Network:

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In the latest episode of the Theory of Change podcast, Nazanin Ash, CEO of Welcome.US, discussed how community-driven sponsorship could revolutionize refugee resettlement, bypass political gridlock, and offer a scalable alternative to overburdened government systems.

Global forced displacement is at an all-time high, and standard, bureaucratic response models are failing to keep pace. Ash argued that mobilizing local communities rather than relying solely on government aid can unlock massive potential and provide orderly, human-centered pathways for newcomers.

The problem: Traditional global systems are built for short-term, state-versus-state displacement, but modern conflicts — predominantly civil wars — are protracted, lasting decades on average. As a result, massive, unmanaged crises crowd out long-term development funds.

“Civil wars burn forever. They’re really tough to resolve. And our international tools for conflict resolution are really bad at solving them,” Ash said.

By the numbers: By shifting the focus from a government-managed process to direct community sponsorship, Ash said that Welcome.US demonstrated unprecedented scale during recent crises such as the war in Ukraine:

• 800,000 newcomers welcomed by American communities in under three years

• Four times as many individuals resettled through private sponsorship than through formal U.S. government pathways over the same timeframe

• $7 billion in time and money leveraged directly by local sponsors to pay for travel, housing, and integration

• 2 million Americans across 26,000 zip codes participated in sponsoring displaced individuals

“The appetite for doing this is so strong. The capacity to do it is so real,” Ash said.

Unlike formal government systems that assign refugees to fixed locations based on strict physical requirements, Ash said that private matching platforms allow newcomers to exercise choice and retain dignity.

“If you know something about humanitarian crises and forced displacement … what you experience most acutely is the loss of choice and the loss of agency. And of course, nothing about our traditional systems lets you have that choice or agency,” she said.

Meanwhile, community members who sponsored families have become active advocates, filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress, and defeating hundreds of anti-immigrant state bills.

“Proximity changes what you protect,” Ash said.

What to watch: Welcome.US currently operates in the United States, and Ash said the organization has plenty of work on its plate. “But we did purchase the rights to Welcome.world,” she added.

At World Water Week in Stockholm, financing took center stage ahead of the U.N. Water Conference in Abu Dhabi this December. The annual gathering saw around 2,000 participants discuss water governance, security, and the rising pressures of a global water bankruptcy.

However, attracting private investment remains difficult, with water projects often seen as offering low returns and traditionally relying on public funding. This has prompted a renewed focus on the World Bank’s "Water Forward" initiative, which aims to make the sector more attractive to investors.

Meanwhile, the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network conference in New Delhi, India, brought together philanthropists, impact investors, and nonprofits to discuss how the region’s own capital can be mobilized to tackle development challenges instead of relying on traditional foreign aid.

While AVPN attendees looked to local philanthropy to finance areas such as mental health and cervical cancer research, the broader global health sector is facing severe funding pressures. One example is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which faces a more than $100 million funding shortfall for efforts to combat the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

To explore how these financing challenges are playing out across the development sector, Rumbi Chakamba sits down with Tania Karas and Jenny Lei Ravelo for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

Sign up to Devex Impact House @ UNGA 81 here: https://pages.devex.com/devex-at-unga-81.html

What is “country ownership,” really? And what gets in the way of making it a reality?

Against a backdrop of historic cuts to development assistance by many of the world’s largest donors, the chorus of voices calling for national governments to set — and finance — their own development agendas is growing louder.

Yemi Osinbajo, the former vice president of Nigeria and co-chair of the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition, has seen firsthand what happens when international donors and national development priorities are aligned — or not.

Osinbajo joined the Devex Theory of Change podcast to challenge the myths and misconceptions around state capacity, corruption, and international finance.

"Forget about giving cash or aid. Let's focus on systemic changes that can release the resources that African countries need for their development,” Osinbajo says.

That means targeting markets and value chains that currently disadvantage lower-income countries, through systemic partnerships rather than one-off handouts, he says.

It also means being honest about who is complicit in propping up systems that are plagued by corruption, or biased against regions perceived as risky, whether they truly are or not.

What if housing finance could help solve today's biggest challenges? In this special episode, Habitat for Humanity’s Jacqueline Innocent reveals why housing is an upstream catalyst for health, education, and equality — and how inclusive finance can transform global housing systems.

Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, three of the world’s most hunger-prone nations, were removed from the latest reporting by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network — a U.S.-based data and monitoring system which tracks hunger levels across the globe.

The move leaves aid organizations supporting these countries in the dark, even though all three have seen an escalation in humanitarian needs. It’s part and parcel of the Trump administration’s broader posture toward the three nations, which have been virtually cut off from foreign assistance since early 2025.

In Haiti, the Inter-American Development Bank is developing a $44 million agricultural program for smallholder farmers. But Haitian INGOs say that local farmers weren’t consulted about the program design, raising broader questions about the role of communities in project development.

Looking ahead to COP31, the U.N. climate summit faces a critical identity test. The conference must now shift from setting targets to delivering them. But this will be hard to navigate in an era where climate finance, geopolitics, and global trust remain under intense strain.

To discuss these stories and others, Adva Saldinger sits down with Elissa Miolene and Jesse Chase-Lubitz for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

Sign up to Devex Impact House @ UNGA 81 here:

https://pages.devex.com/devex-at-unga-81.html

Twenty-five years ago, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded the impact investing nonprofit Acumen, she still had to prove that markets and entrepreneurship could work for people living in poverty — and help lift them out of it.

In the years since, that has moved from a relatively fringe approach to fighting poverty, to the center of global development efforts. Development finance institutions, philanthropies, and asset managers are all looking for investable opportunities — and speaking the language of impact.

But something else has happened to — or hasn’t happened — Novogratz said on Devex’s Theory of Change podcast. The institutions and individuals who could provide critical “patient capital” in the early, riskier phases when it is most effective, are not jumping in as needed.

For Novogratz, it points to a needed reckoning for a social impact sector that has grown up, but still hasn’t realized its potential.

“The capital that is available, and there's a lot of capital, is too expensive, it’s too risk averse, and as a result, we see a lot of talk and a lot of hand-wringing when we could be structuring that capital under the rubric of impact investing and really creating impact,” she says.

In this episode of This Week in Global Development, Business Editor David Ainsworth sits down with Senior Reporters Michael Igoe and Sara Jerving to discuss the U.S. State Department’s announcement to allocate nearly $2 billion to partnerships with faith-based and community organizations providing global health and humanitarian aid.

It is the largest funding package of its kind in over two decades, and this week’s guests discuss how the move is driven by the U.S. government's belief that faith-based groups are more cost-efficient, with the Trump administration arguing they have the potential to be more financially sustainable in the long term.

This podcast episode explores whether these faith-based partnerships include non-Christian organizations, and whether this new approach will truly maximize impact.

In this week’s special edition episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, sponsored by the International Youth Foundation and the Caterpillar Foundation, we examine how shifting labor markets, automation, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the job landscape, leaving millions of young people out of work even as employers face widespread skill shortages. We’re joined by Christina Sass, president and CEO of IYF, and Asha Varghese, president of the Caterpillar Foundation and head of corporate social responsibility for Caterpillar Inc., to explore why addressing this transition from education to employment is not just a youth issue, but a critical development priority.

The discussion also looks at the power of long-term partnerships in creating systemic, scalable workforce solutions. Highlighting nearly two decades of collaboration through the EquipYouth initiative, and tens of thousands of young people reached, our guests share how combining technical training with essential life skills builds youth agency, resilience, and lasting economic opportunity. The conversation also delves into aligning hiring and training with evolving local and global industry needs, navigating the impacts of AI, and why long-term ecosystem investments outperform short-term grants in achieving sustainable solutions.

For over two decades, the U.S. government has been a lynchpin in the global fight against HIV, pouring billions of dollars into treatment, prevention, and health systems strengthening through initiatives like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

Then came Elon Musk, the foreign aid freeze, and a disruptive set of reforms to U.S. global health programs under President Donald Trump’s “America First” Global Health Strategy. Against the backdrop of this tumultuous moment, the question remains: Was the old framework built to sustain solutions, or merely to sustain itself?

Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR from 2006 to 2009, joined the Theory of Change podcast to deliver a blunt assessment of the legacy and current trajectory of foreign assistance. Reflecting on the evolution of former President George W. Bush’s signature global health initiative, Dybul addressed the sharp criticisms now driving a broader push for reform.

While acknowledging the lifesaving impact of past initiatives, Dybul pointed to a fundamental failure in long-term strategy: The shift toward true local ownership never fully materialized. In Dybul’s view, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency surfaced uneasy truths about how the U.S. government has worked with countries to end the AIDS epidemic — and the opportunities that were missed along the way.

"The diagnosis was correct. That indictment was correct. I mean, to be honest, it turned my stomach that 25 years later we were spending the same amount of money as when I walked out the door. That wasn't the plan."

He also pushed back on projections that PEPFAR funding cuts could cause thousands of deaths, arguing that these underestimate governments’ ability to protect health programs — as well as opportunities for greater efficiency.

As global health systems undergo a rapid overhaul, Dybul argues that the next 12 to 18 months represent a critical window. They must either adapt to a model centered on country sovereignty, local innovation, and mutual economic partnership, or risk watching the entire architecture collapse.