Unnamed donor responds to global aid cuts with a record gift for Americares nonprofit

NEW YORK — A major American aid group is promising to deliver more medicines in high-need areas around the world after receiving its largest-ever donation.

Americares, a nonprofit that supports thousands of health centers globally, announced a $50-million gift Wednesday from an unidentified Connecticut family. The contribution represents an unusual expansion at a time when the United States’ sudden aid cuts have hamstrung programs from maternal and child health to HIV treatment and prevention.

“They definitely understood the moment and wanted to do more to respond to that,” Christine Squires, chief executive of Americares, said of the donor.

Individual philanthropists and charitable foundations have sought to plug some funding holes in the 18 months since President Trump upended the U.S. Agency for International Development. A British billionaire funded nutritional peanut paste. Former USAID employees raised more than $125 million to buoy dozens of critical aid programs. The Gates Foundation narrowed its priorities.

Of all USAID targets, global health has received much of the attention from big donors, according to Susan Appe, a University at Albany professor of public administration and policy, who has researched how nonprofits deal with the changing whims of donor countries. That’s reasonable, she said, considering “lives are on the line.” Jeff Bezos’ parents, for example, committed up to $500 million last March for UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Fund.

Experts agree that high-net-worth donors could never save every program lost due to the billions of dollars cut from U.S. spending on global health. But there was an expectation that more philanthropists would step up to support the causes advanced by USAID.

“I think that a lot of philanthropy scholars like myself have been a bit disappointed with the lag of response,” Appe said. “It’s kind of, to some degree, business as usual.”

Americares, which Squires said had received about 10% of its funding from the U.S. government before the aid cuts, certainly felt the impact. Among their efforts that lost support last year was a maternal care project in Tanzania. Colombian medical clinics serving Venezuelan migrants closed after private funders kept them afloat for several months. A planned five-year collaboration to build a more robust medical supply chain across Gaza had to be scrapped.

Squires considers the group fortunate to have a robust-enough network that it now receives all of its funding from a mix of individual donors, corporations and private foundations. That’s important as the group responds to more than 20 emergencies, including the Nepal floods and Congo’s Ebola outbreak.

In this particular case, Squires said the donor’s family has been involved with Americares for 30 years. They’re “very savvy” in their understanding of global health, she said.

Half of the new gift will power its goal to help 100 million people access quality healthcare by 2030 “in a time when that need is increasing,” according to Squires. That work involves providing additional medical supplies to its network of more than 4,000 health centers. Efforts will focus on countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Latin America that lack funding and awareness. Americares also plans to increase support for U.S. health centers in states where more residents are expected to go without health insurance.

The other half will go toward Americares’ endowment, Squires said. She hopes news of the record donation will inspire others. Investments of that size show “there are people who trust,” she said, in both Americares and the humanitarian sector overall.

“It’s not only up to individuals,” she said. “However, individuals who have the means, who have the passion and can invest like this, will help to bring others along. So, I’m excited and hopeful that this will spark more giving across the board.”

Pollard writes for the Associated Press.