Fundraising Campaigns For Disaster Relief

After 25 years working in this field, we've seen a dismantling of humanitarian infrastructure – in just 8 months: - US cut 83% of USAID programming and merged it with State department  - UK slashed aid by 40% - Belgium and France cut its aid budget by 25% each The human cost?  - 16.8 million pregnant women could lose access to essential services  - 1 million children with severe malnutrition may go untreated yearly - 12-18 million more malaria cases expected annually, with up to 166,000 more deaths each year The human toll is undeniable. As world leaders gather at UNGA next week, this funding collapse calls for bold, structural changes to how humanitarian assistance is organized and delivered. The path forward requires a fundamental restructuring – one that is more agile, tech-enabled and locally-driven. This means: 1️⃣ Directing funding through local responders – only 1.2% of humanitarian funding reaches local organizations despite global promises since 2016 for 25% 2️⃣ Harness technology to maximize impact with fewer resources 3️⃣ UN agencies becoming more open to alternative arrangements like shared services and even mergers I've just shared some thoughts on where the humanitarian sector goes from here. For humanitarian leaders across the ecosystem – from donor institutions to UN agencies to international NGOs – these aren't just abstract budget discussions but life-altering realities. #Impact #Aid #Humanitarian #Leadership #UNGA80

UNHCR is ending 2025 with $1.3 billion less than last year, a 30% workforce reduction, and 185 offices consolidated or closed. Grandi's final briefing confirms what I documented in February: the system isn't slipping, it's snapping. Global humanitarian funding has collapsed 53% in two years - from $43.3 billion in 2022 to $20.3 billion today. The United States alone dropped from $14.1 billion to $3.06 billion. No donor bloc is positioned to replace what's been lost. The system is operating at 26% coverage - the lowest in modern history. Child protection sits at 14%, WASH at 14%, camp coordination at 11%. These aren't funding gaps. These are sector collapses. Geographic tiering reveals brutal prioritization: Ukraine maintains 46% coverage while Honduras gets 10%, Vietnam 5.5%, and the Venezuela regional response 8.4%. Entire contexts are being abandoned based on donor political interest, not humanitarian need. This is not reform - it's retreat. The humanitarian system is reverting to 1990s-era rations and clinics, abandoning everything that required sustained presence: multipurpose cash (20% funded), early recovery (17%), education (21%). The model we spent 20 years building is being dismantled while Geneva talks about efficiency. All the details in Thomas Byrnes must-subscribe (and -read...) newsletter!

When crisis strikes, women don’t wait. They lead. It’s time we fund them. From Haiti to Gaza to Sudan, women-led organisations (WLOs) are among the first, and often the only responders when formal systems collapse. Yet two new ODI Global reports by Megan Daigle and team "How Women Lead" and "Breaking Down the Barriers to Women-Led Responses Amidst the Humanitarian Reset" reveal a stark truth: the humanitarian system is still not built to trust, fund, or follow women’s leadership. Here's what the evidence tells us: 1. Women-led organisations are trusted first responders. They’re embedded in communities, working from crisis to devevlopment, from protection and food security to governance and peacebuilding. They do it all! 2. But they remain underfunded and sidelined. Most receive little to no direct funding. Humanitarian coordination spaces still exclude them from decision-making. 3. A “humanitarian reset” is being discussed but not yet felt. Many WLOs face shrinking funds, bureaucratic hurdles, and token inclusion while rhetoric on localisation grows louder. 4. Intersectional women’s leadership is especially invisible. Groups led by or serving older women, women with disabilities, or LBT women face even higher barriers to access funding and participation. So, what do we do? 1. Fund women-led organisations directly, with flexible, multi-year, core funding that builds institutional strength. 2. Simplify access, slash the bureaucratic red tape that keeps WLOs out of humanitarian financing systems. 3. Make localisation feminist, shift power, not just partnerships. 4. Include intersectional leadership, amplify those furthest from power, closest to the crisis. 5. Hold the system accountable, including meeting the UN’s 15% funding target for gender equality. This isn’t just about inclusion, equality or respect. It’s also about survival and more effective and efficicent humanitarian action for longer term impacts. #Fundwomen #investinwomen #womensrights #womensleadership #genderequality #wps Read the reports: https://lnkd.in/g4cenNyE and https://lnkd.in/gQGZZNuh UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls Women's Peace & Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) Equality Fund United Nations Global Fund for Women Melinda French Gates Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) NEAR (Network for Empowered Aid Response) The Feminist Humanitarian Network UN Women Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade The World Bank Sida European Union Goldman Sachs Pivotal Ventures

Lessons from El Niño: early funding One of the lessons learned from the 2023/2024 El Niño episode is the successful use of pre-arranged funding. Releasing money early helped mitigate the impact of climate shocks on people. I would like to draw attention to two of them: the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the African Risk Capacity (ARC). CERF took a proactive approach to responding to this year's El Niño, building on lessons learned from the 2015/2016 episode, where its allocations were often disbursed when the humanitarian impacts were already being felt. This time, the CERF team worked with climate services, regional partners and country teams to plan allocations as early as July 2023. It disbursed over $73 million in early action. Zimbabwe and Madagascar, for example, received payments in December 2023, helping to fund anticipatory action mechanisms. The ARC's insurance payouts were also particularly effective in getting money out quickly. In Southern Africa, these payouts amounted to more than $62 million in 4 countries, enabling governments and partners to quickly address the consequences of the drought. These two mechanisms are particularly interesting because they helped unlock funds before the worst effects of El Niño were visible and before donors were ready to contribute. This early action approach allowed for the funding of anticipatory actions that prevented food insecurity from worsening too quickly. The only setback is the limited scale of these interventions. For example, anticipatory action in Southern Africa reached only 2 million people. There is scope to strengthen and streamline these tools to maximise their impact. #ClimateStories #ElNiño #AnticipatoryAction OCHA Financing and Partnerships Lisa Doughten African Risk Capacity (ARC) Group Photo: Cash distribution in January 2024 by the World Food Programme. OCHA/ Viviane Rakotoarivony

The LA fires have been devastating to so many. I wanted to share a few reminders about donating in a crisis - especially if you have a DAF: 1️⃣ Don’t wait, give now 🚨 For DAF holders, you’ve already set these assets aside exclusive for giving. Take advantage of this “dry powder” in these moments. 2️⃣ Let them know 🤳 Many DAF holders don’t realize if you make a gift to an organization through your DAF portal, the benefitting organization has no idea it’s coming - and won’t know until the gift arrives 1-4+ weeks later. This means they won’t include your support as they’re budgeting for the rapid response needed in a crisis - and your gift might not even go to use for the reason you gave if the moment passed! To solve this you can try to get ahold of someone at the org, or give through DAFpay, which includes your DAF gift in their online campaigns in real time. Adding to their fundraising total motivates even more giving and includes your gift in their immediate response budget. 3️⃣ Support beyond tax exempt organizations 🧑🧑🧒 These disasters affect thousands of individuals and families in need of all kinds of support. Direct aid is a critical part of the response needed. If you know folks affected, ask them how you can best support. I have friends that lost everything 3 weeks before their first child is due - if you don’t have a personal connection to the area but want to make a more personal gift, I can send you the link to their registry as they try to restock baby supplies that I supported. 4️⃣ Use your DAF on GoFundMe for their crisis response funds 💞 The best part of our partnership with GoFundMe is that DAFpay is enabled for their 501c3 entity (GoFundMe dot org), which creates dedicated funds for crisis events, vets individuals/ families / communities in need, and facilitates direct aid. Their California Wildfires fund is linked below 👇🏼 5️⃣ Talk about your giving 🗣️ We too often have a culture where it seems like boasting when we taking about money, even if it’s donating. I say to heck with that - when you share, there is a massive increase in giving from others. Social proof is an enormous driver. 6️⃣ Scams ❌ I read a piece in the Times about scammers - unfortunately people do take advantage of these moments nefariously. The good news is, if you use a DAF, the DAF Provider diligences every request and only pays out to eligible legitimate organizations. I also put this last because it’s easy to hang on any reason to hesitate with giving - just be sure to give please 🙏🏼 #crisis #fundraising #philanthropy 

Scammers never waste a crisis... In the wake of the devastating Texas floods, fraudulent “relief” sites and peer-to-peer donation links are popping up, many aimed squarely at professionals who handle client funds. If a bad actor tricks just one advisor into wiring money from an operating account, the loss (and reputational hit) can dwarf any market dip. As we’ve seen in past disasters, cybercriminals move fast: cloning legitimate charities, spoofing GoFundMe pages, and spinning up look-alike domains that accept ACH or crypto within hours of the first headlines. Here’s the quick litmus test I share with our RIA clients: (1) Validate the EIN directly on the IRS Charities portal (2) hover over every URL. If it isn’t a .org you recognize, bail Simple, repeatable guardrails beat passion-driven clicks every time. Let’s turn empathy into impact, not incident response. #cybersecurity #TexasFloods #FraudPrevention #AdvisorDefense

Niklas Rieger and I compiled the most comprehensive dataset on humanitarian funding to local and national actors. Topline: turns out, still not much funding goes to LNAs…👇 We just published “The State of International Humanitarian Funding to Local and National Actors” with the Humanitarian Policy Group, coinciding with 10 years on from the Grand Bargain and the commitment to get 25% of funding to local and national actors (LNAs). Full report link here > https://lnkd.in/djMt945G , but some toplines: 🫩 Only 9.5% of humanitarian funding goes directly or indirectly to LNAs. 🧩 This is despite the fact we compiled, not just FTS data, but partnership data from UN agencies – UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, OCHA’s CBPFs, IOM, as well as IFRC’s databank. 🏛️ NGOs were the primary recipients of ‘localised’ funding – but local and national governments are a significant receiver of ‘localised’ funding. 🌐 UN agencies are the top providers of ‘localised’ funding (UNHCR, UNICEF, CBPFs), but Gulf donors are also significant contributors (in different ways). I’ll be honest here – when we first started this paper my initial thought was that we are missing a HUGE chunk of funding flows. We know that reporting to platforms such as FTS and IATI on funding to local and national actors is highly incomplete. I’ve seen figures saying only 2% or 3% goes to LNAs, but they’re often out-of-date and using FTS primarily. So, we thought, maybe if we were able to stitch together this patchwork of UN partner information located in PDF documents or dashboards on random parts of their websites then we would see the volume and percentage jump up. And it did. Just not as much as I initially thought – call me naïve! You can see on both charts that when we include all this other data then both percentage and volumes jump up. In terms of absolute volumes it’s quite stark. In 2021 we capture only $1bn in funding to LNAs, which then jumps threefold to $3.2bn, peaking in 2023 then falling to $3.6bn. But in terms of percentages, we are still at 9.5% direct and indirect - still so far away from the 25% Grand Bargain target. It has always struck me as strange that the sector set itself up to fail - there wasn’t really a good way of measuring the localisation target and what we’ve done is, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive estimate. What we need is better reporting – UN agencies have stepped up their game on transparency but could do it in a, ahem, neater way, donors could give a gentle nudge! INGOs need to start publishing as well, there’s huge underreporting and they really are behind the UN on this front (see Chapter 4 for more details). Side note: we haven’t included 2025 here as some of the UN partner data isn’t released until much later on in the year. BUT, the 2026 Global Humanitarian Assistance report (due to be published next month by ALNAP) will have a preliminary estimate, watch out for that!

The last 48 hours have been incredibly stressful as we watched nonprofits in the US and abroad brace for the potential impacts of federal funding changes. But it's also been heartening to watch critical infrastructure organizations step in and defend nonprofits working on the frontlines. Corporate impact leaders: If this week has taught us anything, it's that this year will be the time for us to show sustained support for our partners by: 1. Having conversations with our partners who may be at risk of losing funding to find out what they need and what we can offer. 2. Considering the deployment of disaster or crisis funding to support them with unrestricted giving so they have the flexibility to use those funds as needed over the next few years. The level of agility that will be required to respond to changes can't be understated. 3. Supporting our nonprofits with skills, especially in the areas of pro-bono legal support, financial forecasting, marketing/PR/crisis comms. 4. Running employee fundraising campaigns (maybe with extra matching dollars!), either for infrastructure organizations who will be supporting the sector in the near-term, or for your nonprofit partners who are at risk. 5. Communicating the nature and risks of these issues to your business partners internally so they can be part of the solution and you can mobilize faster when needed. CSR and nonprofit folks: what else can/should we be doing? Please add your thoughts or links to resources and people we should follow so we can coalesce around these issues and fortify the organizations who provide support to our most vulnerable populations. The teams at Benevity are working across all parts of our ecosystem – clients, nonprofits, and partners – to listen, engage and enable action. Although the immediate issue has passed, there is much work to do to strengthen our sector for the future. Please reach out if there's anything we can do to help! We are listening... #SocialImpact #Nonprofit #CorporateSocialResponsibility #DiversityEquityInclusion

Let’s talk about the real crisis nobody wants to admit: One funding source controlling too much of your survival. Grants. One major donor. One corporate partner. One government program. It feels safe. Until it isn’t. When that single pillar cracks, the whole organization shakes. The strongest nonprofits I’m seeing right now are doing something radical: They’re intentionally making themselves harder to kill. Not by “raising more money.” By building funding ecosystems. Here’s what that actually looks like: • 5 to 10 revenue streams instead of 1 or 2 • No single donor over 15% of total budget • Paid offerings alongside philanthropy • Partnerships designed for long term value, not one time checks • Communities that give monthly, not campaigns that spike once a year Meanwhile… Most nonprofits are still celebrating landing one big grant like it solved everything. (It usually just increased their risk.) In business, relying on one customer is considered reckless. In nonprofits, we call it “success.” The future of nonprofit sustainability won’t belong to the best fundraisers. It will belong to the best architects of diversified revenue. Those who treat funding like a portfolio, not a lottery ticket. If losing one donor could shut you down, you don’t have a funding strategy. You have a vulnerability. And vulnerabilities don’t survive pressure cycles. The organizations that thrive from here on out will be the ones who stop chasing money… …and start engineering resilience. Curious: How diversified is your nonprofit’s funding today (honestly)? One stream? Three? Five+? With purpose and impact, Mario

90% of Instagram accounts seeking donations for the Assam floods are either fake or suspicious. Most people who are donating have no idea. This is not new. During Cyclone Amphan, thousands of Indians sent money to fake relief accounts created using forged IDs and random UPI numbers, and the money never reached a single flood victim. In 2025, Indians lost an estimated ₹22,495 crore to cyber fraud; fake donation campaigns alone account for a significant chunk of that every year. Scammers don't wait; fake accounts go live within hours of a catastrophe, when emotions are high, and verification instincts are low. What they are doing is criminal under Indian law. Section 318 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, cheating by creating a false impression, carries up to 7 years' imprisonment, and Section 66D of the IT Act, cheating by personation using a computer resource, adds another 3 years on top. The law is clear; enforcement at the speed of Instagram is not. Three things to do before donating online. Verify the organisation has a valid registration under the Societies Registration Act, donate only to accounts registered under the organisation's legal name and not personal UPI IDs, and use official government portals like PM CARES or the Chief Minister's Relief Fund where accountability actually exists. The law will catch up with them eventually, but by then the money is gone, and the damage is done. How many of us actually verify before we donate?