Many funders agree that now is the time to give boldly. Nonprofits are reporting increased demand for services while experiencing reduced revenue from all sources, including more than $60 billion in cuts to overseas development aid. For nonprofits deemed “high risk” before the polycrisis of recent years, it was already difficult to obtain funding; now it is next to impossible. At the same time, the number of organizations and regions in which cross-border philanthropy can flow without facing substantial hurdles decreases daily. Widespread sanctions regimes and new regulations restricting the receipt of foreign funds are effectively cutting off resources to critical causes, and bans in countries that target or criminalize interventions that protect homosexuality, reproductive rights, or refugee status are proliferating. In some countries, unfettered government access to citizen data in the name of national security puts vulnerable communities at risk of persecution, underscoring the urgency of supporting partners in countries with conflict and restrictions on civil spaces.

Nonprofits working under these circumstances of partners in countries with conflict and restrictions on civil spaces face multilayered obstacles, making them either invisible (unable to fundraise openly) or unfundable (unable to meet donor requirements), or both, and the stakes are high. Funders often think of risk in terms of the legal and financial consequences of making a grant—whether it will lead to a fine or penalty, affect their reputation, or fail to meet the requirements of a qualifying distribution. However, as legitimate as compliance risk considerations are for donors, they stand in crass disproportion to the threats confronting grantees in countries with conflict and closing civil spaces. As one funder we spoke with expressed, “All we’re doing is legal compliance—that’s a totally different risk than the risk undertaken by our partners, whose lives are often on the line. Our partners have been jailed and killed.”

We recently interviewed seven private foundations and three public charities that provide funding in obstructive regulatory contexts and that, for the purposes of this article, we anonymize to avoid bringing unwanted scrutiny to them or their grantees. Several give globally to diverse causes, while others focus on specific issues and/or regions. Each funder spoke to the urgency of understanding risk, rather than letting fear drive decision-making. “Foundations have a lot of money, but compared to government funds, it’s actually quite minuscule,” said one large foundation executive, regarding supporting partners in countries with conflict and closing civil spaces. “The money is not the most important value; what’s important is the ability to take risk. Governments don’t have that ability. We can fail in ways that governments can’t.” Another mid-size public charity funder told us, “In this moment, it feels [like] there is a greater risk in not funding. … It’s incumbent upon philanthropy to move resources. That is our job. If we’re not doing that, then what are we doing and why? How can we expect our partners to be efficient and impactful if we can’t ourselves?”

Read the full article about supporting causes under threat by Martha Lackritz-Peltier at Stanford Social Innovation Review.