Since January 2025, government cuts to international development assistance have closed clinics, cut jobs, and left communities without care, underscoring the need for global health philanthropy to step up. The toll is mounting: A count in June estimated 124,000 adult and 259,000 child deaths as a result.

Even in a best-case scenario, it will take years for most lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that received outside support to step up their own health funding. Philanthropic capital can’t fill this vacuum. However, US foundations alone hold more than $1.6 trillion, US donor-advised funds hold more than $250 billion, and other major global foundations have multi-billion-dollar war chests. And because so many international aid programs have closed or been cut back, a veritable army of skilled global health workers is at hand. For a sense of size, cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have led to more than 20,000 layoffs in the United States and nearly 240,000 globally. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization deployed a 21 percent budget cut in May 2025, reducing its management team by half and laying off nearly 400 staff as of August 2025.

Recent well-intentioned global health philanthropy efforts to close the funding gap have yet to attract the capital they need to fully operate. For example, the Center for Global Development’s Project Resource Optimization initiative connects private donors to a vetted list of high-impact, former USAID partners. It generated $110 million in funding for various programs as of September 2025, but for comparison, USAID’s congressional appropriation was more than $35 billion in 2024 alone. Another effort, Unlock Aid’s Foreign Aid Bridge Fund, raised $2 million from small donors, but couldn’t garner support from large philanthropic partners and shut down in April 2025.

Two persistent roadblocks stand in the way of efforts like these: 1) philanthropy’s inability to respond quickly to challenges, and 2) funders’ fear of deploying capital without enough information. Surmounting these barriers requires that foundations and other funders set aside traditional tactics and work in new ways. Only by leaning into trust-based philanthropy and recognizing that on-the-ground partners have the knowledge and skillsets to solve their own problems can funders respond in time and increase the pace of progress.

Read the full article about global health philanthropy by Caitlin Orth, Shari Turitz, and Joel Sawady at Stanford Social Innovation Review.