Reimagining U.S. International Assistance for the 21st Century

Join us in voting on bold proposals to transform how America engages with the world

Dear Unlock Aid community,

Two years ago, we embarked on a six-month listening tour, speaking with hundreds of people and communities across America and around the world. We asked a simple but essential question: If the U.S. could start over, how would we redesign our approach to foreign aid?

Today, that question isn’t hypothetical—it’s before us. The Administration’s 90-day review of U.S. foreign assistance is underway, set to conclude by April 20, and the decisions made over the next few weeks will define how the United States shows up in the world for years to come.

As the New York Times said in their Saturday print edition of the paper: “Those who care about the world and America’s role in it need to create a new vision for what foreign aid could be.” We can’t just return to the system that was. America’s aid system was built for a different era. It’s time for a new way.

Recently, we launched our #AidWeWant campaign, proposing a new standard for America’s engagement with the world grounded in clear principles. On Sunday, we called on Secretary Rubio in the Miami Herald to release $1 billion in life-saving health funding — but to deliver aid differently: focusing on paying for measurable results, directly supporting frontline providers, and embedding local transition plans from the outset. There are frontline organizations around the world that are ready to deliver on the basis of results in days and weeks – not months and years.

Today, we’re sharing an expanded set of ideas drawn from our 2023 listening tour and updated to meet today’s political realities. We invite you to review these proposals, or let us know what we’re missing. Next week, we’re launching an online voting platform to let you vote on the ones that you think will make the biggest impact.

Take an early look at the ideas. Click here to receive an invitation to vote or submit your own ideas by March 30.

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What Are We Proposing?

A Snapshot of Our Proposals

Next week, we’ll introduce an interactive platform featuring about 20-25 ideas to transform how America engages the rest of the world. Here’s a preview of just four:

1. Deploy Already-Approved Funds to Launch a $1B Pay-for-Results Health Fund: Stop Threats Before They Reach America
   Immediately reinstate U.S. funding for critical humanitarian and global health programs targeting HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, polio, Ebola, Mpox, and other infectious diseases to proactively stop health threats before they reach U.S. borders – but do aid differently. Pay frontline actors on the basis of results and bake-in self-reliance from the start.
   Time to launch: Immediately
   

2. Enable Americans to Co-Invest in Development
   Enable everyday Americans—especially diaspora communities—to invest alongside the U.S. government in vetted ventures and other initiatives, shifting beyond simple “remittances” to strategic co-investment.
   Time to launch: Within 12 months
   

3. Create a “Menu” of Win-Win Options Good for Partner Nations, Good for America
   Reinvent the U.S.-partner country relationship by offering partner nations a “menu” of high-impact opportunities in sectors that benefit both the United States and the partner nation— e.g. critical infrastructure, energy, disease surveillance, food security– rather than setting priorities from Washington and hiring third-party contractors to perform work on countries’ behalf.
   Time to launch: Within 12 months
   

4. Make Innovation America’s Calling Card: Accelerating Science, Technology, and Innovation for Mutual Advancement
   Make innovation America’s calling card by creating a Global Innovation Office to serve as a single, agile "one-stop shop" for innovators, industry, and academia to: deploy “Operation Warp Speed”-like advanced market commitments in new medicines and other discoveries, manage an innovation frontier fund to provide tiered seed-to-scale funding for new and proven approaches; link U.S. investments with fast-growing innovation hubs around the world; and identify solutions developed abroad that can be brought back home to benefit Americans.
   Time to launch: Within 12 months

Click here to preview an initial list of ideas for voting.

Note: Our proposals focus primarily on stable contexts. We aren’t proposing one-size-fits-all solutions, nor do we delve deeply into acute humanitarian response scenarios, especially fragile environments, or democracy and governance issues, areas outside Unlock Aid’s traditional focus. Our goal is to propose solutions that move “beyond aid” how the United States engages the rest of the world. Implicit in these proposals is that the U.S. government has the requisite staff and infrastructure to implement these recommendations.

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Why are we doing this?

It’s time to move past the stalemate.

For decades, the foreign aid debate has been trapped between critics who want it eliminated and defenders who protect the status quo. Our polling shows that Americans generally support U.S. international assistance—if it delivers clear results and aligns with U.S. interests.

This moment offers a genuine opportunity to transcend the false “cut versus save” debate by showcasing what a new, 21st-century model of U.S. global engagement can achieve. Americans are inspired by new solutions, not outdated systems. We need bold ideas that benefit communities worldwide and that provide clear returns for the American taxpayers who fund them.

We can't simply call for a return to previous approaches, either. After decades of spending in largely the same ways, U.S. foreign aid has become the primary funder for essential services in many communities around the world, making it a single point of failure for too many countries, their health systems, and other vital services. This leaves millions vulnerable to the shifting political winds in Washington, DC.

Failure to invest more directly in frontline actors weakens countries' self-reliance, reduces cost-effectiveness, and stymies local market growth. Instead, America needs a bold new approach that that pays more than lip service to self-reliance, and that brings real, tangible benefits for Americans and our partners.

Signs of momentum for change

Here's the good news: change is possible. What appears to be a leaked State Department memo suggests the Administration is considering reforms that closely track with many of our past recommendations. Here are just a few examples:

There are a number of other positive recommendations as well, including:

• Continuing investments in key areas like health, food security, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response

• Making spending in technology and innovation, along with energy, infrastructure, and trade and investment a major feature of the Development Finance Corporation

• Addressing long-standing procurement barriers and accepting the due diligence performed by other donors to bring down barriers of entry to work with new partners

The memo does not make recommendations about funding amounts and notes that many proposals will require Congressional approval, especially those to merge agencies.

It also leaves out areas where we’d like to see more focus, such as: continued commitments to robustly fund highly-effective global health agencies such as Gavi and the Global Fund (although with reforms to improve how these agencies work), evidence-based innovation programs, commitments to use evidence about what works to inform decision making, and to use funding already approved by Congress to immediately restart life-saving programs – but to do aid in a new way.

However, if this memo accurately reflects potential future policies, the memo signals that, with continued advocacy, this 90-day review could produce a number of positive structural recommendations. But we need to keep pushing the Administration and Congress to shape as best a final result as possible.

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How Can I Vote?

Your voice matters.

We want to propose solutions to the Administration and to Congress that are so compelling they can’t be ignored.

That’s why, starting on April 1, we’re inviting a select group of 15–25 experts from a variety of backgrounds to review and evaluate these proposals in depth. We’re also opening the voting process to the broader public, and soliciting ideas we’ve not yet considered. Just make sure to get those ideas to us before we open voting.

Your insights will help us to put forward proposals that are both good for America’s partners and for the United States.

Preview the proposals, or register to vote or submit your ideas.

Now is the moment to unite behind fresh thinking and bold action—let’s break beyond the stale debate of “cut versus save” foreign aid and reimagine how America engages the world.

To Progress,
Unlock Aid