The Results Are In: Reimagining America's Global Engagement

More than 600 people voted at ReimagineAid.org. Here's what they said they want for the future of U.S. international assistance.

Dear Unlock Aid community,

Today we closed voting for our ReimagineAid.org platform.

Over 600 people weighed in, alongside an invited panel of more than 20 experts from across a number of sectors and communities, including philanthropy, science and technology, global health, investing, and more. We asked what ideas they wanted to see the United States prioritize as policymakers consider the future of U.S. international assistance.

Here’s what they said:

What the People Want: The Top Five Ideas

We asked the general public to vote for the top ideas they thought would have the biggest impact out of 14 proposals presented. Each voter was invited to choose their 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices.

The top vote-receiving ideas included:

Launch a 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. Once successful in health, replicate to other sectors and geographies.

Launch a Strategic Direct Cash Transfer Initiative
Transform U.S. humanitarian and development assistance by making direct cash transfers a core strategy rather than a marginal component. The initiative would consolidate smaller emergency payments into larger, strategic investments that enable recipient families to move from survival to self-reliance, while leveraging digital payment infrastructure for unprecedented transparency, efficiency, and local economic stimulus.

Invest in Community Health Forces: Saving Lives While Creating Jobs
Invest in professional Community Health Workers as a cornerstone of American foreign health assistance.

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, disease surveillance, food security– rather than setting priorities from Washington and hiring third-party contractors to perform work on countries’ behalf.

Create the Breakthrough Fund: Three-Tier (Pilot to Scale) Innovation Financing
Establish a tiered fund (seed → growth → scale) for breakthrough technological and evidence-backed solutions in food security, global health, and other critical sectors, accelerating pilot to scale without bureaucratic delays.

Expert Insights: The Top Endorsed Ideas

We also convened a panel of more than 20 experts who brought deeper analysis to a longer list of 31 proposals. Each expert was asked to rate each proposal against a 1-7 scale, from low endorsement (1) to high endorsement (7).

The top vote-receiving proposals included:

Click here to see the full results for all 31 evaluated proposals.

Thank you to our experts:

Why This Matters Now

The timing for big ideas couldn't be more critical – or needed. Washington, DC is stuck in a counterproductive cycle about whether to cut or save U.S. international assistance. The way to break through this debate is to articulate what a bolder, more 21st-century approach can and should look like.

Make no mistake about it: the Trump Administration's abrupt canceling of U.S. international assistance has put millions of lives at risk, including Americans, a point we’ve made repeatedly. Its unilateral dissolution of foreign affairs agencies, as well as the abrupt terminations of thousands of employees, locally-employed staff, and partners without Congress’ consent also creates serious constitutional questions, uproots the lives of people who have dedicated their careers to public service, and dismantles the infrastructure America needs to execute effective foreign policy.

That’s why we’ve called on Secretary Marco Rubio to immediately restore funding for life-saving programs, using funds already approved by Congress, and to rapidly put in place the systems and personnel needed to successfully run them. But we’ve also called on the Administration, when it does restart U.S. international assistance, to do aid differently.

Because here’s what’s also true: America’s foreign aid system was also long overdue for transformation. That millions of lives could suddenly be put in jeopardy because of the sudden, shifting winds of Washington, DC is itself an indictment of a system that promised self-reliance but instead too often put America at the center of other countries’ development. Recent administrations have promised big changes but instead too often delivered mostly incremental tweaks, confusing good intentions with durable results.

The way through this stuck debate is to fight for a future where America does engage productively and proactively with the rest of the world – but in new ways: as a partner and not as a patron, in ways that are mutually beneficial for America and for its partners, and by building a new system that's better than what we had.

Many policymakers, especially many of our allies in Congress, are open to this vision. They want to know what people outside of the Washington, DC Beltway think. They also need the ideas and the backing from the American people to make a new and better system a reality. It's on all of us to shape what comes next.

The Origins of ReimagineAid.org

We founded Unlock Aid three years ago to transform U.S. international assistance, developing our initial agenda around the needs of social entrepreneurs who told us about the barriers that kept them from working more closely with our public institutions – and who also volunteered ideas on ways to fix them.

In August 2022, we convened 75 of the world's leading social innovators in Mexico City to ask, "If you had $500 million to solve one or more global issue, how would you spend it?", resulting in more than a dozen “moonshot” proposals to solve the world’s biggest challenges.

Two years ago, in 2023, we went on a 6-month listening tour to ask hundreds of people in the United States and around the world a simple yet important question: "If we could start over, how would you redesign America’s approach to global development?", resulting in concrete proposals for lawmakers to act upon.

The ideas on ReimagineAid.org include dozens of the proposals we heard through thousands of these conversations, updated to meet today's political realities. It also includes about a dozen additional proposals submitted to us by outside groups since we first announced this initiative. ReimagineAid.org was set up to be a participatory platform to source, vet, and evangelize great ideas, no matter where they originated.

What Happens Next?

Today, we're sharing these results with officials in the Trump Administration, Congress, and the media. These ideas represent not just the vision of Unlock Aid, but the collective wisdom of hundreds of people committed to a more effective approach to America’s engagement with the rest of the world.

In the coming days, we'll share more about what comes next, including how we’re updating our top asks to policymakers based on what we’ve learned.

We’ll also keep pushing hard for Secretary Rubio to immediately restore funding for life-saving programs – but to do aid differently. The Administration took down a system with record speed. Now it needs to rebuild with the same urgency.

Join Us on April 30th in Washington, DC

Now is your chance to get involved. On April 30, we're taking our message directly to lawmakers in Washington, DC. Click here to join us to make your voice heard.

This isn't just about preserving U.S. international assistance – it's about transforming our system. It's about building the kind of global engagement that America needs for the 21st century: one that is more results-driven, more innovative, more focused on genuine partnerships and that builds self-reliance.

The status quo wasn’t working. But cutting everything isn't the answer, either. It's time for something better – the #AidWeWant.

To Progress,
Unlock Aid

P.S. Visit ReimagineAid.org to see the full list of votes, results, and learn more about our panel of experts.