The recent “When Aid Fades” report by the Global Democracy Coalition serves as a stark reminder that funding cuts to civil society aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They represent a systematic weakening of the global democracy ecosystem—one that has stripped protections from human rights defenders, undermined independent media, and emboldened authoritarian regimes that now operate with fewer external checks on repression.

Understanding the Scale of the Crisis

At Accountability Lab, our Global Aid Freeze Tracker has captured the human dimension of this shock. What began as a quick snapshot for our community evolved into a comprehensive survey including hundreds of organizations worldwide. The findings are sobering: early data showed that about half of respondents had less than three months of operating reserves, and subsequent rounds have confirmed these alarming trends.

When we layer the “When Aid Fades” report alongside our Global Aid Freeze data, a consistent picture emerges. This isn’t a marginal correction in aid flows—it’s a systemic shock threatening the foundation of global democracy support.

The View from Two Worlds

Accountability Lab operates as a global, “translocal” network dedicated to making governance work for people by supporting active citizens, responsible leaders, and accountable institutions. This positions us uniquely in two worlds: we’re both an implementing partner experiencing cuts firsthand and a connector between donors and local civic actors. This dual perspective reveals uncomfortable truths about the current moment.

Business-as-usual in democracy support is over. The model built around large, centralized U.S. government instruments—heavily projectized and compliance-driven—simply cannot survive in a world where that pillar can disappear in three months. Our data shows that organizations with diversified, flexible funding and smaller overheads are weathering this crisis better than those built entirely around single large contracts.

Introducing Civic Strength Partners

We need to think much more seriously about ethical transitions. Not every organization will survive this shock, and “resilience” cannot become code for asking exhausted colleagues to do more with nothing. That’s precisely why we helped launch Civic Strength Partners.

Civic Strength Partners is a new collaboration between Accountability Lab, Development Gateway: an IREX Venture, and Digital Public. It functions as a partnership-matching and support network for civil society and social change organizations navigating major transitions—whether restructuring, mergers, or, in some cases, winding down.

The initiative provides resources, professional services, and infrastructure to help organizations protect what matters most: their people, their data and intellectual property, their relationships and legacy. This might mean triage support for managing abrupt funding loss, exploring mergers with like-minded organizations rather than closing, or expert guidance to safely archive sensitive digital assets when programs must end.

What We’re Learning

Early engagements across geographies and organizational types have revealed consistent patterns:

Decisions are being made without the full picture. Under pressure, organizations act before alignment, data, or relationships are in place.

Human dynamics are undervalued. Change plans often overlook trust, shifting identities, behavior change, and emotion—the real levers of endurance.

Expertise and infrastructure exist but rarely connect. This creates duplication and fatigue when resources are already scarce.

Adaptation is misunderstood. Change is too often treated as failure rather than evidence of resilience.

A Way Forward: Four Key Ideas

1. Treat Civic Infrastructure as Essential Infrastructure

The report makes this abundantly clear: weakening civil society and independent media isn’t a side effect of funding cuts—it’s a core impact with long-term consequences for stability and development. Democracy support must be reframed not as “nice to have” after meeting basic needs, but as one of the basics itself.

This cannot be the work of democracy, rights, and governance-focused civil society organizations alone. Strong civic infrastructure is everybody’s business. We need meaningful engagement from the private sector (rule of law, freedom of movement, speech, and assembly are critical for business too) and the public sector, particularly the professional civil service.

2. Rebalance and Reimagine Power and Resources

While large U.S. government grants were helpful for scale, they came with bureaucratic burdens that limited the pool of eligible applicants and discouraged cross-donor and cross-organizational collaboration outside formal grant structures.

We now have the opportunity to take a new path. The data shows that direct, flexible, multi-year support is critical. We need to prioritize a non-duplicative, “elbows down” system that values collaboration among doers, thinkers, and those able to manage complex financial systems. We also need organizations that weave together language, skills, evidence, and peer-learning models between these groups.

3. Build an Ecosystem of Transitions, Not Just Grants

If we accept that some organizations will merge, transform, or close, we need services like Civic Strength Partners—and equivalents in other regions—to make those processes humane, strategic, and protective of hard-won knowledge.

Through the reimagining that has happened this year, we’ve developed solid ideas about what the future of the field looks like. There are organizations across the ecosystem that have been doing critical work in these areas for decades. Let’s find them and ensure they don’t disappear, so we don’t need to relearn what they already know. Our new campaign, Civil Society Wayfinder, is a LinkedIn campaign that aims to find and fund these doers.

4. Use Evidence to Argue for a New Settlement on Democracy Funding

The aid freeze has generated a wave of data: “When Aid Fades,” the Global Aid Freeze Tracker, humanitarian impact studies, and more. Together, they make the case that abrupt, politicized cuts are not just morally costly—they’re also deeply inefficient. Reinvesting in democratic governance, accountability, and civic space is one of the most cost-effective approaches for long-term peace and development.

Moving Forward

When aid fades, democracy does not have to fade with it. But this requires us to listen to what the data is telling us and center the experiences of local partners. Only then can we create conditions that allow organizations not only to survive this moment but to shape what comes next.

The challenge before us is clear. The question is whether we have the courage and creativity to meet it.

*This article was adapted from a speech to GDC partners to launch the report in November.

Jean Scrimgeour