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Emily Belz
The news comes as the State Department responds to flooding in Nepal.
World Vision CEO Edgar Sandoval speaks at the White House announcement of funding for Christian aid groups.
Samaritan’s Purse Declines $300 Million Federal Contract for Disaster Response
After Aid Cuts, US Announces $2 Billion for Christian Groups
Samaritan’s Purse told CT it is withdrawing from a $300 million award from the Trump administration to provide aid after natural disasters.
The money was part of $2 billion in awards the US State Department announced earlier this month for a consortium of Christian groups working in global relief and development.
Of that funding, $538 million was set aside for Christian organizations responding to natural disasters. World Vision and Compassion International will oversee $238 million for one year of disaster response. North Carolina–based Samaritan’s Purse would have overseen $300 million to provide “immediate life-saving assistance to people affected by natural disasters and sustain humanitarian operations in protracted emergencies” over two years, a State Department spokesperson told CT on August 10.
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Samaritan’s Purse CEO Franklin Graham said on Friday in a statement to CT,
Samaritan’s Purse was invited by the US Department of State to participate in a recently announced macro grant funding agreement of $300 million over two years. We were honored to be a part of this proposal. While we deeply appreciate the confidence that the State Department has placed in Samaritan’s Purse, after prayer and discussion, we have withdrawn from being a recipient of these funds.
Throughout my history leading Samaritan’s Purse, we have always relied on God, not government, for funding. We thank God for the incredible donors he has led to be a part of upholding this ministry. As we have done for decades, we will continue sharing the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—his death, burial, resurrection, and coming return—always responding to crises in Jesus’ Name.
We are grateful for our working relationship with the State Department and will continue to be available to partner with the US government in response to emergencies, just not through this macro grant program. I am thankful for the changes President Trump has made to America’s foreign aid program and appreciate the tremendous efforts Secretary of State Marco Rubio has put into this. I’m grateful that the US government remains the global leader in providing life-saving aid around the world.
The announcement comes as the government is responding to a major disaster in Nepal. The State Department said this week it will provide $500,000 in assistance through Catholic Relief Services, which is also part of the new Christian aid consortium.
Samaritan’s Purse is a $1.8 billion nonprofit specializing in disaster relief both overseas and domestically, responding to Hurricane Helene in its own backyard, for example.
Since 2020, Samaritan’s Purse has received about $220 million in federal contracts, mostly through USAID.
This year it has already received federal contracts to respond to the Ebola outbreak in Congo ($3 million), the Venezuela earthquakes ($15 million), violence in Lebanon ($10 million), and the humanitarian crisis in Cuba ($40 million).
Those are separate from the proposed $300 million award.
After making deep cuts in global health, food assistance, and other foreign aid based on allegations of fraud and abuse in USAID, the Trump administration announced $2 billion in humanitarian-aid funding for faith-based groups, with a consortium of US Christian organizations overseeing $1.4 billion.
World Vision will oversee one US-funded consortium providing health services and will co-lead another doing disaster relief with Compassion International and the Accord Network. Samaritan’s Purse has a separate $300 million award over two years for natural disaster response and other humanitarian responses to “protracted emergencies,” according to a State Department email to CT. Another pot of $570 million in funding will go to local faith-based hospitals and clinics through countries’ own infrastructure.
Margaret Schuler, the chief impact officer at World Vision, has worked on this consortium idea behind the scenes with the administration for the past year.
“Our number one interest from the beginning was to get resources flowing back out to communities that need it,” she told CT. “It was hard to see those resources stop.”
Other members of the consortium are World Relief, ADRA International, Catholic Relief Services, HOPE worldwide, International Care Ministries, and LifeNet International. Compassion International will work in both the health and disaster relief groups. The State Department had separately announced $240 million in funding for Catholic Relief Services earlier this summer.
Representatives from the Christian organizations involved said this funding would not replace programs hit by USAID cuts but would go to new channels.
For example, World Vision’s US-government funded work with orphans and vulnerable children in Kenya was cut last year and has not been restored, Schuler said. The new funding will reach populations affected by the cuts, but “there are not programs we cut that are now going to be funded again.”
“It’s an evolving funding approach by [the State Department],” she said.
In general, Christians working in relief and development welcomed the news as a turnaround from the USAID cuts last year that affected many faith-based organizations. But privately, they brought up a variety of questions about how this will be worked out.
The State Department said this new funding “represents the largest announcement of global health foreign assistance to faith-based organizations in over 20 years.”
A large portion of this newly released funding would be spread over five years, so it’s not clear whether the amount is actually larger than the grants Christian organizations were already receiving before the shuttering of USAID. Catholic Relief Services, for example, had about $700 million in federal grants in 2024, before the closure of USAID wiped that out.
Of the $2 billion in this new initiative, $1.4 billion will go to health care, mostly in Africa.
That includes an $850 million pot of funding over five years that could go to a World Vision–led consortium called the Faith and Community Initiative. The money will be awarded one year at a time, pending availability of funds, according to the State Department, so for now World Vision will oversee the first year’s award for $250 million.
Then $538 million will go to Christian groups leading mostly disaster response but also the provision of food and clean water in areas of crisis. Of that, $238 million will go to World Vision and Compassion for one year, according to a State Department spokesperson.
Another $570 million will go to faith-based hospitals and clinics through memorandums of understanding (MOUs) that the US has been working on with local governments. The MOUs are a new aid structure where the US agrees to give money directly to a country’s government instead of contracting with charities. Kenya signed a $2.5 billion MOU with the US late last year.
Though the funding is going to all Christian organizations, Schuler said World Vision will work with on-the-ground partners of any faith.
“This grant aims to work with any partner in any location, whether Christian or Muslim whatever their faith-based affiliation is, and to serve all people regardless of faith,” she said.
This announcement is happening against a backdrop of aid groups fighting to unfreeze already appropriated global-health money, particularly for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which treats millions with HIV around the world.
Last year Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, withheld $3 billion from PEPFAR. Sen. John Cornyn recently placed a hold on two of President Donald Trump’s nominees until the administration agreed to release PEPFAR funds. One mission hospital has seen a 50 percent cut in its PEPFAR funding.
Christian nonprofits like World Vision lost a lot of aid funding overall last year.
World Vision CEO Edgar Sandoval told CT last year that the charity expected to lose $170 million, or 10 percent of its annual budget, after the Trump administration cuts. He said the organization had laid off 11 percent of its US staff.
“What makes these cuts very challenging is that we’re not talking about, call it, one-off programs, like installing a water well or a clinic. We’re talking about massive programs at scale,” Sandoval told CT in July 2025. “Replacing that funding doesn’t happen overnight.”
In this new initiative, some groups might receive more funding than previously—Samaritan’s Purse, for example, is one of the lead recipients for the $538 million disaster response fund and previously received about $19 million in grants in 2024.
The White House held a private event last week announcing the funding, with remarks from White House Faith Office leader Paula White-Cain about the Christian calling to serve “the last, the least, and the lost.”
According to her prepared remarks, provided to CT by an attendee, White-Cain cited the long leadership of the United States in fighting malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV—through PEPFAR. She also cited the US funding for programs to address malnutrition and to vaccinate children.
“That’s 108 million more birthdays every year worldwide because of our commitment and generosity,” White-Cain said about the HIV and malaria program.
Last year Trump administration leaders and Trump himself characterized USAID’s work as fraudulent. Then–Trump ally Elon Musk, who bragged about feeding the organization “into the wood chipper,” said it was “beyond repair.”
This year the State Department’s press release about the Christian nonprofits highlighted that “Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, and Compassion International exemplify the Administration’s commitment to partnering with faith-based and community organizations that responsibly steward taxpayer dollars.”
While the prime grant recipients are large nonprofits like World Vision, smaller faith-based groups might receive some funding as sub-grantees.
Mary Beth Powers, CEO of the Catholic Medical Mission Board, attended the White House announcement although her group is not part of the consortium.
“It’s such an important statement to continue this work globally … showing the compassion America has long shown,” Powers said. She hopes the groups can recreate some of the work USAID did with faith-based partners before it was shuttered.
Powers added, “I’m happy World Vision and others are taking a leadership role with local faith-based groups.”
Christian Connections for International Health is another significant faith-based organization that is not part of the consortium but partners with many local Christian health institutions globally. Executive director Doug Fountain said the organization appreciated the “US government’s recognition of faith-based organizations as essential partners in global health and humanitarian response.”
“We are especially encouraged by the emphasis on local organizations and by the broader commitment to partnership with country governments,” he said in a statement to CT.
Kent Hill, a former top official at USAID who also used to work at World Vision, welcomed the news.
“Apparently, the administration is trying to resurrect some of the good USAID did before its harsh and very unwise dismantling of it,” he wrote in an email. “The needs are great and a great and good country would generously seek to meet those needs.”
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