Dalan Fund’s Crisis Response to the Impact of the US Funding Cuts on Movement-based Organizations in Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central and North Asia.
Background
The US funding freeze and attack on human rights funding ecosystem with its grave impact on the entire Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central and North Asia (CEECCNA), and increased funding of the military while defunding human rights have caused an unprecedented crisis and have jeopardized decades of diligent work of social justice organizers. The current moment has posed an existential question and uncertainty about whether the local regional organizing will sustain and survive.
At Dalan Fund, we work in 16 countries across Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central and North Asia, most of which have lived under authoritarian regimes and shrunk space for civil society, with several regressive laws such as the so-called Foreign Agents laws or Anti-LGBT propaganda laws, etc.
According to the Civicus Monitor, which tracks civic space across the world, there are five major tactics that governments are using to repress the civic space: intimidation, detaining protestors, censorship, protest disruption, and restrictive laws, all of which are deeply disturbing realities in the regions. Based on the latest Civicus Monitor 2024 report, the CEECCNA countries are categorized as follows:
Closed: Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan;
Repressed: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan;
Obstructed: Georgia, Hungary, Ukraine;
Narrowed: Armenia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia.
We are reflective of the vast array of strategies and tactics employed by organizers in rapidly changing and complex political environments.
We believe that strategy is a verb to adapt to the ever-shifting landscape, and we at Dalan, as well as those in the philanthropic sector, need to recalibrate based on the reality we are in. In light of the unfolding crisis in the organizing and funding ecosystems, at Dalan, we have re-strategized to be in tune with the contexts and be of the best service for our communities.
In this spirit, we have developed a participatory crisis response mechanism, Shield Fund, with a mission of shielding democracy, access to human rights, and dignity in CEECCNA in the wake of US funding cuts.
Sense-Making of the Current Moment
In February 2025, we hosted a closed sense-making session and circulated a survey with advisors and grantee partners to better understand the scale and severity of the impact they are facing due to the US funding cuts. The snapshot of the key learnings provides a brief and devastating overview of the impact already experienced by local organizers:
A large number of movement-based organizations are on the verge of shutting down, while there is a significant increase in the scope of work, with a sharp decline in funding availability. A community assessment indicated that:
73% of our community members report their budget losses ranging from 21% to 100%, severely impacting their ability to sustain essential services and operations*;
60% of respondents report severe operational challenges, reduced capacities, loss of staff salaries, and a shift to unpaid labor.
* Since most of them are small organizations and unregistered groups that did not receive direct funding from USAID, the cuts have primarily affected the grants they received from the US embassies and intermediaries funded by the US government.
Contextualizing the US Funding Cuts in CEECCNA Regions
The US, in addition to Dutch, British, and Swedish bilateral funding cuts, and a significant funding landscape shift in human rights philanthropy, has destabilized and disrupted grassroots organizing for human rights, justice, and dignity for all.
While our partners are actively seeking new funding opportunities, they emphasize that due to pre-existing deprioritization of the regions and scarcity of available funding options with increased need and intensified competition, it is extremely difficult to close the funding gap. In the long term, these challenges will have irreversible consequences on the resilience and capacity of groups and organizations.
Shield Fund 2025
Given the severe funding cuts and high need for funding sustainability among our current community of movement partners, the Shield Fund will resource (i) our current grantee partners that are most impacted by the funding cuts, (ii) limited number of new movement partners based on the assessment of the sub-regional landscapes conducted in collaboration with our community members.
