Navigating Effectiveness vs. Accountability in Humanitarian Organizations

The two recent interviews highlight vast differences in the level of understanding about what makes aid effective.

I am Ashley Ross and since finding myself out of work due to my USAID contract’s termination, I’ve been cautious about wading into the U.S. foreign assistance debate.

But I miss the work of untangling analyses and clarifying concepts, a core part of my previous role. I couldn’t resist analyzing two recent podcast episodes on U.S. foreign assistance.

• Ross Douthat’s NYT interview with Jeremy Lewin, a DOGE official involved in dismantling USAID, now overseeing what remains of the Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) portfolio at the State Department.

• Santi Ruiz’s Statecraft interview with Dean Karlan, USAID’s former Chief Economist

Taken together, the episodes reflect different understandings on three key questions:

• What foreign aid is for?

• How should it be delivered?

• What constitutes fraud?

These questions are often conflated in critiques of aid, but they need to be addressed separately if we’re serious about reform.

1. What priorities should foreign aid address?

After being repeatedly pressed to articulate the new priorities for U.S. foreign assistance, Lewin ultimately says that Trump and Rubio will continue to define what those priorities are in the coming years.

Still, he’s clear: foreign aid should serve American economic, diplomatic, and security interests. Countries should act in their own interest, and the U.S. should do the same.

Lewin does acknowledge a place for humanitarian assistance, particularly in “high-impact” areas like PEPFAR and maternal health, but warns against trying to solve every global problem or investing where returns are unclear.

Given that what remains of DRL now reports to him, it’s worth noting that Lewin says there may be times the U.S. calls out infringements of individual rights, but we should not promote what he calls “collective rights” advanced by the UN.

(Personally, I’m not sure how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn’t about individual rights…)

Lewin defends DOGE’s act-fast approach with USAID, arguing that the short-term “ill effects” were worthwhile for the long-term goal of “significantly realigning foreign policy and foreign assistance for the American people” over the next 30 to 40 years. But without bipartisan agreement beyond the executive branch, no administration can deliver lasting realignment.

At the end of his interview, Karlan makes this pragmatic case: we need bipartisan consensus on core priorities that are not reinvented every four years. Without agreement on durable priorities, no institutional reform will produce long-term results.

2. What are efficient ways to deliver aid?

Karlan points out that DOGE’s approach was not guided by whether a project was accomplishing what it set out to do. As he puts it, “They never once looked at what benefits were being generated from the spending.”

Lewin doesn’t argue otherwise. His concern is that too many projects continue indefinitely or grow beyond their original scope. In his words, “The best foreign assistance is that which ends.”

Karlan disagrees. He does not view continuing aid as failure: “Even if we succeed in helping the poorest country in the world use their resources better, they're still going to be poor. We're still going to be rich... I don't think getting off of aid is necessarily the objective.”

There’s truth to both sides, but continued assistance should not be painted as a failure by default.

Karlan brings a deeper lens to the question of effectiveness, as it was his job as USAID Chief Economist. His interview is worth listening to for insights on designing simple, scalable programs based on evidence, and on making honest tradeoffs in funding decisions.

If we fund ten priorities, he notes, we are not reaching as many people as effectively as we might if we focused on our top three.

He also cautions against using effectiveness as a proxy for accountability. Real accountability includes space for experimentation, risk-taking, and learning from failure.

3. What constitutes fraud?

This is where critiques of aid become most politically charged and conceptually confused.

Karlan stays in his lane. As Chief Economist, he evaluated whether programs worked. Investigating fraud was the role of the USAID Office of Inspector General (OIG), who was dismissed in February.

Lewin argues that when people say DOGE found little fraud at USAID, they are using too narrow a definition. He suggests that paying $400,000 salaries to researchers working on climate constitutes fraud against the American people, even if those researchers were working within the approved scope and budget of their awards.

We can debate cost efficiency and compensation levels, but fraud has a legal definition. It should not be used as a rhetorical device.

Redefining fraud to include work that reflects prior administration priorities has become a common refrain in critiques of both foreign aid and domestic nonprofit sectors. This casts entire areas of policy and programming as fraudulent, simply because they do not reflect the political priorities of a new administration.

That’s not fraud. That’s a shift in priorities. (See Question #1.)

My Takeaway

If we don’t articulate clear foreign aid priorities (Question #1), we risk defaulting to a transactional, quid pro quo approach.

While each administration should bring its own focus, we also need bipartisan support for a core set of enduring aims that extend beyond election cycles. Only then can we effectively assess what works (Question #2) and invest in scaling evidence-based approaches.

The two interviews highlight vast differences in the level of understanding about what makes aid effective. We cannot afford to dismiss the expertise of implementation and research staff as “fraudulent” simply because their work reflected the priorities of a previous administration (Question #3).

What Else Should We Be Asking?

These three questions are interesting, but let’s not constrain the debate to just these concepts. What are other questions that we should be asking as we envision a new foreign assistance structure? For example, should we even call it “foreign assistance”?

Share your ideas in the comments…

Thank you!