Big foundations and nonprofits flood to the sidelines of a diminished United Nations

New York — As the United Nations contemplates a diminished role amid cutbacks and questions about global aid, foundations and nonprofits will descend on the city starting Sept. 22 for United Nations General Assembly Week, a packed schedule of sideline conferences, meetings, happy hours and dinners around world leaders’ gatherings.

Yet the uncertainty has already begun to shape participation. The Gates Foundation has delayed this year’s progress report on global development goals, citing unclear commitments from countries on foreign aid and health funding. Former President Bill Clinton said the Clinton Global Initiative will change its format this year, asking leaders from business, politics and philanthropy to develop new programs during the two-day conference. The United States — the U.N.’s largest funder — has frozen funding or sought to claw back allocations to several agencies, prompting major layoffs and program reductions across U.N. bodies. The world body’s Security Council has not acted to stop two major wars, despite its founding mandate after World War II “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The gathering remains the year’s most visible signal of how much the philanthropic and private-sector world depends on the U.N.’s platform, even as reach and funding tighten. Kevin Sheekey, senior adviser to billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, said UNGA Week remains the only time the whole world gets together, and that alone justifies its existence. Since 2017, Bloomberg’s organization has convened a forum on the U.N. sidelines, a unique opportunity to connect world leaders, businesses and philanthropic groups. This year the forum will emphasize global collaboration and investment opportunities in African countries, with a particular focus on sports as a catalyst.

The United Nations Foundation, founded by Ted Turner in 1998 to promote cooperation with the U.N., compiles a public-facing calendar of sideline events. This year, the foundation has tracked about the same number of events as in prior years, said George Hampton, one of its executive directors. But he noted a shift toward smaller roundtables where conversations can be more frank and substantive. “It is clear that the space we have to solve problems is shrinking, the kind of global cooperation table is shrinking as the problems themselves grow,” Hampton said. “So it does feel there’s a new urgency, a new sense that this time matters more than those before it.”

Clinton Global Initiative CEO Gregory Milne described the format changes as adaptive responses to evolving crises, likening them to how CGI pivoted after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This is a critical moment for the global development community,” Milne said. “But we also know that the CGI community and thousands of organizations that span the public and private sector have always worked to meet the unique and urgent challenges of the time.”

An early sideline program, Free Future, hosted Thursday at the Ford Foundation, focused on ending gender-based violence. Speakers, including Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former Liberian president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, reflected on the Beijing conference in 1995 and its legacy. Sirleaf said progress toward gender equality remains uneven: “We have not done enough.” Monica Aleman, international program director at the Ford Foundation, argued that violence imposes an economic toll and that investments — whether cash transfers or other opportunities — can help survivors regain stability. The event, which brought together funders, private companies, advocates and grantees, aimed to energize participants ahead of a busy week on the U.N. sidelines. Celiné Justice, of Pivotal Ventures, said her organization would be listening for opportunities to bring this issue into the room and emphasized that philanthropies must work together and build partnerships beyond their traditional allies.

A correction at the end of the article notes that the United Nations Foundation was established in 1998 by Ted Turner. The AP’s philanthropy coverage continues to track sideline events as UNGA Week unfolds.