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Recruiting in Crisis: Nonprofits Struggle to Hire Amid Shrinking Aid and Rising Danger

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One statistic stood out when the United Nations unveiled its Global Humanitarian Overview 2025: only 15.9 percent of a two-billion-dollar emergency requirement had been funded by mid-year. The UN now seeks 47 billion dollars to reach 190 million people worldwide, but the gap between appeals and contributions has rarely been wider.

 

For nonprofits, the funding shortfall is more than a budgetary problem. It is reshaping the labor market as global needs peak. A layoff tracker maintained by The Chronicle of Philanthropy has recorded thousands of nonprofit positions cut or frozen this year. Recruiters report backfills being postponed and new posts requiring board-level approval before they can move forward. As one aid manager put it, “You cannot hire people on promises, and right now, all we have are promises.”

 

Security is an even greater constraint. The Aid Worker Security Report 2025 documented 383 aid workers killed in 2024, a 36 percent increase compared with the previous year. Another 308 were injured, and 125 were kidnapped. The first six months of 2025 brought roughly 230 more deaths, already exceeding the annual toll of most years before 2023.

 

Save the Children has warned that the situation is deteriorating even further. By mid-August, 265 aid workers had been killed in 2025, a 54 percent rise from the same period last year. Sixty-five percent of those deaths occurred in Gaza alone. Gaza accounted for 181 deaths in 2024, making it the single deadliest context for aid staff. In South Sudan, the bombing of an MSF hospital in Fangak in May killed seven people, including a nine-month-old infant, and injured more than 27 others.

 

With casualties mounting, organizations face spiraling insurance costs, longer mandatory security training, and shrinking pools of candidates willing to deploy to red-flag zones. Recruiters say that duty-of-care obligations have become central to job negotiations, with many experienced professionals walking away from postings that once would have been considered standard.

 

The financial picture is equally stark. OECD projections suggest official development assistance could fall by nine to seventeen percent in 2025. Analysts warn that public donor funding for humanitarian work could decline by as much as 34 to 45 percent from its 2023 peak. These contractions are already filtering through to hiring pipelines, leaving organizations unable to commit to long-term staffing even with precise operational needs.

 

Faced with these converging pressures, nonprofits are accelerating localization strategies. Jobs once reserved for expatriates are being redesigned for national staff. Organizations are investing in local leadership pipelines, context-specific expertise, and human resources systems to reduce dependence on international recruitment. What was once promoted as a principle of equity has become a survival tactic.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 describes the operating environment as one of “persistent geopolitical tensions” with no short-term relief. For humanitarian recruiters, that means budgeting for volatility, hiring in shorter cycles, and relying more heavily on regional networks. One veteran aid worker said, “Crises do not wait for us to fix our staffing problems. We adapt, or the work does not get done.”

 

Sources

 

About the Author

Jewel Ruiz is a seasoned executive recruiter with over a decade of experience in identifying top talent across various sectors. Since transitioning to recruitment in 2010, she has honed her skills in sourcing, screening, and managing the full recruitment cycle. As a freelance recruiter, Jewel combines a structured approach with deep industry insights to deliver high-quality placements, always focused on achieving optimal results for clients and candidates alike.

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