FHI 360, a global research nonprofit headquartered in downtown Durham, will officially lay off more than 480 furloughed U.S. workers, including 144 in North Carolina.
The organization on Thursday said these permanent cuts were in response to the federal government slashing international assistance program funding. Since President Donald Trump retook office, FHI 360 has now laid off more than a quarter of its 4,000-person global workforce and canceled over 70 projects.
“Having to part ways with so many talented staff who have dedicated themselves to advancing FHI 360’s mission is incredibly painful,” the nonprofit’s CEO Tessie San Martin said in a statement. “We have had to take these difficult actions to ensure FHI 360 remains positioned to continue delivering evidence-based solutions to global challenges and creating measurable impact.”
The layoffs will be effective May 2.
Founded in 1971 at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, FHI 360 today works in more than 60 countries and is based at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham. Its recent projects include addressing early childhood nutrition in Jordan, youth education in Congo, and malnutrition in Yemen, where FHI 360 researchers have found one in five children under the age of 5 suffer from acute malnutrition.
FHI 360 generates most of its revenue from a single federal source. According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. Agency for International Development committed to pay the nonprofit nearly $3.8 billion between 2013 and 2022, the third-most USAID funding any nongovernmental organization earned during this period (The Durham-based nonprofit RTI International received the sixth-most USAID funding. It too has made multiple staff reductions in recent months.)
According to its latest annual report, FHI 360 generated $869 million in 2023, with 67% of that money coming from USAID. The next largest revenue source for FHI 360, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, accounted for only 8%.
Waiting on payments
The Trump administration has dismantled USAID over the past three months.
On Feb. 3, the White House released a statement titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep” in which it listed projects it opposed, including several related to sexual orientation and gender identity. And in March, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said 83% of USAID programs will be canceled, totaling around 5,200 contracts. In announcing this decision on X, Rubio credited Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency for “this overdue and historic reform.”
FHI 360 furloughed its first U.S. workers in February, and announced additional indefinite furloughs in March. Combined, the furloughed workers who are now laid off account for 45% of the nonprofit’s domestic staff.
In March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a federal judge could order the Trump administration to unfreeze money owed to USAID contractors for their completed work done prior to Feb. 13. FHI 360 spokesperson Jennifer Garcia told The News & Observer the organization has now been paid for this past work, but that the government hasn’t covered other costs.
“We’re still awaiting full payment for our work,” she said in an email. “And we have yet to be paid to resume work on projects that were not terminated, including lifesaving humanitarian programs.”
President John Kennedy created USAID through an executive order in 1961, near the height of the Cold War. In a speech to Congress earlier that year, Kennedy called providing foreign assistance one of the country’s moral, economic and political “obligations.”
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